I heard a great story on Fox News yesterday morning while I was getting ready for my day. Since the story involved human trafficking, an issue that I care about deeply, I stopped what I was doing and watched.

I loved what I saw!

It seems that a group of nuns in Indiana is (rightly) concerned about the increased potential and reality of trafficking surrounding the Superbowl tomorrow. But these nuns didn’t hold a prayer meeting or a candlelight vigil. Ok, they might have, but that wasn’t the point of the story. The point was that they chose to get smart and creative in fighting evil. They used their investment funds (who knew?) to buy stock in the major hotel chains, and then used their leverage as investors to get the hotels to train their staff in spotting, repairing and stopping trafficking incidents this week.

Clever!

Is it possible we are too busy praying about the issues…and perhaps we need to get a little smarter?

I’m not saying don’t pray!!! In fact, I’d suspect thats where the nuns got their innovative idea in the first place. Watch the report below if you want. And kudos to the nuns who are savvy enough — and gutsy enough — to leverage their investments into an eternal investment. Well done!

I just finished reading Mark Batterson’s latest book, The Circle Maker. If you have followed Coffee Shop Journal at all, you know that Batterson is one of my favorite authors in the current Christian landscape. So I have been slowly savoring The Circle Maker, letting its message sink deep rather than skimming the surface of my mind.

The premise of The Circle Maker is simple: God honors the prayers we pray. Hardly ground-breaking! But Batterson frames The Circle Maker in an ancient Jewish tale that takes prayer to a new place. There was, once upon a time, a Jewish prophet named Honi. Honi lived at a time when drought was torturing Israel, and it was time for Honi to pray on his country’s behalf. So Honi literally drew a circle in the dry sand, stepped inside it, and pledged not to leave until God answered his prayer.

It sprinkled.

Honi prayed again.

It rained cats and dogs and threatened to flood the nation.

Honi prayed again until a gentle rain fell.

Using Honi’s story mixed with stories from Batterson’s National Community Church and his own life, Batterson encourages us to circle – metaphorically and often literally – the dreams we have for our own lives, the dreams God planted. Pray, think long term, let your prayers build your legacy: Batterson encourages us over and over to do the hard work of bringing ourselves and our lives into harmony with God’s plan for us.

I spent some time recently thinking about the “circles” in my life.

While Mark Batterson was walking circles around the city of Washington DC (and I say we need more people walking circles and praying in Washington DC!), I feel as if sometimes I’ve just been walking IN circles. May I be honest? Sometimes I’m not so sure that my prayers are much different than the “positive affirmations” that pop psych gurus like to peddle off on us. I pray them, regularly, but I sometimes forget that someone is LISTENING to them.

God honors our prayers.

But do our prayers honor God?

I pray — most of the time — wimpy little me-sized prayers instead of the kind that have me shaking in my boots. At church this weekend we called those kind of prayers audacious prayers. Batterson reminds us that God loves those kind of prayers, because everyone knows that only he could accomplish them. Only God could possibly have one such a thing.

I don’t want to live my life missing out on God-sized answers to prayer.

I need to be drawing audacious circles and then standing in them.

If you want to get more information about The Circle Maker and watch some cool trailers, go to TheCircleMaker.

Blanchard Hall, the "heartbeat" of the Wheaton campus.

David and I are in the Chicago suburb of Wheaton for my…ahem…25th College Reunion. Today was the warm-up day, the day for us to sneak onto campus, register, wander around looking enviously at the new and improved bookstore, the new and improved dining room, the new and improved student center, the new and improved….well you get the idea. It seems that all is new and improved except, perhaps, the returning alumni! For us there is nothing new and not much improved!!

Or is that true?

Nothing makes you think about the person you have become like your college reunions. If you are prone to a mid-life crisis, a reunion is where you are likely to find it! But as I mingle with these friends who started out on life’s adult journey with me, I’ve realized that I could never have predicted or scripted the course of my crazy life.

In the words of a friend of mine, Bob Goff, my life is inexplicable.

My mind works like one big set of tinker toys, connecting one person to another I just met. I connect books to people, people to projects and to each other. I file information away to be connected to other information at some other time, some other place. I find trends in the challenges facing people who are trying to make a difference in this world, and try to encourage them. I love the people under my wings.

These are the things I do. And as I stand in this rich soil of Wheaton, the place where I started to be who I am, I am coming to appreciate who God has seen fit to make me. Make no mistake: it’s tempting. It’s tempting to look for the new and improved version of everything. It’s tempting to find a new job title that maybe describes me, places me in a category so others can easily figure me out. It’s tempting to wonder about paths not taken, twists and turns.

But I love my life. And I loved standing in the bookstore among all the books I have read and loved. I loved that a faculty member stopped to ask me about our iPads, and whether she should get one for her husband. I loved that I knew the answer to that, and to so many other questions she asked.

David and I agree that we would have LOVED to do college with the technology these kids are toting around in their backpacks. It’s an amazing moment in history to be engaged in learning.

On the other hand, it’s also an amazing moment in history to be out changing the world. And you can’t do that by being jealous of the “new and improved!”

However that salad bar was pretty awesome…and the ice cream machines…and the ice cream topping bar…

Can you ever escape your past?

“And these are but the outer fringe of his works;

how faint the whisper we hear of him/

Who then can understand

the thunder of his power?

– Job 26:14

I’ve seen God do some amazing things in the past few weeks. Perhaps my favorite is God’s total transformation of our friend Bob. Bob was addicted to pain pills and alcohol for 15 years at least — the growing-up years of his two precious daughters. The girls gave up on the idea of ever having their own earthly father in the way they needed and deserved. And God, the father of the fatherless, stepped in to help fill that need.

But there were holes left behind. Only Bob could fulfill his God-given purpose.

A few weeks ago Bob hit the bottom, and ended up in places he never imagined. They were not pretty places, but they were where he needed to be.

God sent John to Bob. John wasn’t afraid of those places. In fact, he revels in meeting the broken-hearted, like Bob. And through John, Bob saw God. We nearly keeled over in shock recently when we encountered Bob hanging around the lobby after church, clear-eyed and delighting in life out in the world again.

“What are you doing here, Bob?”

“Oh, John and I have a connection. He came when I was pretty low. What a great day! I haven’t been able to think this clearly for 15 years!”

I watched Bob’s daughter get  a hug from her daddy and I wanted to weep. It was so good! And it’s just a whisper of what God is doing all around us. Just a whisper! If only we could hear the thunder!

I know that Bob has quite a journey ahead of him, and he may slide back a few times before he gets it straight. But I also know that God is after his heart, and won’t stop until he has it. I can trust God.

As we were leaving, Bob casually mentioned that he’d signed up to be baptized. It was a perfectly normal, logical decision for Bob. For the rest of us it was a miracle.

What an amazing weekend!

Some of the details will have to wait for another post, but I was so privileged to go and tour a completed and running safe house for girls rescued from trafficking. It is the only Christian safe house in the state of Florida. And while I was humbled at the dedication it takes to run the house, I was also overwhelmed by its simplicity.

You see, this wasn’t a huge home. It was pretty average. And they didn’t have ten and twenty girls. They had two, with room for five. And these two houseparents were not specialists trained for trafficking. They were parents who answered the call to love on two girls in a radical, unconditional way. The overwhelming part was this: it was all so doable.

And yet there is only one Christian safe house in the state of Florida.

This has got to change, and you and I are the ones who have to change it.

Later in the weekend David and I were at a weekend retreat sponsored by the Luis Palau Association. If you don’t know who Luis Palau is, click this link or google his name. We heard so much over the course of the weekend that confirmed what God was saying. This is our job to do, and so we need to prepare.

Luis was speaking on Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, his son. True worship, he said, involves sacrifice. We are called into the world to tell others that Jesus loves them more than they could imagine, more than they’ve been told. He loves them so much, that nothing they have done could keep him from heaping even more love on top of them. He loves.

But for someone to hear that message, others must sacrifice. As Luis said, “Someone must pay the price. Someone must sacrifice to do the work.”

My mind flashed to the safe house.

I don’t know what it is going to look like yet, but that someone is me. That someone is you. These girls need a place to heal and be restored.

This is our sacrifice.

I’ve been using Hoot Suite to post twitters and to follow my social media lately. I love that program! I love to browse freely across my twitter peeps, reading their blogs and connecting with people all over the world.

I love being able to write a blog post, post the link, and then repost it later at a better time. Did you know the average Twitter stream only lasts ten minutes? So Hoot Suite lets me repost links to my blog posts without being tied ot my computer.

So I was feeling pretty good about myself and my new relationship with Hoot Suite.

Until I discovered Klout.

Klout is some rating used by Hoot Suite that measures… well I don’t know what it measures. I presume it measures your standing and your “clout” on Twitter? It’s kind of the credit-rating score of social media. In any case, all-wise Hoot Suite has determined my Klout number.

Immediately I had to see everyone else’s Klout number.

Shoot! I don’t understand why that person’s Klout is higher than mine…they have fewer followers! They don’t even twitter ABOUT anything! How can this be? OK, that person I understand: they are a pastor and have thousands of followers. But her? him? Why not me?

In a matter of seconds my self-esteem plummeted and I was ready to sign off Twitter. Why? Because some unknown conglomeration of numbers judged me and found me wanting. My Klout stinks. Comparatively. Of course there are those with no Klout, but we don’t consider those, right?

Oh it’s vicious, isn’t it? The game of comparing ourselves to others? It sneaks up in a heartbeat. I don’t even have an idea what Klout really is!

Guess what? God gives you (and me) totally different scores. In God’s kingdom, the first are last and the last are first. In God’s kingdom, the children get it and the leaders don’t. In God’s kingdom, the power of one person can sometimes outweigh all the Klout of another. In God’s kingdom, it’s all his Klout anyway!

I’m laughing at myself now, pleased that I saw through another attempt of the world to judge me and make me strive for nothingness.

There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere mortal.”

– CS Lewis

Who am I now that I’m not who I was?

This is a question that has been running around my head for the past year. David and I are, predictably, in a season of change in our lives. Part of that change was inevitable: our kids are moving out and all those responsibilities will soon rest mainly on their shoulders. This is an amazing transition, and it has humbled me to watch the girls begin it. Another part of our season of change is due to our family circumstances. We just sold my dad’s business in Boston, and are now entering a new phase in our own business lives as a result. Put both these circumstances together and — in my opinion — you have an opportunity for God to step in and write His story all over your future!

So this is the state of affairs as I begin to read Soulprint, by Mark Batterson. You may remember that Mark’s first book, “In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day,” was my first in-depth blog review and set the course for not only Coffee Shop Journal, but my spiritual growth plan for the past four years. (You can find the first of the Lion posts here, if you want to go back and read them.) Mark has since written two other books which I have thoroughly enjoyed, but didn’t impact me like Lion.

Soulprint is getting ready to set my course for the next few years. In a return to the kind of vision of hope that moved me years ago, Mark Batterson is writing about God’s unique plan for us to step into our future and accept the vision God has for each of us. Our fingerprints, he says, are unique. So are our “soulprints.” An that uniqueness is not just God’s unbelievable gift to you, the lottery you won in life. It is a responsiblity! He has planned for you to be…YOURSELF!

Is that not the most amazing thought?

You are good enough to do the task God has designed for you. As Mark says in the first chapter, “You were created to worship God in a way that no one else can. How? By living a life no one else can — your life. You have a unique destiny to fulfill, and no one can take your place. You place an irreplaceable role in God’s grand narrative.” Anything less than being all that God created us to be amounts to forfeiting our spiritual birthright.

Stop and think about that again.

How many times have we read the story of Esau in Genesis 26 and wondered how in the world could Esau have sold his birthright for…soup? Really, Esau? Soup?

But maybe we are doing the same thing. Oh, we might be selling for a slightly higher price — at least a few filet mignon dinners — but when we stop being all we can be, we’ve sold out just like Esau.

“Let this promise soak into your spirit…It’s never too late to be who you might have been.”

For the rest of the book, Batterson uses the life of David to illustrate how God takes all the moments of our life and connects the dots into the role he has for us to play.

“Every past experience is preparation for some future opportunity. And one way God redeems the past is by helping us see it through His eyes, His providence. So the key to fulfilling your future destiny is in your past memories.”

David the lion-killer (oh! There come the lions again!) is transformed into David the giant-killer. God is literally hand-crafting us one at a time for the destiny He planned.

I don’t know about you, but those thoughts challenged and comforted me. My mind went back to the day we sold the business up north. On the phone with Buddy Hoffman, a pastor and dear friend who has mentored us over the years, I was wondering out loud what was next for us. Buddy said, “One thing you know: it will look nothing like the past and yet it will also look everything like the past.” It’s good to know that God never expected me to be my Dad, or my Mom, or my pastor, or Mark Batterson, or the many authors I admire. He never planned for me to plan my life around them or anyone else. He planned for me to be me.

“The end goal is not a revelation of who you are. The end goal is a revelation of who God is. After all, you won’t find yourself until you find God. The only way to discover who you are is to discover who God is because you are made in His image….He sets us free from who we’re not, so we can become who we were destined to be.”

– Soulprint

[I rarely do in-depth processing of books on the blog, usually settling for a brief recommendation and what I learned from a particular book or author. But Soulprint is hitting me at a deeper level...so be prepared for at least several posts while I take this journey! And take my advice...go grab a copy.]

I’ve already sensed the trend for 2011 in my life. I’m fighting it, but I know that I’ll give in eventually. Here it is:

Less is More

Not a novel idea, and not my own idea. John Maxwell kicked off our year at Christ Fellowship (as he always does) with a series of messages on finding our fresh start for 2011. This one point, a sub point at that, leaped out and grabbed me by the throat. Less is more.

I’d already picked my New Year’s resolution, which was to simplify.

Now Maxwell was telling me that Less is More.

He went on to remind me of something I’ve known intuitively for awhile: you can only tell a few stories with your life. If you try to tell them all, your words become jumbled. It’s hard for God to speak out of a jumbled mess. But if you edit the themes of your life down to what God has truly called you to, then you can make your life tell the story He planned for you from the beginning. Edit your own story.

Well, then.

I’ve spent today looking back at the past year and forward to the next one. I’m working on narrowing down my field of vision to the story God wants me to tell. I’m still stuck in the chaos of my everyday, unedited life, but I’m working on it.

Simplicity is complicated.

How about you? What story is God asking you to tell in 2011?

Last night I watched a superhero in training crash into the side of a building. His jumping was just so off, the poor chunky guy. With the ability to jump to the top of skyscrapers and use them like giant’s stepping stones across the city, he was skidding to the edge of each building leaving behind craters and chunks of cement. It was not elegant.

“No Ordinary Family” is a new show on tv this fall, and it features a — no other way to say it — very ordinary family who suddenly develops super powers after a plane crash. My building jumping super hero is the dad of his crazy family. Each of the family members has a different power, and in these early episodes they are struggling to learn what to do with these powers.

Let’s go back to our building jumping dad. He is strong, he can jump, he can stop speeding bullets (hey… I am not claiming this show has great writing, but hang in there with me for a minute!). But without rhythm, Dad can’t stick a landing. Bad trait for a super hero. Also Dad seems to have extraordinarily poor judgement, tackling wedding caterers while missing the thieves. Dad’s faithful sidekick (yes, he has one) attempts to teach some dance steps in a futile attempt to impart grace. Meanwhile wife, daughter and son all stumble through their days with their powers, accomplishing nothing but messing up their everyday lives.

What we, the omniscient tv watcher, can see is that this family desperately needs to find their rhythm as a family. Their powers — Mom’s speed, daughter’s mind reading, son’s intelligence and Dad’s strength — are so perfectly designed to work together! Together they would be unstoppable if they would only communicate! If they could find the rhythm of working together towards a greater purpose they would find they have every skill they need. And yet how painful to watch them stagger about like toddlers while the world waits for them to get their super power act together.

How like this family are we? We have all the power we need to accomplish in the kingdom all that he has for us, but like the family in my silly show, we forget to talk to each other. We stay in our little bubbles and bounce off each other like bumper cars. Working together is no doubt harder than staying in our bubble. We may have to — ouch — rely on someone else’s strengths to cover our weaknesses. We may have to put our personal mission on hold while we work on someone else’s goal.

But oh the joy of feeling that power, His power, working like the super power that it is!

No, this isn't Toby. But it sure looks like him!

There are some phases of life that are all about cleaning up messes. Oh, they are beautiful phases — make no mistake — but they are so messy. Babies create nothing but messes, which is hard to understand since they can’t even move around on their own power! Toddlers expand that mess-making to an artform. As the kids get older, their messes get, well, messier. Your house may stay cleaner, but oh there are so many other kinds of messes. All of them, however, are messes that are important to becoming the grown-up they were meant to be. And as parents, we scurry about trying to clean up the messes and teach the principles that we need to keep life running smoothly. We pick up the toys, we do the laundry, we wipe the bottoms, we listen to the late night chats.

There are other phases of life that are all about creating messes. Those are the times we watch our kids step out in a burst of courage to a project that may, or may not, be over their head. They are the times that we feel God stirring in our souls to create something new, and so we try.

Lately, my house has been full of mess-creating. It’s just one of those phases. We’ve added two hedgehogs to our animal repertoire. And a turtle, who has recently disappeared (that’s a long story…well, not so long but still…). On Wednesday my daughter Jillian is expecting the delivery of a micro teacup poodle. All these new residents came with their “STUFF. And we’re also hosting a wonderful graduation party on Saturday for Laurie, the superbly crafty girl who has been living with us while she finished up that degree. Laurie’s party is exploding all around us and onto nearly every available surface, although the OCD among us tend to coral the mess once in awhile so we can breathe. It’s all about making glorious messes.

Today, in church, I was thinking the same thing. As the body of Christ, part of our creative nature comes out in making and cleaning messes, doesn’t it? We try one thing for a season, then sense the Spirit prompting us to switch directions and make adjustments. We give each other the freedom to make a creative mess in our lives and stand in awe when — once in a blue moon — God creates something that leaves us breathless.

Sometimes, of course, we are breathless but more in that gasping for breath how am I going to survive kind of way. And that’s ok, too. We step out and start that Bible study for women we don’t even know only to find ourselves swinging in the breeze hoping someone comes. We let a friend down and realize we need to apologize before our relationship suffers. Perhaps we ( and I mean this in a general sense…certainly not me…) even lose our patience with the messes other people are creating faster than we can clean them up!

In the last few days I’ve come to really appreciate the whole cycle of making a mess and creating. I’m seeing God work out his image in us in ways I never would have been able to plan on my own. I see it in my friends; I see it in my own little family. It’s making me smile.

Life is so messy!