Well that has been a true break between posts. We have been in the USA for the Christmas and New Year break, bunkering down with family. First time all together since 2012 so been great. Long flights ahead for us and we will finally be in Madrid tomorrow night, maybe around 24 hours of travel in total. Then we will have some days there and hopefully line up to see a few apartments.
All the above might or might not be semi-interesting, however what follows of course is highly interesting to one and all!
Around 2000 I received 5 different prophetic words from different people in widely ranging geographies in a period of about 3 months that I was going to enter exile. The language slightly differed, biblical illustrations varied from Ezekiel to Joseph but the message was clear. The interpretation of any word is of course always open to any number of possible outcomes. At the time I was at the height of travel with approximately 6 months in the UK, 3 months in mainland Europe, and 3 months in the USA and Brazil. My context was no longer that of denominational / network invites but invites that related to a geography. The strap line of ‘working together for the sake of territory’ summed up what shaped the invites. As I sit here (Sacramento) and type this post I remember that just over twelve years ago we had finished walking from the Oregon border to the original mission in San Francisco praying for a new Jesus movement that would come from the extreme (symbolised by the West Coast) and that it would rise with a new generation of parents who would position themselves within but not over such a movement.
So that was the context but also inside I knew that those days would soon come to an end. Immediately following the walk was when Sue became ill and within 6 months had passed away. From that time till Jan. 1, 2009 there were clear shifts in my situation with less and less high profile / size invites. I was probably slow to realise that whatever exile means it has to express a measure of significant separation from a previous familiar context. Separation and, in measure, dislocation is necessary before finding a relocation. In my experience a shift of geography was incredibly helpful in catalysing this process. I probably needed that to move more clearly into exile. When reading Jeremiah is seems that the people had moved to exile geographically but not mind-set wise. He needed to exhort them to buy land and seek the prosperity of the city. Their mind-set was locked into ‘how can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land’. The mind-set had to change – and probably also the song. Church that is wrapped up in itself will be very insular and will shrink in size – even when the numbers in the pews increases; but a church that wraps the world in its arms through anonymity, hiddeness and by being deeply sown in the land will find ‘of the increase of his government there will be no end’, and only by doing so will there be the alignment for the answer to the ‘let your kingdom come’ prayer.
Can exile become normal? I think so. And in the first post of this year I dedicate it to those who in this year will discover that far from being away from the presence of God that he will be found increasingly in the exilic setting. These next few years will see many in our world experience exile. They will find that the society around them is not the one they can live comfortably within. It is important that there are those in the body of Christ who have been there and are comfortable with exile, they are the ones who can believe that there is a new world at hand.