Sometimes it takes a dream to make sense of being awake. And therein lies the beginning of this tale. In March of last year (2006) I had a dream which I recorded in my personal journal. It was a dream with several scenes, but I will relate only the one that is relevant to this moment. Here’s what I wrote: "I had a dream as I was waking up this morning. In the dream Gale and I were moving into a downtown apartment of some kind with lots of glass walls. In the dream it was early morning - dawn - and I was concerned that we get dressed quickly, before it became to light out. In the next scene we were outside on the street with other people. We were told that a parade was coming, although some people expressed concern that it might be delayed or even cancelled due to rain. But the parade soon came with lots of entertainment, and we soon found ourselves involved in it."

As readers of ths somewhat-weekly e-letter already know, I have been heavily involved in a neighborhood outreach in the form of a block party which I was instrumental in founding (I started the summer outreach two years ago, and the block party last year). For reasons which I will not elaborate on now, I have felt impelled by the Lord to withdraw from the leadership of this outreach. Suffice it to say, this has been a heart wrenching experience with ripple effects which continue to reverberate through the ministry community. In the midst of a very intense, even explosive week, my house church community reminded me of the dream which I related above (we’ve been discussing it and laughing at other parts of it - like the talking dogs which howled my name in a different scene! - for nearly a year now). I found it interesting that the issues involving the block party exploded the week after Gale and I moved into (drum roll please) an apartment, something we were not even considering a year ago when I had the dream. What the prophetic people heard was powerful and, for me, determinative: "It has become a religious parade, and you are to stand aside and let it pass by." That hurt. But it also rang true. There are always people in the church who can’t resist a parade or the temptation to lead it, even when the Spirit is no longer in it. But I"ve been told to lay this one down and stand aside, so that is what I must do.

The "funny" thing about this block party was, as some of you are aware, that I had planned to hold an informal "house church conference" on intimacy and hearing God’s voice as part of practical house church equipping in conjunction with the block party. The idea was to pursue some equipping on intimacy and prophetic listening, and then go work at the block party and apply what we had learned.

Well, I think I just received the first lesson, namely, the cost of listening and obeying. I’ve come to the personal conclusion that most of our intimacy and listening with God is what I would describe as "cheap intimacy." Like so much of our worship, which costs us little more than time and some over-priced worship CDs, our intimacy and our listening seldom costs us anything. I believe that God wants us to pursue greater intimacy with Himself, but once again I see the caveat that such discipleship brings. He may in fact be calling us not only into a greater intimacy, but also into a more expensive intimacy.

We are not the first (or the last) of God’s saints to walk the path of expensive intimacy, listening and obedience. Some of you have been called upon to walk this path, too. Abraham walked it, and in his intimacy and listening with God he heard what he neither wanted nor expected to hear, "Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah; and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you." Wow! Not exactly what Abraham had hoped would come out of his own personal listening time! And God was not being unkind to Abraham. Rather, He was testing Abraham’s heart. The birth of a nation and a people for God’s own possession required nothing less than that spiritual purity which could only be produced by placing one’s heart in God’s crucible of testing and affliction where spiritual gold is refined and dross is consumed. Sorry, that’s just the way it works. Always has. Always will. It’s how God turns raw ore into precious metal He can use.

O.K., O.K., believe it or not, it isn’t my goal to depress you, but to challenge you. The events of the past several weeks have forced me to take a serious look at what God is seeking to accomplish, and to make sense of what He is prophetically saying to and through us and our small corner of the house church movement. I will try to do this with a minimum of elaboration.

First, I believe I am hearing that God wants a "pure" movement. As the River of God’s Spirit prepares to flow in matchless power through new channels of house churches and other forms of simple church, He is emphasizing to us the importance of maintaining a "pure" movement. It’s what I call "a clean meeting". The best illustration I can offer comes from the late British playwrite, George Bernard Shaw, who placed these words in the mouth of one of his characters: "You cannot build a marble mansion with a mixture of mud and manure." What are you building with? Is it "pure," is it "clean." Why would God want to reproduce it 1,000-fold in the coming move? This emphasis upon "purity" leads to my next observation.

Second, One of the mature prophetic voices in our network had a vision of God laying down three planks in front of me. At the time we didn’t understand what this meant. But this vision occurred in close proximity to the visitation which I related in my newsletter for May 2, posted on our website in our newsletter archives. In that encounter, three themes emerged (quite frankly, they overwhelmed us): The importance of 1) Repentance, 2) Intimacy, and 3) Holiness/the fear of the Lord. We finally connected the dots and understood what we were hearing. God has laid down three "planks" upon which He desires the coming house church movement to be built. If you wish, think of these three planks as the two walls and the floor of this new channel through which the River of God’s Spirit is preparing to flow: Repentance as one side, Holiness/the fear of the Lord as the other side, and Intimacy as the floor of the channel. That's the kind of house church channel the River of God's Spirit desires to flow through in this upcoming move. And that's the kind of channel we want to pursue becoming as Neil Gamble comes to minister to us in July.

Over the past week I have shared with Neil Gamble what has taken place and sought his counsel on what we should do regarding his visit. His response was simple, strong and clear: "God wants me to come to Spokane for five days, so let’s do it even if its only you & me praying together!". I’m humbled by the clarity of Neil’s heart and purpose and his desire to come and spend time with us. And as we talked, Neil is open to whatever it may be that God wants to do among us during this time. The goal is to pursue intimacy with God and to hear from Him, regardless of what He might want to say to us. I am prayerfully hopeful that we will be able to seek God regarding the three "planks" I have mentioned above, but we want to be as "agenda-less" as possible. Intimacy and hearing from God is our "agenda". Everything else is optional.

So, Neil Gamble will be with us in Spokane from Wednesday, July 18 through Sunday July 22. The focus of our time will be, as the Spirit leads, pursuing greater intimacy with God and learning to hear from Him. Neil and I will be working on a schedule for the time over the next few days, and I will have an information page posted on our website by the end of next week. We are also looking at holding the gatherings in a couple of local homes, but all of that will be posted next week (REALLY! I promise!).

I believe that God wants to do something powerful during this time that will "drive a stake in the ground" for the house church/simple church movement in our area. Anything that is surrounded by as much spiritual conflict and resistance as we have encountered over the past few weeks must have a special place in God’s plan! I pray that you will take some time to join us and be a part of whatever it is that God wants to do.