As I was coming in to work the other morning, I was thinking about how much I probably miss every day because I don’t focus on responding like I am right now. It seems the more willing and available I intentionally make myself, the more God trusts me to do. It’s almost like He’s saying, “I have kingdom work to do, let’s see, who can I trust with it? If I prompt John, will he have the ears to hear and the will to respond?”

So I told the Lord, “I want to experience the thrill of helping someone find You. I know there are people in my life who don’t clearly understand Your grace and love, I want to help someone find faith—there’s no better way to live! If You’ll lead me to someone You know is ready, I’ll tell them what I know about Your grace and goodness and explain how they can put their trust in You.”

Later that morning, I’m in a meeting and had to look up an old email. As I did, the latest email sent caught my eye – it was the name of a woman who had struggled with addictions, came to Gateway exploring faith years ago, but never committed. She had moved overseas, but now she was back. Her email said, “I’m going to do this 60-60 Experiment, but I’d like to get some questions answered first, any way we could meet?”

Two days later, a guy I play soccer with called me saying he was feeling like he had a short fuse at the last game, and he needed to get his life back in balance. I had already felt a prompting to see if he wanted to do this 60-60 Experiment, but I wanted to have breakfast with him to see if he understood God’s grace first. Then he calls me!  So I’m meeting with both of them next week though I don’t “have the time” – I’m trusting I have enough time to do the things God wants me to and to get my ongoing responsibilities done as well. I’m seeing once again, the more trustworthy and faithfully willing I make myself, the more God trusts me to do. Life with God becomes an adventure!

This morning I was brushing my teeth and asking God what was in store for today. I had a series of thoughts stream through my mind: I thought about community and spiritual friendships from Sunday’s message, which led to thinking about a book I read on community, which led to a mental picture of the author. I had met the author in Chicago a few years back, and I ran into him at a conference I was speaking at six months ago. We recognized each other (though honestly, I couldn’t recall his name), but as we talked he really opened up about major hardship and crisis in his life. I could tell he was really struggling, and I kept praying as we talked, “Lord, give me his name—please!” Nothing came to mind.

So I’m brushing my teeth, I see this author in my mind and pray for him. Boom—his name comes into my mind clear as day. So I asked, “Lord, do you want me to call him?” Not sure, but remembering how the Lord had led me to write Daniel last week, I decided to respond. I asked Theresa, who assists me, to see if she can locate a number or email. She somehow found his cell phone and when I called that afternoon, it turned out he was in Austin! He lives in Ohio! That seemed too weird that he was in my city the day I get this prompting to call him.

I asked him if he had any idea why God might have put him on my mind. We ended up talking about all that God’s been doing to heal and restore him since we last talked. He confessed he was about to ditch God completely because of the misconstrued perspective of God’s intent, but getting honest about it with God led him into a new discovery. It struck me that he’s been learning about the very core of this 60-60 Experiment: how good God is when we let go of our old, controlling ways and learn to do life trusting him! He said the last four months have been some of the best of his life, not the easiest, but he’s found a new freedom, it’s been “playful” and “freeing” he said as he has discovered God’s presence everywhere, all the time, actively guiding him.

I also found out that he’s probably taking a job with the publishing house that published Soul Revolution. I told him I’d love to give him a copy of the book, so he’s stopping by tomorrow to pick it up.  I’m not sure what that was about or why I needed to connect up with him while he was in Austin, but maybe one day it will be clear. Or maybe it was just to encourage him on his newfound journey of faith. I’ll find out one day, but this whole thing makes the journey of life more exciting.

I woke up one night several weeks ago thinking of Daniel, a guy who came to faith at Gateway and then fell back into drug dealing with his brothers (all three are in the State Penitentiary). It was kind of weird that I had a dream about him. I’ve written him in prison on and off over the past three years, but I hadn’t been thinking about him. It was gonna be a very busy weekend and I had a lot to prepare for—our leadership retreat on Saturday, three services on Sunday, and speaking at a predominately African-American church in Austin Sunday night. I had to stay focused.

When I got to the office, I noticed a pile of mail I had not looked through. “Now is not the time to look through it,” I told myself. But I happened to see a handwritten return address with “Daniel” at the top. I felt like this was one of those God moments where He was trying to get my attention, so I opened it and read Daniel’s letter.

Daniel was struggling because another inmate who had become a spiritual mentor to him had been transferred suddenly. They had been reading scripture together, encouraging each other and praying together, and now he felt alone and abandoned by God. He hadn’t heard from me (I thought I’d written him, but it turns out months had gone by and I had not). It was the last thing I had time to do or felt like doing, but I stopped and wrote Daniel a note of encouragement. As I was writing, I had the thought “send him Soul Revolution” and encourage him to do it with other inmates.

I got a letter from Daniel today. He got the book and is going to do the 60-60 and find Running Partners to do it with in prison. He said, “I received your letter and book this week. Maybe by the time I see you, God will give me the words to adequately describe my feelings right now. I can just say, Salud!!! and Wow!!! I’ve already begun the 60-60 experiment and it has stirred emotions and given me hope that God is truly with me, even here in prison. I was struggling after James transferred; hurting in ways I hadn’t hurt in years. I started to cry out to God before I got your book. When I got it, I knew He was answering me. It’s like God loved me so much he woke you up to share His love with me. Isn’t that what you wrote in your book?”

Yes, it is…and it blows me away every time I see Him do it!

This weekend I realized that I haven’t been very present with the Lord. Even the beep became “normalized,” and I got so cranked up and busy that I gave the Lord more of a “head-nod” than an ear. I started to feel that wax-buildup in the spiritual ears. This is pretty common, and I’ve found only one thing that helps me—get alone with God and be still. I’ve developed an acquired taste over the years for these solitude times, because I’m an activist, Type-A (on steroids) by nature.

At first, I felt so guilty and unproductive just “doing nothing” but wasting time with the Lord. It felt like nothing was happening except that precious time was passing. But I have to tell you, I’ve been amazed at how replenishing and enjoyable these times of getting away to be alone with God have become. Now I find myself saying, “Oh Lord, where did the time go, I don’t want to leave.” And afterwards, my sense of His ever-present-ness remains much clearer throughout the following days.

The past three days, I got on my mountain bike and went out to “my place” for about an hour or so.  It’s a place I’ve been going now for about 10 years where I park my bike, and either sit on a rock and look out over the hill country while I talk to God, or I hike as I talk and listen. When my mind is moving so fast I can’t slow down the gears, I’ll walk and talk with the Lord before I try to sit still and listen. Somehow walking focuses my mind and frees it from other worries so that I can better listen quietly.

Dallas Willard (probably my favorite living author) says that solitude is the single most important spiritual practice needed in our frenetic age. I’m now convinced from experience of this truth. At first, I did solitude more as a discipline because it didn’t replenish me. The main reason it failed to replenish me is that I didn’t know how to slow down long enough to hear in my spirit the Lord’s quiet, calming voice. I needed enough time practicing this and pushing against the fearful resistance that yelled, “You’re wasting time you loser—this isn’t doing anything—do something so you’ll be somebody.” But that lie was what God needed to push out of my life. I needed to deeply hear that “You’re somebody because you’re connected to Me—apart from Me, you’re nothing,” but He couldn’t remove the lie until I pushed against it in solitude long enough to hear the truth. We all have lies and junk that God wants to show us (which is why some of us run from solitude—we don’t want to face those old coping mechanisms that became a comfortable false sense of security).

I’ve already seen an improvement in my consciousness of God’s presence and activity throughout the day today, and it feels like getting little glimpses into what heaven will be like. It changes the way I experience moments with my kids so that each moment becomes sacred and full of life (you know those moments you wish you could freeze and live in forever?), and it changes the way I deal with stress-potential challenges or deadlines that fly at me most days.

I just wish I could remember how good it gets when I get cranked up and disconnected and then believe that lie that says, “You don’t have time for solitude.”

At times, responding to God’s will gets tricky and confusing. This morning I decided to get into the office by 6:30 so that I could prepare for a staff meeting before my day of meetings began. So I’m driving along sippin’ some Java, and I see the cars ahead of me in the right lane swerving and breaking. There’s a guy riding his bike down the side of the right lane that I too have to veer around him. “He’s gonna get killed riding in traffic in the dark with no lights,” I thought in a not-real-kind way. The guy had a backpack on and looked like he was riding to work for the day. After passing him, I stopped in the right hand turn lane traffic, waiting to turn right onto the freeway feeder road. Just then, I saw the guy on the left side of the street riding by, but it looked like he was struggling. He kept stopping and looking down, riding a little further then stopping and grimacing. I thought, “Something’s not right. I’m not sure he’s all there. I need to help him.”

The traffic started to creep forward, and I drove forward thinking, “Do You want me to do something Lord? But what?” I had a flashback of the funeral I had done six weeks ago for a man in our church who got hit by a car riding his bike. “He’s back behind me, I can’t stop traffic.” I turned onto the feeder road and got in the far left lane traffic to enter the freeway, but now I was wrestling with the Lord. “Do you want me to help? Should I go back? But then I’ll be unprepared for staff meeting. What do I do?”

I decided to respond. I cut across three lanes, turned right and looped around through the mall to get back onto the road where I saw him. I wasn’t even sure how I could help, but I thought I’d offer him a ride to work and let him know how hard it is to see him in the dark. I thought about a time five months ago when I was driving by and saw a woman and four kids out on the side of the road. I drove past late for a meeting, and I had an unmistakable “go back.” I fought that one for five blocks, but finally went back. I found out she was a Christian and had been praying for help because she didn’t know how to change a tire and had all her kids with her on the side of the road and no cell phone.

So I rounded the street corner back to where the cyclist was last spotted, but couldn’t see him. Drove under the freeway and circled around in the shopping centers and looked down other streets, but I couldn’t find him anywhere.

Sometimes you respond and you “see.” You see looking back how that was clearly a prompting from God. Other times, you scratch your head and ask, “Did I miss something?” In this case, I may not have responded fast enough. Maybe it was just rolling down the window and asking if he needed help or just warning him, or maybe it was not a prompt at all—maybe it was just me. But I acted with willingness in faith, and so I know in God’s eyes “it counts,” even if I missed it somehow.

There’s always a tension in it. It’s never convenient to respond to God. Yet we also are called to be responsible and do our work with all our heart as unto God, so following him doesn’t mean sitting around with no plans—but sometimes it means over-riding our plans to respond. I find the only way to learn is to risk and respond. Anyone else learning through this same tension?