Today is a big day for the McDowells. We have become FULLY CONVINCED that Jesus was talking to us when He said, “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you…” Jn. 20:21. After these years of training, we feel the weight of the love for the world that drove Jesus to bring deliverance to those who had NO HOPE. Paul sums it up: “For the love of Christ compels us…that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.” 2 Cor. 5:13-15. But to understand how we got here and what’s different about today, I have to tell you about…

Yesterday.

Three kids and six years ago, when we were married, we printed on our wedding program Isaiah 61, figuring that whatever Jesus was about, we wanted to be about, too. At the time, we were being rocked by His ministry in our own lives, as He set us free, healed our areas of broken-heartedness, and planted His good news in us. We boldly proclaimed to the congregation (to paraphrase): “This is what we’re about! Slap us upside the head if you ever find us doing otherwise!” We meant it. In between then and now, here’s what we’ve been up to:

• Prayer Ministry: This is a poor name for it, but “ministering the gospel of Jesus Christ specifically to an individual’s unique areas of need through prophetic revelation” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Our brains fry when we try to count, but we’ve been privileged to have personal prayer times with several hundreds of people over the last seven years. When the Lord speaks, hearts open, marriages get restored, bondage is destroyed, and the indescribable value of each of His children is made abundantly clear. On one ministry trip, we only had a few minutes to pray for a young Korean woman, but as the Lord showed pictures from her childhood, tears flowed like rivers from her eyes. This young woman had almost never experienced affection in her family, and there was a mighty impact when strangers described to her through a translator her secret pain. We were sent from so far to tell her God saw her, knew her, loved her…and would free her from self-hatred. I can’t forget the older European gentleman who choked when God spoke to his depression and the abusive discipline of his childhood home. He simply believed on Jesus’ power to set him free and was jumping at the end of the prayer time, “I’m free! I’m free!” Like the woman at the well, he ran to tell everybody.
• Evangelism: This has become our burning passion, what we think about day and night! From starting a gospel service for the homeless in downtown Tacoma, to telling kids at the park about Jesus’ love, to sharing with other young moms, to college ministry, to jr. high school ministry…you name it, we like it. I remember one homeless mom who stayed with us with her young son. She listened to what we said with a furrowed brow, taking cigarette breaks outside, and then simply decided to turn her whole life over to Jesus, immediately moving to join a discipleship community. I remember one little crowd of African-American girls who gathered round at the park to hear what God would “say” about them. They were so hungry for a sense of significance, they laughed and jumped up and down when strangers accurately described details about them, and told them that Jesus had great purpose for each of them.
• Discipleship: If evangelism brings new birth, discipleship is the privilege of nurturing the young life into maturity. The folks we’ve discipled over these past years have been lodged so deep into our hearts, we can’t get ‘em out. To have spiritual “kids” who once were practicing witchcraft, suicidal, mutilating themselves, and fornicating, but are now walking in truth, being restored to wholeness, raising godly children, and making more disciples is…well, there just are no words for that kind of joy. We are addicted to discipleship, and feel, looking back, that none of our resources have been better spent than the ones poured into this. We love teaching and training, but that just flows out of our hearts to disciple, to spur others on to fully follow Jesus.
• International Ministry: What is this? Well, just all of the above, done somewhere else. In the past 7 years, we’ve been to six countries, ministered to missionaries from many different nations with teaching, training, and prayer. But that’s just the beginning, because here’s what’s coming…

Tomorrow:

For years, the Lord has been speaking to us about a major move of God among the emerging generation. We see rumblings of this around the country and world, but believe there is something coming never before seen. That’s why we think of everything that’s gone before in our lives as training…we believe that God’s going to bring together all the pieces often fragmented in the church (evangelism, discipleship, restoration of the heart, and prayer) to bring unprecedented wholeness and equipping to a generation marked by unprecedented destruction. Did you know that while in our grandparents generation, 65% were church goers, hearing some form of the gospel, only 3% of eleven year olds today are regular church attenders? American youth are essentially an unreached people group. Witchcraft, perversion, and addiction are normal to this generation, and instead of being the greatest exporter of missions, we are now the greatest exporter of pornography, secular humanism, and materialism. Our nation is now outdoing the unevangelized nations of the world in exploits of wickedness. This sounds dire…because it is.

BUT God is not intimidated. In fact, He’s never been intimidated by sin or brokenness or statistics. On the contrary, we’ve been astonished to learn how tenderly His heart is yearning for all His little ones, His lost sheep, and how little concern He has what for what kind of mire they are in, because the blood of His Son Jesus will wash it all away! We see this generation in the story of the sinful woman in Luke 7, having an extravagant love for the Savior because they will have been forgiven much. But “how then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written:
“ How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace,
Who bring glad tidings of good things!” Rom. 10:14-15

Which brings us back to:

Today:

For these past seven years since leaving the army, OJ has operated our small business. His hard work ensured our financial needs were taken care of, so we could obey as God added babies, seminary, travel, and all the ministry described above to the schedule. Until now, just about every bit of ministry we’ve done has been on our time and our dime, which taught us this: there is no such thing as “ours!” It all belongs to Him! During these years split between the marketplace and ministry, we are so glad to have learned things we couldn’t have learned any other way: hard work, perseverance, total marriage teamwork, and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit to ensure all the kids’ needs are abundantly met. But today, it’s become clear that the need is too great, and we simply must devote all our time to ministry, particularly to the emerging generation.

We thought of all sorts of great solutions to allow us to go into full-time ministry and support ourselves, but God did not care for our good ideas. He has essentially shut every one of them down, and we finally realized this is why: “…how shall they preach unless they are sent?” He’s been gently informing us that we are not the only ones who are burdened for this generation and the gospel, that there are many on this team! It took us awhile to get this idea into our heads; sorry for being slow on the uptake!

We are asking you, if you share this desire, to SEND us to this next generation. OJ has already stopped working full-time out of obedience, and there are more requests for prayer and opportunities to teach than we can keep up with. We’re sending this because we know that God is causing some hearts to leap. If what we’re talking about makes your heart skip a beat, then we want to hear from you! This is the whole church’s calling, and we want to stir up everyone to be ready to care for the new converts God will bring in through the MANY preachers He is sending to the field. We love to share the vision, train, and minister for this purpose! In the immediate, we need a team of partners praying for us, encouraging us, and helping to finance this work. Please consider if the Lord would have you SEND us; we’re dying to go!

…since I’ve written a post.  I haven’t known how to put on paper what’s been going on in our hearts and home.  A couple months ago, OJ and I began a season of fasting and prayer in desperation…just desperation to get the message inside of us out.  Sometimes it seems lodged there, somewhere between the gut and the tongue, sometimes causing indigestion.  We’ve had lots of conversations, and some just FLY.  And others just seem so awkward, like we’re trying to talk around our feet as they are permanently lodged in our mouths.  Feel free to picture that for your own amusement.

Here’s what we’ve been talking about.  THE GOSPEL.  Is it, or is it not, the answer to every single one of your problems, my problems, and your neighbors problems?  OJ and I are contending that it is.  Contend with whom?  Well, here’s the catch.  Contention always comes with those who most agree with us.  Stick with me for a minute.  Recently I was beginning to introduce a woman to the Lord, and i told her in the middle of other sentences, “God loves you.”  Before I could go on, she murmured, “I know…”  as if that was already covered.  I looked at her with her sad face, tired eyes, and hopeless demeanor, and shot back immediately, “No, you don’t.”  There was nothing argumentative in it, whatsoever.  It was a simple statement of the most obvious fact at that moment.  If there’s anything that this precious lost one did not KNOW, it was that God LOVES her.  Because if God really LOVES her, then…well, a child could figure it out…her problems are solved.  Imagine a woman being pursued by suitors.  If an illiterate foreigner in a far away land loves her, that’s nice, but there are some obvious problems.  Or if a mentally unstable janitor with iffy residence history loves her, there may be some kinks to work out in her life plan.  Or if a  workaholic businessman with a summer bungalow and hallitosis loves her, there could still be significant worries.  You get the picture.  But if GOD loves her, what exactly does she have to worry about?  And so it was very easy to say, “No, you don’t know that God loves you.”

Everybody has problems and the world is full of destruction.  And so, as we know from the Christmas story, God had thousands of angels show up to fill the sky and make it ring out with the news…the NEWS…THE NEWS THAT GOD WAS, RIGHT THEN, BRINGING PEACE TO MEN.  The news that as much as humanity has proved itself the guiltiest possible race, having reveled in every crime imaginable in every corner of creation over and over and over again…just when it seemed creation could no longer put up with the unutterable wickedness that is our human history, God announces GOODWILL, the unthinkable.  Jesus, our peace.  Our PEACE.  Either He is or He isn’t.  I’m telling the lost that He is.  But most of us are still praying for peace, as if someday they will find it.  JOY TO THE WORLD!!!  Either that’s what came or it didn’t.  But why are we still hoping to someday find joy?  Where is the joy?  DId Jesus come, or are we still praying for that?  Life abundant, rivers of living water, everlasting life…these are the things that Jesus said we would have if we come to Him.  He also healed the diseases of all who came.  These are Jesus’ words, not mine!  Jesus didn’t make an invitation to come to Him, so we could join the club that prays for peace, and tries to have joy, and wishes they were more loving.  He spoke simply to simple people (these quotes are from Jn 3,4,5):

He who believes in the Son has everlasting life…

He who believes in Him is not condemned…

You must be born again (born of the Spirit).

…whoever believes in Him should not perish…

…Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.

…he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.

OJ and I began to confront the questions raised by Mark 16 and Jn 14:12-14, where the Lord talks about the works that will follow those who believe.  But here’s what really came up for us when we got honest, was that while the works Jesus mentions expose our unbelief because they are tangible evidence, the unbelief is really rooted much, much deeper than that.  When it comes to the basics of the GOSPEL, (take for instance the quotes above), we have so much unbelief.  The unbelief is so deep, so pervasive.  Because if we have been born again, given everlasting life, are not condemned, don’t miss how simple this is…we should not be perishing.  We should not be thirsty.  We should not be dying, because we’ve passed into life.  But most of the time, we find ourselves getting together seeking some water for our thirst, praying over all that’s perishing in our lives, and feeling condemned.  For goodness’ sake, the only people I’ve ever heard talk about feeling condemned are Christians!  These are the issues we can claim to believe without ever realizing that we don’t, at least not fully.  Unless someone confronts the distance between the EVERLASTING WORDS OF LIFE that we say we believe, but come drivelling out of our mouths powerlessly as religious platitudes.  Unless someone does like I did for my unsaved friend with the sad face who claimed to know that God loves her.  “No, you don’t.”

So for OJ and me, we’ve decided to jump in fully.  To say to ourselves, “What exactly is the problem?”  Is it not simply that in some way, we do not believe Jesus?  Because how sad?  How angry?  How to feel like a failure?  How to be hopeless?  How?  If even one of those statements Jesus said is even only mostly true, how do we live in sorrow, depression, and anxiety?  What exactly is the problem?

Jesus is so clear.  so simple.  “Why are you afraid?” He asks the men on boat as the storm throws water into the boat.  He is LORD.  He is LORD.  He is LORD.  What problem?  What disappointment?  What failure?  What sorrow?  What anxiety?  He is LORD.  There is only one problem:  it is unbelief.

Final note:  trying to believe is not the same as believing.  A simple way to know if we believe is to survey our life to find out how much of it depends on God being real.  Like if God’s not real, it will go bust.  The heroes of faith Jesus thought worth mentioning in the NT (thinking of Bartimaeus, the woman with the issue of blood, the lepers…note the common thread of desperation) held NOTHING together.  These were folks who were so unable to cope with the extent of their perishing that if Jesus was not real, they were done for.  One of the greatest obstacles to true faith is a lack of desperation.  When we can cope with the level to which we are experiencing perishing (be it marriages, our children, our finances, our health, our heart-brokenness) ourselves, then we can throw prayers of unbelief out all day long.  But when we can’t go on any further unless He breaks through, when we actually need Him to be real…this is where we find faith.  God bless you!