Weakness Works - More on UAE

When you fly east, you lose time. I get kind of sad about it, actually, even when it's just a flight to Denver or Houston. When I flew to the UAE, I lost a day. Left on a Friday, got there 12:30 am Sunday morning.

Walking off the plane I saw my friends, Jacob and Amy. Jacob has been a brother of mine for a long time, and Amy is the Youth For Christ front-liner who helped make all of this possible. She came up with the Desert Challenge idea years ago. She also designed the theme I spoke on, as well as basic themes for each talk. The title of the conference was WAKE UP. The talks looked liked this:

1. Wake up to God's presence in the universe and to the majesty of his creation.
2. Wake up to the significance of Jesus' death and resurrection.
3. Wake up to who you are in Jesus.
4. Wake up to Jesus as the Eikon or Image of the living God.
5. Wake up to the cost and mission of being a disciples of Jesus.

The story I want to tell you right now has everything to do with waking up, though it doesn't necessarily delve into the talks themselves.

I had trouble sleeping on the planes.

In fact, I couldn't sleep. I think I dozed on the first plane, falling off when Harry and Dumbledore finally recover the true memory of Voldemort and then waking up t0 the quietly spoken words, 'I am the half blood prince," at the end. The food was great, the flights where great, and at 12:30 am I was feeling great. Walked off the plane, there were my friends, we drive out of the airport, and the car breaks down. Overheats. That makes me nervous. I've split a block driving an overheated car, and that happened in freezing winter. We're in Dubai, in the middle of severe desert, and though the temperature was kind wonderful, I was very happy when we pulled over to a fuel station and spent then next couple hours drinking orange juice and quoting The Office.

Finally, we made it to the church facility where Desert Challenge was going to happen. We had a 4:30 am staff meeting - no joke. And yes that is early for people in the middle east. The computer guy, Jim, said, "No one would call a meeting like this...except Amy."

Around 5:45 - 6:00am, I was on an air mattress. I woke up around 8:30 am.
The first talk was around 1:30pm. The second talk was around 7:30 pm. I was so completely dead during the second talk, I never stated my thesis. My thesis was (and is, yo): Jesus did not come to make bad people good; he came to make dead people live. Thankfully, this guy, John, a local youth pastor of awesomeness asked me, "Hey, how would you sum up all your talks, in one sentence..." and he asked me that during this late night interview thing when all the students were gathered, and, thank God, I was able to then state the thesis. The thesis IS my answer.

Now, I was also supposed to lay down a verse in a rap competition that was going to be so intense young people would be like running out into the desert screaming my name....but I never did the rap. I had it all figured out, but John later told me that when he looked at me, he saw I'd "done enough that day." Whew.

Let me tell you that God's strength is perfected in our weakness. Even now, at home a couple weeks, there is so much stuff I need to get done because I am behind, unable to finish for x reason and y reason, and that can cause nuclear stress. It can just slay you mentally. But there is a real beauty and grace-infused peace in allowing God to perfect his strength in our weakness.

The Desert Challenge experience was on Thanksgiving weekend. Trust me, folks, I could NOT HAVE PARTICIPATED and have missed Thanksgiving with my family. I had to leave when I left, no sooner and no later. The entire thing was designed from the ground up to exhaust me, and the folks I worked with there were also totally exhausted, running on God's strength. The second day was an epic day - huge responses to the gospel, huge responses to the challenge of making disciples, and an overwhelming sense among all involved that God was coordinating everything each individual had planned into this intensely beautiful textile, something more wonderful than the (pretty awesome) scarves I picked up for Manda at the mall the last day.

There is a tendency in me to have everything worked out, premapped. In fact, Desert Challenge was, pretty much, premapped and worked out. But there were enough variables and enough gaps one could needle away at until numb with worry.

Didn't happen.

Afterwards, I was amazed at how congruent everything felt. I have not listened to any of the talks after the fact - I don't have copies of them - but unless I'm delusional, the Holy Spirit granted us this powerful cohesive unity which wasn't build on sameness but a rich diversity of perspectives and obedience-centered giftedness.

I'm going to write more about this time on this blog so all, what??? four of you (ha ha :) ) can read about it, and I'll have a record laid down. Listen: even my mistakes were blessings. Those of you who know me know I struggle to accept that any mistake I make can be a blessing! But God really did use every moment for the building of his kingdom and the furthering of his purpose: to set the world free from the power of sin and death through resurrection life we are given freely through Jesus' death and resurrection. I know that's a mouthful, but that is the message. These students RISK THEIR LIVES when they share Jesus with others. They are steeped in a culture that tells them to earn. The UAE free market culture is built on similar values our Western 'earning' culture is built on. And there are is a prevalent spiritual ethos that perpetuates a sense that we earn what God gives us; that our strengths determine our success.

I thank God that this was not the case for me in Dubai as he really showed up and perfected his strength in my weakness(es).

UAE

Guys, I'm back, and my heart is on fire from what God is doing in the United Arab Emirates. In fact, I wasn't ready for what he was going to show me - and that started from the very first moments I stepped off the plane. We were driving from the airport - me, Amy (the head of Desert Challenge and all things YFC in that region), and Jacob who I hadn't seen in a couple months. Our car started hissing and every good person in Dubai who thought we couldn't see the wig of smoke rising from the car hood was blasting horns and pointing. We parked at a gas station, sat on a curb, and drank orange juice. Amy was stressing because she has a conference to plan and I was sitting there IN JOY because, well, I'm in Dubai with Jacob and Amy and I'm sitting on a curb in the middle of the night quoting The Office and telling stories.
Then check this out. Later that night, we:
1) had a meeting at 4:30 am. Yes. Read that one more time, in case you missed it. I was teetering at the meeting but alive and 'myself' and then...
2) we had our minds blown at the videos Jacob and Ray and others put together for DC. Blew away in sense that any fears I had that the normal genre-limitations and cheesiness of contemporary mass-christian art would dominate the tone of this conference were destroyed. Guys, these videos are about four minutes a piece and they rocked. The videos were sick. True accomplisments. They stand up to multiple viewings.
3) I had my mind blown at the love and graciousness, the welcoming spirit, and the desire for these kids to be impacted. This whole spirit came drenched with a sense of edification and establishment: I had every sense that they wanted the talks to go well, my time there to be everything I wanted it to be, and God to be in total control.
Which he was. All these little things happened which kept decentralizing myself from the center of this thing. Listen, that has to happen. Christians love to take any speaker - even the average ones - and place them up high. Not this time. My initial goals for my own talks were dwarfed and forgotten on night #1. I'll be telling these stories here, very soon.
Love to you all. Now I'm back in the city of Angels. Ready to do this.
Keep Running,
John