I'm going to Australia!!!

So, I was listening to this song as I wrote this blog, maybe you should listen as you read it :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jEuPIahKSw&index=2&list=PLC60FC34E5A5F9376

I've been putting off writing this post for about a month and I'm not exactly sure why. It may be that the decision to go to Australia doesn't feel real, or that I don't feel comfortable telling people that I need support or maybe it's that I'm leaving a community of people that I really love and telling them that I'm leaving is difficult. But, for all those reasons there is one reason that stands above them all. I am a son of the living God, who is continually speaking and directing His children into what He has for them. Not for my glory, but for His. So, with a saddened, yet joyful and excited spirit I tell you that I am going to follow Father God wherever He sends me and as of now, He is sending me back to Brisbane, Australia. I will be leaving June 24th to do Basic Leadership School (BLS) for 20 months. During this time I will be "staffing" two 6 month Discipleship Training Schools, which means I will be discipling, correcting homework, praying and processing with students and then I will be leading two outreach teams for 2 months each somewhere in the world. The possibilities of where I could lead the teams are places such as: India, Peru, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and more.  I will also be going through school, so I will have homework, reading, lectures etc... This may be a little confusing, but to sum it up: I am taking a full time, unpaid missionary position, to learn and then do what I have learned to further God's Kingdom.  If you have questions please feel free to ask in the comment section! :) Here's a link to the school I will be staffing: http://www.goywam.com/pathfinders.html

There are so many things on my heart and Father has been teaching me soooo much since I have been home. But, I can't think of any other way that my life should go, you see, I'm all in. There's nothing that I want to hold back from Jesus, I want to go after Him with everything that I am. We sing songs constantly of giving Jesus everything and for a long time I couldn't reconcile singing those songs when I knew I had things that I hadn't given to Him. Also, I now know that God has given me a passion for seeing people come to know Him and not just know Him, but become disciples. As I said in an earlier blog post:

"If you look at the life of Jesus, who I would argue changed the world and many historians would agree with me, it brings up a question: what did he really do? He didn't create a physical empire, he didn't change the laws, or the tax code, he didn't go to war and win a lot of battles, he didn't become king or even pope. If you look at the stories of Jesus, he hung out with 12 of his closest friends and was with the poor a lot and he changed the world, because he changed the individual, he SAW the individual for who they were. My encouragement to you is: don't think that you can't change the world, YOU are a part of this world and so are the people around you. If you say today, "God allow me to pour into one person so they become a disciple of you" and then follow through, you will change the world and they will help you."

I think I am taking my own advice and going to make disciples and in the process I pray I become one!

So, the humbling/difficult part (at least for me)

It will cost $500 a month for me to live in Australia, this covers housing and food. Also, on top of that, I need $8,000 to cover things such as: health insurance, visa's, flights, outreach etc..

I am praying for two things, these are all tax deductible!!!!!!:
1) You can give a one time donation in one of two ways (this goes toward the $8,000)
     1. Go to the link below and follow the steps, just don't select "recurring"
     2. You can send a check and make it out to Truro Anglican Church, don't write anything in the memo                 line, just send a short note saying that this check is for me: Jason LaLone
          Truro's address: 10520 Main St., Fairfax, VA 22030

2) 25 month to month partners at $20 each (this will cover the $500 a month)

     - You can set up an automatic payment each month that will go directly into my account that is set up        through my church, Truro (which is tax deductible).

a.       Go to this link: https://secure.accessacs.com/access/nonmemberlogin.aspx?sn=150078&sc=give

b.      Click “Need a Login? Click Here”

c.       Create a username by entering the information needed

d.      Select recurring and then your desired options, if you select 20-25 occurrences that would be best for me! =)

e.      On the next screen, select “Outbound” and put my name: Jason LaLone in the optional memo box.

f.        If you decide to partner with me, please send me an email at JTLALONE@HOTMAIL.COM

Please keep following me, I will be posting updates over my time in Australia and elsewhere! You guys are so amazing! I love you all! 

Wrestling with God

As I was sitting in the Lords Presence after a day of thoughts that seemed to keep attacking my brain, do you ever have those days? When everything seems to be bigger than they really are, where problems in our lives become our everything? I was wrestling with God, asking some really tough questions and demanding answers. I actually encourage you to wrestle with God, there are times in our lives that we need this process and its funny how our loving Father gives us the ability to do it. Remember the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel? As a side note, God always wins, which is good because what would happen if we won? Also, demanding answers is not the best way to go about it… oops J

Anyways, to make a long story short here’s what popped into my head as I was worshiping our Lord and Savior: “If I get comfortable with my faith, with my relationship to Father and stop seeking for more, then the Holy Spirit’s job becomes much more difficult. Our comfort hinders our ability to get the fullness of what God wants for us.” Woah! Lets read that again and try to grasp what He is saying. Jesus did not call us to a comfortable life, but He called us to a life that’s more than what this world offers, He calls us to live on His power instead of our “great ideas”. Living dependent on the one who created life.. I have been reading a book called “Fresh Power” by Jim Cymbala (the pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York City) and he has said a couple things I believe are worth pondering.

                “Too much of our religious life is made up of programs and human ideas, talents and strategies. While these have value, they pitifully fail to meet the need of the hour. What is missing today is something from heaven itself, something from God the Holy Spirit that fills and floods our lives.”

What does the above statement mean? It means we have to rely on God, get out of our comfort zones and do what He has told us to do: Seek God, make disciples, use Jesus’s name in confidence that He will do things He said He would. I serve a God that wants to break in and bring life to the hopeless situations in our lives, do we believe that “nothing is impossible with God?” 

Thanks guys! I pray for blessing, peace and hope to invade your life today.

John

We so often live a life filled with what we think and we see things the way that we want to see them. Now, this can be because of the way we were raised, the things we learned in school, our friends etc... But, what I am after, and will always be after is truth. And, not to sound lofty, but I have found it and it didn't come in the form of anything created, but in the form of the creator. The one, I might add, that calls us children, I just started reading through the gospel of John and his language of how he describes His Father is incredible. His passion for what he was writing is so evident in the language he uses as he tries to get these words ingrained in our minds. I often read things whimsically, kind of without thinking, but if we can see beyond just the words we can grasp a little about what he is talking about. Just read these two passages from John 1:11-13 and 1:15.

11 He (Jesus) came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
15 John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’

First, John talks about our identity, which I have written about before and will probably write on a lot more. This topic seems to be very popular in the Bible, one that we should start to pray about and allow God to teach us about. Secondly, in verse 15 John says "He (speaking of himself) cried out", can you hear the passion in his voice/writing? The more I read John, the more I realize that he did not see the world the way we see it.

So, although I could write much more on this topic, here is what I'm getting at. In our society, we pride ourselves on our minds, the things we think about, what we learn, how we learn etc. and if we can stand on our thoughts and defend them to our grave then we somehow think we have won something. As if what we "know" grabs us the right to something, or maybe it just makes us feel more comfortable. Either way, or whatever reason stands in our minds to this kind of thinking, here's what it does: It creates strongholds. These are positions that we have taken in our mind and life that we won't change, and often times we don't even know that they exist. Many times we see the "fruit" of them, but not the actual stronghold. For instance, if you think that God is cruel judge and not a loving Father, then your life/actions/thoughts (fruit) will reflect that mindset. Obviously this is just a simple example, but there is so much more in our thinking that Jesus wants to change. Here's the problem with these strongholds: Jesus wants them. He actually wants to change them, mold them and tear them down so that He can build them back up in the truth that is Himself. We have created so many walls and the things that will actually set us free we argue against and somehow make ourselves believe can't be possible. Well, in my experience, because we serve a God of the impossible, who is inherently SUPER natural, here is my answer. Go after Jesus, maybe like John did and "cry out" to God. Of course everyone reading this is like "I don't have any strongholds in my life", well my response is "neither do I"   ;)

Of course I do, I just don't know it yet. Here's my prayer. "Jesus, I want you more than anything. I pray today that you reveal to me things in my life that are preventing you to change me the way you want to. Reveal the things in my life that are not your truth and then tear them down and build them in you."

Thanks guys! Your awesome!!!

Exploration

It sunny and beautifully 70 degrees outside! It seems that when the sun and the weather match up my brain starts to come alive and I can't help but write about all the goodness in the world. My mind starts relaying signals that weren't there yesterday because of this wonderful sunshine, or maybe it's the vitamin D? Either way it's exhilierating and I just HAVE to tell you how amazing our God is. Here's a short clip from my most recent journal entry:

In the audacity that follows the statement "you are my son" or "you are my daughter", in the mere fact that I have the right to call God, the creator of all, MY Father, it urges me and hopefully you to want to explore this topic further. What's wonderful about exploration is that we get to travel to places which are "unknown" or at the very least vaguely defined. Which can bring up many different reactions from many different people. The unknown, for some, is scary or frightening, we would rather retreat to what is comfortable, to the tangible places in our life that are reliable. To others, the unkown is exciting, exhilerating and allows our minds to jump around to new possibilities. For me, I enjoy both, the unknown and the solid foundations in which my mind can "rely" on, when overwhelmed I can retreat for a time and start to process these new possibilities, asking if they support my foundation or if they require my "comfort zone" to be re-arranged. 

But, for both kinds of people, this exploration phase is important and we shouldn't be scared of it. The reactions of both parties will be different, and that's perfectly fine, whether retreating or forging ahead, we need both as long as we are constantly asking God and the Holy Spirit to teach us. We shouldn't be scared of making mistakes!! If we are seeking God, reading His word, in community, and constantly praising our Lord, then "pushing the boundaries" with God, should be, in my opinion, encouraged. Let's remember that Father and the Holy Spirit are constantly wanting to renew our minds. This doesn't mean our foundation of Scripture changes, it means that our definitions are under observation and able to be changed by the Holy Spirit's instruction. Our experiences with God allow us to go deeper in our understanding of Scripture and what He wants to do to bring His Kingdom to earth. 

In my example of finding out that YOU are a child of the king, it can bring about some changes in the way we think, act, feel and respond to situations in our life. This is just one example of the "exploration phase". When we start to understand this as who we are, instead of some abstract idea, our perceptions may change as well as how we relate to the world, to ourselves and to Father God. Another example would be: when we understand who is actually living inside of us, as in God Himself! The Holy Spirit, a part of the Trinity. We now start to read Scripture with new eyes, realising it's the same Holy Spirit who worked through Paul to start the new church in Acts or through Stephen who fearlessly preached the gospel. 

Be blessed today! Explore God and get to know Him, He is waiting for people to not be scared to "make mistakes", because don't we make them all the time anyways? ;) 

Short blog post

As thoughts from the past rush into my mind and try to disrupt the heavenly thinking that should be going on, and then my emotions take them over and feelings start to explode in my inmost being, my first reaction, as to most things is to ask questions. Sometimes those questions take me deeper into depressing thoughts and other times they lead to more questions. And as I fight for the answer, trying to distinguish whats coming from myself and whats coming from the evil one, it can lead my mind into a spiral of confusion. In this world of fast paced living and usually a faster paced mind which can take in the world around us in stunning time, we can get caught up in this circular motion of thoughts that can be difficult to come out of. When we finally decide to take a step back, and my step looks like this: I ask Father to silence the enemy James 4:7 "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" and then ask Him to silence my own thoughts. You see, I want to walk like Jesus walked and the reason Jesus could do all the things He did was because He listened to His Father. The other reason was because He knew the devil's schemes, something that we should not be unaware of. So, in a simple little prayer we get to hear from our Heavenly Father and we get to figure out and have some more insight on what the devil is trying to do. Try this in those times when your mind is fast paced and you know you need Father's perspective/peace/love/grace etc...

"Daddy God, please silence my own thoughts, I want to know your heart and what your saying about this situation. Please silence the enemy in Jesus name, I submit to you Jesus and resist the devil. Allow my thoughts to align to yours and speak so that I may know your voice."

And then listen! We often forget the listening portion of prayer, we fill it with so many words that sometimes its hard for us to hear what God really wants to say. I recommend a quieter place to listen, but with all the craziness in our lives we can learn to hear God in our business :)

Listening

With the impending doom of my future ahead of me (sarcasm), and so many people asking the "what's next?" question, I thought I would write a blog post to share my ideas, thoughts and feelings about the issue of my future. This question seems to come up anywhere in the world you go, for some strange reason I thought if I went to another country I could escape this question, and, to be completely honest I don't know if I was trying to escape it from myself or the people asking me. Either way its always there, that is, the future is still ahead of me and people seem to be very interested in it. It makes sense, and is a completely logical question to ask someone who just got back from a "missionary" type experience, actually its a fine question to ask anyone who's future is unknown (isn't that everyone? =).

So, at least for the time being, here is my answer. I hope that it doesn't seem like a "cop-out" answer, I certainly don't think of it like that, but to each his own.

Future, the always changing, always unknown and honestly the fear of many people will be an ever present danger to our thinking, if we allow it be. In "our" world (I say this because the USA/Northern Virginia area is very unique to a lot of other parts of the world) we must have an answer to this "difficult" question in our life. There needs to be an option, usually a good option as long as we justify it as "good" in our minds, to increase our current situation, we must build something, or do something that can be put on a resume.  PLEASE don't misunderstand what I'm saying. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THOSE THINGS!!!!! I applaud anyone that puts hard work into something and can proudly stand on that work, but there is something in our thinking that I believe needs to change and I certainly cannot do it. I think we need to start asking and talking to Jesus first, as in, before we do anything else. We need to ask what He thinks about the things in our life, our plans, future etc... and then "take a chance" and do what He says. I have no doubt that the things we can come up with by ourselves will be somewhat successful, or even have God's blessing upon them. Jesus loves us enough to get behind our plans even when we don't consult Him first about it. But, our whole life can change if we start to listen to Jesus, and not just listen, but actually obey what He says. When in doubt, go back to Scripture, Jesus spoke 2,000 years ago and whatever He said then is our truth for today, but I know He is always speaking and will honor our listening ears. My consistent prayer is from what He kept telling His disciples, "Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear."

So, daddy God, please let us have ears to hear you, open our minds to things you want to do and then give us confidence to obey what you say.

So, after a long explanation, my future is this: I will continue to pursue and listen to Jesus with everything I have and I am trusting that He knows exactly what I will be doing in the future. In the meantime, I will bring His Kingdom to the earth, and it's so much fun! I love it! Jesus is sooo good! =)

Back in the good ole U.S. of A.

I'm back! And now that I'm over my jet lagged mind and my body has caught up to the day/night flow of the time difference from Australia to the US I thought it would be good to update all of you on a little of my life.

As I sit here and look at the white powdery stuff that has lightly fallen on to my neighborhood I can't help to be a little overwhelmed. Thinking about the past 6 months is like trying to stop an oncoming train with a rubber band, it just won't stop, and I think that's the point. This life never really stops and it certainly doesn't go into slow motion like the movies portray. You know when there is a really intense moment in a movie and the main characters slow down, or sometimes everything else around them slow down? Well, real life isn't like that. It just keeps coming and no matter how many rubber bands you have, your thoughts/friends/events/church and everything in between is just kind of there. And with all the support of all the people around me I am so thankful, so absolutely blessed for all of you and I couldn't think of any other people to be sharing my life with than you. But, (of course there's a BUT) you see my perspective on life has changed since being away. I no longer see things the way many people in our world do, I have been consistently asking God to change my mind on things, to allow me to see the world the way He does. And I think, actually I know, that He is slowly answering my prayer. Even though this season of my life has not been the easiest (actually that's an understatement), Father is teaching me some valuable lessons about His Kingdom, about His church and about the people that are all around me that He so desperately loves.

That last statement is exactly the point. It's HIS Kingdom and HIS church, it can't be and never will be my kingdom or my church. The more and more I get to know Jesus, the more and more I just love people, and it goes for the church as well. Even though there are things that may upset me about church in general, it isn't mine, it has to be His. Over my time in Australia and India I got to encounter many different people, religions, cultures and much more and through all of it I have come to the conclusion that Jesus loves them all. And because Jesus loves me, you and everyone else in the world, my job is to do the exact same. I have to meet people exactly where they're at and love them, because Jesus does. What's amazing, and awesome, is that the more I have relationship with Father, the more I just fall in love with the people around me, He gives me the compassion and then I just do what He is doing, which is to love the person that's next to me.

Thanks for reading! Much more to come later :)

Here's a couple more photo's from my time in India:

Our group performing a "Jesus" skit in an Indian village

People watching the skit