Here are some additional photos of the beautiful city of Budapest.
It’s Saturday morning and I am sitting in my flat soaking in some quiet time and enjoying the laughter of the small children just outside my window. There are few sounds in our world more soothing and delightful than those of carefree children playing and laughing. Every time I hear these sounds I am reminded what God’s word says about being like a little child with regard to my faith. I suppose there are many different pearls of wisdom one could glean from this passage. For me, it helps me to stay focused on the notion that I have a daily need to draw near to and stay close by my heavenly father. It’s adopting a mentality that I am naive and vulnerable when I stray away from the guidance and protection of my father God. Trust has been the key issue here for me. Many of you have had the experience of being responsible for a small child in a crowded place. The child wants to cling to you because they feel overwhelmed by the situation. When I ponder the daunting complexities and challenges of life in this world I can feel overwhelmed at times. I believe that God is very pleased with his people when they admit their inadequacies and vulnerabilities, choose to put their trust in Him and learn to depend on Him everyday. The moments of pain and trial in our lives, such as the one I have been embroiled, are great opportunities to be renewed in this crucial element of our relationship with God. I can say with a great degree of certainty that I have a deeper understanding and commitment to the daily need to cling to my father God (and what that looks like) regardless of the circumstances in my life.

I have learned the hard way what happens when I choose a different path. Why would I ever want to do that in the first place, to walk away from the only source where I can truly have what I desire? There is still much I need to learn about this but what I know right now is that it starts with a subtle deception or faulty mentality. I had begun to believe that other things that I experience in my life, some of them blessings from God, could serve as the satisfaction and fulfillment my heart is hungry for. For example, relationships with family and friends are blessings from God and are essential to our human experience. On the flip side those relationships can become our primary source of feeling value, worth and significance, which by design was something reserved primarily for our interactions with God. Once my search for a loving affirmation veers off solely into people relationships, I have effectively separated the human from the sacred and I am now vulnerable to losing my way and wandering further down the road away from my first and most important love. My most significant heart needs, such as affection, affirmation and compassion, can only be satisfied and fulfilled by the creator of the universe, the one who knit me together in my mother’s womb. Part of the process for me these past several weeks is to reunite the human and the sacred so that God is my primary source of comfort and strength and the human relationships are returned to their proper level of importance.

Another clear example of seeking for what I need in the wrong place is in the activities I engage in as a minister. There have been too many moments when I allow myself to be convinced that what I do in the interest of the kingdom is a measuring stick to determining my value and worth as a person. If you have been reading this blog recently you have heard me talk about the way I have used performance in the past to justify and solidify my position as a ‘good guy’ in the eyes of God or others. As far as God is concerned, He already knows that I am a wretch. God sees my heart as clear as day, knows all my faults, weaknesses and ugliness and still loves me with a passion I can scarcely fathom. As far as others are concerned, even if I could convince everyone in the world to love me and respect me, I would still be hungry for more.

The simple fact is that I was not designed to be satisfied by the limited, conditional love of others, but only by the limitless, unconditional love of the designer of my heart. The book of Matthew, chapter 18, is where Jesus talks about becoming like a little child. Some think He meant pursuing or submitting to an attitude of humbleness, which seems to fit. When we are humble we can admit that we don’t have the answers and we don’t have control over the circumstances in our lives. Much like a little child in circumstances that seem mysterious and overwhelming. When I personally make those admissions it leads me to a place of recognizing my need for someone who does have the answers and does have the control. Jesus is that someone. And I know I can trust Him to take me by the hand to lead me and guide me out of the darkness and into the light, out of the confusion and into the truth, out of the heart hungering and into the banquet. May God’s blessings of humbleness be yours today. May you grant Him permission to take you by the hand and lead you through whatever you are facing in your life today. Your heavenly father will be well pleased with the invitation.

Here is my Slovak of the week. This is my friend Jakub. He is 15 yrs old and attended his first Bojnice baseball camp this year. Jakub loves his new sport(baseball) and would like to play professionally. He speaks pretty good english which I am glad for because it allows us to be friends. After hearing the faith stories at the baseball camp Jakub decided he wanted to start his own faith journey. It has been my privilege to encourage Jakub in his new life. God is good.

Here are some additional pictures from the city park known as Koliba. It is a very popular area among the residents of Bratislava especially on the weekends. Saturdays and Sundays see hundreds of people here reading, grilling, relaxing and playing games. It is still in the city limits and yet you feel like you are up in the mountains. I have visited the park three times now, most recently to show our visiting American friend Judy around. My landlord hosted me on a bike trip to the park last weekend. Thanks Miro. I plan on making regular trips to this place of beauty and solitude.

The past 3- 4 months of my life have been saturated with change and growth as this very special time in my faith journey continues to unfold. Along the way there is pain, confusion, insight, transformation and awakening. One of the most difficult parts of this journey has been the way it has played out so publicly. It is quite humbling to have so much personal, sensitive information about yourself accessible to so many others. One of the primary ways the experience has been made so visible is this blog site, which is under my direction. I don’t know if I can explain to you why I decided to essentially bare my soul so publicly. The only thing I can tell you is I know that it was supposed to happen that way. It would not have been my first choice however but here lies an indication of one of the things God is changing in me which is my tendency to convince other people that I have it all together. This is one of the ways I attempt to receive affirmation or love from others, to convince them of my value. Some would say everything we do as human beings is motivated by the desire to be loved. Out of countless other desires we experience as humans, the desire to be loved is the deepest, most significant desire. So the danger with my decision to allow others to peek into my soul as I experience this time of healing and transformation is that I might lose control of the image I have tried so hard to create and maintain with many of you over the years.

One of the things I have been hearing from God lately is something Jesus told His disciples, “…do not be afraid.” According to the feedback I have been receiving from some of you, I believe that is exactly what God wants me to hear right now. The fear of losing control of my image and your respect has disintegrated as I read the feedback from you as well as people I don’t even know. Really the opposite of my original fear seems to be happening. Readers of the blog can find elements of what they are reading that relate to their own lives. Sometimes that helps us to give ourselves permission to enter in to this process of trust and to do it without fear. The only way I have found that I can really go into it without fear is to realize and embrace the reality that God can and should be trusted. It starts with understanding and embracing the amazing, unconditional love my father God has for me. Once that love relationship is firmly established then I can believe and trust that God has my very best interest in mind and would never do anything to hurt me or betray me or reject me. I am so thankful today that God loves me way too much to leave me as I am. In other words God knows how much deeper my ability is to love and be loved by Him. It is obvious to me God wants to bring change, healing and transformation into my life for the very reason that He loves me so much. The question I was confronted with is, will I choose to allow God do what He wants to do. I could have refused God in this deal. I could have said, “…thanks but, no thanks. That looks much too painful or scary to me.” And for many years of my life, that is exactly the answer I gave to God. This was not a conscious, external process with God but a subtle, internal process. God was constantly inviting me into a deeper relationship with Himself by offering to heal me and release me from the places I had imprisoned myself. Quietly and often times without knowing it I was refusing to give God access to my heart. Which is essentially telling God "no." It is astounding to me that as a puny, fallible human being I have the power to decide what the creator of the universe can and cannot do in certain areas of my life. Now that is scary.

But it is exactly how God created life to be. It is the nature of the love He created. Nobody can be forced to love another. It must be in the form of a gift which can be accepted or rejected. And the most important example of that is God’s love for us. God gives us a choice about whether we will receive His love and reciprocate it or reject it. I am learning that when I choose to say yes to God’s offer the process of true peace and freedom begins to unfold. Yes, I have learned this truth before and accepted it to certain degree as well. But as I described in an earlier blog entry I had been lured away by the promise of a counterfeit love. The empty love of feeling good about myself based on the acceptance and approval of others. Or believing that relationships with other people would some how bring me to the place where the love I am wired to crave is secured. This is where our internal prisons are made, shackles for my heart. I entered into this pursuit of a counterfeit love believing that I was still in a right relationship with God. Deception had clouded my view and my perception. I ended up in a place where I was honoring God and our relationship with my words only, not my heart. There is no true love, in any relationship, without the involvement of the heart.
My journey has now brought me to the place where I am tasting once again the freedom and rest (peace) that goes along with entering into a true love relationship with God where my heart is fully engaged. This is a place where I learn more about who I really am. It’s a place where I can bury the false identity I attempted to create to acquire the love I was hungering for which was available to me all along for free, with no effort and no strings attached. May that same love be deeply rooted in your heart today. Blessings.

Welcome to Budapest, Hungary. Enjoy the next several pictures from this beautiful city just south of Slovakia. Life goes on here in Slovakia, however it is anything but typical. Each day brings a new level of familiarity and comfortability with my new surroundings. I am quite certain that this process will be on-going indefinitely. The other process continues to unfold as well. My emotional and spiritual journey continues to take me through quite a significant degree of transformation. If you have been reading the blog for the past month or so you know that I have experienced a subtle, yet powerful, awakening to my inner self and my true proximity to God. As my eyes were opened to this reality it became clear to me that I was no longer standing within ear shot of my heavenly fathers voice. I had wandered away from His territory and subsequently from some of the blessings that go along with that close proximity. Blessings like favor, protection, discernment, peace and other crucial personal needs.

The questions I have been wrestling with are: how did I get to this place; why would I ever go out into the world to seek for a better way to be loved; how do I return to where I need to be, where the love is unconditional and everything I need, and so on. The only way I know how to find the answers to these questions is to press in to my father God and pray that I will hear His voice with clarity. “Pressing in” means putting myself in a position where God can speak and move and be experienced. This is no easy task in today’s loud, fast moving world. I don’t know about you but I can all too easily get caught up in a mentality where more activity is better. Busyness becomes a badge that I wear to demonstrate to myself and others that I am important and successful because I am going in many different directions at the same time. It helps me convince myself that my life is significant. The problem here, as I have experienced it, is that God is not found in the commotion and the noise. God is found in the stillness and the quiet. My primary pursuit these last few weeks has been to remain in the stillness and to seek solitude as much as possible. I’ve learned that it can be done, even in today’s world. And the payoffs are well worth it.

It is almost exclusively in these quiet places where God can reveal to me the answers that I seek. When I choose not to enter in to the quiet to meet with God, it doesn’t take long before I lose sight of who God is and then eventually also who I am. It’s really quite simple and yet very difficult. The bottom line is: do I belong to God or do I belong to the world? Will I choose to live in God’s territory or the world’s territory? It is my choice, a choice which must be made every day of my life. God wants all of me, an intimate relationship with me, all the time. Why is that a scary thought for me?
I think part of the answer to that question has to do with control. There is a constant inner struggle within me to hold on to the control over my life and to grab hold of everything I think I need to feel secure. There is no doubt in my mind that my attempt to accomplish this feat is futile. When I am really honest with myself I have to accept the fact that I really do not have control over my life. And I never will. Anything could happen to me at anytime. I don’t get to decide how many days I have here on this planet. The second realization is, what I think my needs are (to feel secure) and what I really do need are two different things.

One need I know I have for sure is the need to continually give up the control over my life, which I really don’t have anyway, to my all wise, all powerful and all loving heavenly father. I am convinced that He, as my creator, and He alone knows exactly what I need. There have been times in my past when I have experienced this place of true surrender and it is amazing and beautiful beyond words. I guess I needed to come to Slovakia to return home again, to my fathers home where I have everything I need. It is a place where I can just be myself and know I will be loved anyway. It is a place where I will be loved unconditionally, never condemned. The security and serenity I have there can be found no where else. It is now up to me to unpack my bags there and cease my wandering. To give God access to my whole heart, not just the pieces I want to surrender. When I truly allow God to love me the way He wants to, I will never have any reason or desire to go in search of another kind of love.

This is an amazing city. The architecture, the bridges, the statues...
Like most cities in Europe, there is a ton of history here.

After a great day of visiting this city we went to the train station only to find our train was very late. So we went back into the city and saw a whole new perspective after dark. Fantastic!

As I said the bridges up and down the Danube river in the city are beautiful, especially at night. If you are wise in your spending, you can have a great day in the city for very little money.

Here is my Slovak of the week. This is my friend Peter. We first met last year at the baseball summer camp and became fast friends. We kept in touch through e-mail over the last year to keep our connection going. But there was also another reason. Peter wanted to come to America as a foreign exchange student for the next school year. I attempted to find him a family in Minnesota but it was not to be. Eventually, through an agency, Peter got his family (in Arizona) and has been preparing to go. This picture was last weekend, 2 days before his departure to America. It was a bitter sweet time for us as we have become quite close. I have heard from Peter that he arrived safely and that he likes his new family and home. God be with you my friend Peter.