Phish Bowl Ministries
September 2011
Matthew 4:19
“Chummin’ for Saints…until the nets are full”

My dear friends, I thank you for all of your prayers and concerns about how I am doing. I hope to speak clearly about the five year mark in prison. For many of us, the five year blues hit very hard. You wake up not wanting to start another day in what has become our world, our life. We ask God if He is ever going to hear our prayers and when will the answer come? It’s not always just one thing; we have many different things on our minds that hurt, such as: the memories of our kids. My daughter, Brontë turned 16 on the first. For most of us, thoughts of what we have done and what we are still doing to our kids because of putting ourselves first runs through our minds. So, we call out to Jesus and ask, beg, for relief.

So I take this and other stuff to the cross. I know the Word. I read the Word. I remind myself of God’s perfect plan daily. Still, I feel as if I’m Lazarus waiting in the tomb for my Lord to call me out from the dead to a life with the living, to a transformed new me. My favorite game to play with God is telling Him: “If only I was free, I could do this or that.” I remind Him of what kind of husband, father, and church-man I would be and how the world somehow is less without me.

My beloved, your concerns and soul-sickness may not be the same as mine, but something else might be bringing to your soul a dis-ease, a longing for something different from the life you’ve been living so far. We need Jesus’ help just as Lazarus did. When we find ourselves sick and tired of being sick and tired, only God’s help will do. The same breath that filled the life of Lazarus and brought him back, can and will do the same for us, to you and to me. The same sickness, the sickness of thinking we can earn God’s love. The thinking that if God would only work the way I want Him to, all would be just right.

So, I told you all last month, that I was in the desert looking for God…our loving God let me go. I packed my bags; I picked what to take and how to get there. I cried out to God, “I’m dying! Where are you? Why won’t You help me? Have I sinned so badly that I’m beyond Your love?” “God is kind, but He’s not soft. In kindness, He takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into radical life change.” Romans 2:4 MSG. What had to change is my image of God. I did not leave to go to the desert; I was coming out of it. Slowly, I let unbiblical thinking have a place in my mind.
“A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” Galatians 5:9

My image of God and how He works with His children was not the true God. So, I, in my power, in my thinking, left the loving God of the bible to live in the land of the if-thens:
If I was good enough, then…
If I was committed, then …
If I would read the right book, then…
If I was someone I was not, then…
One by one, each fell short and I retreated more and more into loneliness. First came walking to chow alone, then eating at a table without my friends, finding reasons to miss yard call, then a full out retreat from fellowship. I crawled back into my Lazarus tomb (my cell) and back into darkness.

What started this was my thinking of God’s timing and how He works. I put God on my time table. Then, I kept returning to my vacation home in the land of “what-ifs”. I abandoned what I knew was true and went so far away from it that I could no longer remember what it looked like until a friend asked me how I was doing and would not take the 10 minute cover story. He said, “That all sounds good, but I did not ask you how things are going around you. I asked, how are you?”

I was reading my bible daily, in service to the church body, and was in church 5 days a week. I was lonely because I turned from the Truth of a loving God and did not let close friends be in fellowship with me.

I know that God’s timing was not my timing in my mind, but now I had to apply what I knew about waiting to be transformed and His plans for me and for my family, to my walk.
God did not wake up this morning asking Moses, “How did Timothy Nathanael, my doulos get in prison”? God did not plan my sin, but He is making provision for its consequences. Including Brontë’ and Bishop having to grow up without their father. My father in Heaven knows how I feel; He watched 33 of Jesus’ birthdays from afar. Picture this as Mary and Martha sat with Lazarus. I wonder if they thought about what they did know about their friend, Jesus.

One thing that they knew about Jesus is that He did not hurry to get to Lazarus. From the age of twelve until the age of thirty, He remained quiet from the needy world---thirty years! We might consider this and think what a waste of time! During this time, as far as we knew, Jesus was growing up to be a carpenter. But what we need to know is this, when God saw fit to announce Jesus’ ministry, and not before, Jesus appeared in the “fullness of time”.

Jesus still works out our time. The word “time” in Scripture has two meanings in Greek. Chronos is literally time which can be counted on. This is where we get the word chronology. The other word for time is Kairos. Kairos time is far different than chronos time; it is “the appointed time in the purpose of God”. It is a “time in between” when God breaks through.

On the hot day in Bethany when Lazarus died, no plea from the begging sisters or concerned disciples could move Jesus to operate in their human chronos time table. They had to wait for the karios moment. Until that moment, Jesus would linger, Lazarus would die. I’m a lot like Mary and Martha; I have in mind the chronos time when Jesus should arrive. I seem to find it hard to understand that transformation is a slow process, on God’s timetable.

Consider this: The Potter forming clay on a wheel works and reworks the clay. He shapes the clay until it is transformed into His desired image. This is not a fast process. It’s not meant to be a fast process. It’s loving, intentional, deliberate, and purposeful. It may look slow from our point of view, but the Potter has had the timing in mind all along. Our Potter is Jesus and He knows all about kairos. Keep this in mind. In the end we will see beautiful workmanship because the Potter waited for just the right time.

Transformation is slow, not because God does not love us, but because God has a greater purpose in mind. Has it crossed your mind that God just might want you to be transformed more than you want to be transformed? As we go on in Lazarus’ story, Jesus tells His disciples that Lazarus’ illness was “for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it”. John 11:4

Glory talk goes on beyond our view point, beyond our time tables and beyond what we think is best. It allows God to break through at the most unusual time. Glory talk happens when God does something big and gets the credit which at times is the hard thing to understand whether you’re behind bars or when we’re in a crisis and just need God to show up. But, I do know this; when God seems distant and quiet, it becomes the fodder for fire in which glory begins to burn brightly.

It’s ironic that the times when God seems most absent can be the times when we get to know Him better. We read in Romans 5:5 that “hope does not disappoint us”. As our desperate heart cries out to the lingering Jesus, we wonder what kind of hope that could be. It’s in those moments God is birthing a new hope in us; a hope in who He is, not a hope in who we want Him to be.

Please Saints remember, it is a life long journey to understand that God’s will, will not disappoint us.

Glory is brooding, glory is about to be unleashed.

We can find healing in God’s loving arms and in a church full of Messiah’s Misfits. Remember my chains as I remember yours. Watch. Hold fast in the faith. Be brave and be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.

Semper Fidelis!




Phish Bowl Ministries, P.O. Box 153, Loveland, CO 80539.
http://inthephishbowl.blogspot.com
An outreach of Calvary Chapel Loveland