Streams In the Desert

This post was taken from Streams in the Desert compiled by Mrs. Chas. E. Cowman 1925

Foreword:
It was our privilege to spend a number of years in the mission fields of the orient---Japan and Korea, but the trying climate and over strain of heavy work caused my dear husband's health to fail, and we were compelled to return to the home-land, where for six years a battle was waged between life and death.

"Then cometh Satan," tempting us to faint under the pressure, but each time when testings had reached their utmost limit, God would illumine some old and familiar text, or a helpful book or tract would providentially fall into our hands, which contained just the message needed at the moment.

One day, while walking along the seashore, wondering almost if "god had forgotten to be gracious" a little leaflet lay at our feet. we picked it up and read "God smiles on His child in the eye of the storm," and we caught a new glimpse of His loving face.

"His choicest cordials were kept for our deepest faintings" and we have been held in His strong, loving arms these trying years till we have learned to love our desert, because of His wonderful presence with us.

Our own trouble has drawn to us hundreds of troubled hearts and we have tried to "comfort them with the same comfort where with we have been comforted of God." For a period of three years we have passed on these daily messages to the readers of God's Revivalist, and the numbers of requests that have come for them in book form have led to the publication of Streams in the Desert. The book is sent forth with a prayer that many a weary, way-torn traveler may drink therefrom and be refreshed. Latlia B. Cowman

Sacrificial Blood, do you have what it takes?

The top most place in prayer is bought with blood.

Toys and Trinkets are easily won, but the greatest things are greatly bought. The top most place in prayer is bought with blood. You may have the pinnacles if you have enough blood to pay. That is the conquest condition of the Holy heights everywhere. the story of real heroisms is the story of sacrificial blood. The chiefest values in life and character are not blown across our way by vagrant winds.

Great souls have great sorrows.

"Great truths are dearly bought, the common truths,
Such as men give and take from day to day,
Come in the common walk of the easy life,
Blown by the careless wind across our way.

Great truths are greatly won, not found by chance,
Nor wafted on the breath of summer dream;
But granted in the great struggle of the soul,
Hard buffeting with adverse wind and stream.

But in the day of conflict, fear and grief,
But when the strong hand of God, put forth in might,
Plows up the subsoil of the stagnant heart.
And brings the imprisoned truth seed to the light.

Wrung from the troubled spirit, in hard hours,
Of weakness, solitude, perchance of pain.
Truth springs like harvest from a well-plowed field,
And the soul feels it has not wept in vain."

Miss Annie Johnson Flint

The capacity for knowing God enlarges as we are brought by Him into circumstances which Oblige us to exercise faith; so, when difficulties beset our path let us thank God that He is taking trouble with us, and lean hard on Him.

This post was taken from Streams in the Desert compiled by Mrs. Chas. E. Cowman 1925

Lost Love of the Heart - Chapter One

Excerpts from The Sacred Romance
by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge

Thirsty hearts are those whose longings have been wakened by the touch of God within them. A.W. Tozer

Some years into our spiritual journey, after the waves of anticipation that mark the beginning of any pilgrimage have begun to ebb into life’s middle years of service and busyness, a voice speaks to us in the midst of all we are doing. There is something missing in all of this, it suggests. There is something more.

The voice often comes in the middle of the night or the early hours of the morning, when our hearts are most unedited and vulnerable. At first, we mistake the source of this voice and assume it is just our imagination. We fluff up our pillow, roll over, and go back to sleep. Days, weeks, even months go by and the voice speaks to us again: Aren’t you thirsty? Listen to your heart. There is something missing.

We listen and are aware of…a sigh. And under the sigh is something dangerous, something that feels adulterous and disloyal to the religion we are serving. We sense a passion deep within that threatens a total disregard for the program we are living; it feels reckless, wild. Unsettled, we turn and walk quickly away, like a woman who feels more than she wants to when her eyes meet those of a man not her husband.

We tell ourselves that this small, passionate voice is an intruder who has gained entry because we have not been diligent enough in practicing our religion. Our pastor seems to agree with this assessment and exhorts us from the pulpit to be more faithful. We try to silence the voice with outward activity, redoubling our efforts at Christian service. We join a small group and read a book on establishing a more effective prayer life. We train to be part of a church evangelism team. We tell ourselves that the malaise of spirit we feel even as we step up our religious activity is a sign of spiritual immaturity and we scold our heart for its lack of fervor.

Sometime later, the voice in our heart dares to speak to us again, more insistent this time. Listen to me—there is something missing in all this. You long to be in a love affair, an adventure. You were made for something more. You know it.

When the young prophet Samuel heard the voice of God calling to him in the night, he had the counsel from his priestly mentor, Eli to tell him how to respond. Even so, it took them three times to realize it was God calling. Rather than just ignoring the voice, or rebuking it, Samuel finally listened.

In our modern pragmatic world we often have no such mentor,
so we do not understand it is God speaking to us in our heart. Having so long been out of touch with our deepest longing, we fail to recognize the voice and the One who is calling to us through it. Frustrated by our heart’s continuing sabotage of a dutiful Christian life, some of us silence the voice by locking our heart away in the attic, feeding it only bread and water of duty and obligation until it is almost dead, the voice now small and weak.

But sometimes in the night, when our defenses are down, we still hear it call to us, oh so faintly—a distant whisper. Come morning, the new day’s activities scream for attention, the sound of the cry is gone, and we congratulate ourselves on finally overcoming the flesh.

For what shall we do one day when we wake to find we have lost touch with our heart and with it the very refuge where God’s presence resides?


Starting very early, life has taught all of us to ignore and distrust the deepest yearnings of our heart. Life for the most part teaches us to suppress our longing and live only in the external world where efficiency and performance are everything. We have learned that something else is wanted from us than our heart…which is most deeply us. Very seldom are we ever invited to live out of our heart.

If we are wanted, we are often wanted for what we offer functionally. If rich we are honored for our wealth; if beautiful for our looks, if intelligent, for our brains. So we learn to offer only those parts of us that are approved, living out a carefully crafted performance to gain acceptance form those who represent life to us.

We divorce ourselves from our heart and begin to live a double life.
On the outside there is the external story of our lives. This is the life everyone sees, our life of work and play and church, of family and friends, paying bills and growing older. Our external story is where we carve out the identity most others know. It is the place where we have learned to label each other in a way that implies we have reached our final destination. Bob is an accountant, Mary works for the government; Ted is an attorney. The Smiths are the family with the well-kept lawn and lovely children; The Joneses are the family whose children are always in trouble.

Here busyness substitutes for significance (meaning), efficiency substitutes for creativity, and functional relationships substitute for love.
In the outer life we live from ought (I ought to do this) rather than from desire (I want to do this) and management substitutes for mystery.There is a spiritual dimension to this external world in our desire to do good works, but communion with God is replaced by activity for God. There is little time in this outer world for deep questions. Given the right plan everything in life can be managed…except your heart.

The inner story of our heart, is the life of the deep places within us, our passions our dreams, our fears and our deepest wounds. It is the unseen life, the mystery within—what Buechner calls our shimmering self. It cannot be managed like a corporation. The heart does not respond to principles and programs; it seeks not efficiency but passion. Art, poetry, beauty, majesty, ecstasy: these are what rouse the heart. Indeed they are the language that must be spoken if one wishes to communicate with the heart. It is why Jesus so often taught and related to people by telling stories and asking questions. His desire was not just to engage their intellects but to capture their hearts…

However we may describe this deep desire, it is the most important thing about us, our heart of hearts, the passion of our life. And the voice that calls to us in this place is none other than the voice of God. We cannot hear this voice if we have lost touch with our heart.

The true story of every person in this world is not the story you see, the external story. The true story of each person is the journey of his or her heart. Jesus himself knew that if people lived only in the outer story, eventually they would lose track of their inner life, the life of the heart He so much desired to redeem. Indeed it was to most religious people of His time that Jesus spoke his strongest warnings about a loss of heart.

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Failure to Launch

Many things are rolling around in mind this morning after a time in prayer.
It struck me in prayer this morning that we need to write new fighting songs for the church. We need songs that will inspire a new generation to go for God, at any cost.

We have lived under a paradigm for the last seven years that built ceilings of intimidation and limitation, rather than launch pads of inspiration and faith. The result was that dissatisfaction and a critical spirit were sown in our hearts even toward our own churches. This critical spirit was seen in leaders and youth alike.

By broadcasting the premise that “we do it much better than they can do it back home” and living a life style that borrowed against tomorrow to build excitement today. This event based “energy center lifestyle, sought to insure that if anyone did go back home to their smallish church they would never be satisfied, after tasting the heightened energy of Apostolic Center life. Young leaders, whom we sent to Bible School, rarely returned home. Almost nonecame home to serve in the local house. They never came home to be sent into the fields; or to plant a new work. They didn't return to support and be supported by the leaders at their home “mother” church.

The doctrine that a “my ministry” devil ran amuck in the church, required that all inspiration must be captured, squeezed through a man made sieve, crushed or killed. The ministry of the saints was reduced to, sit down, shut up and serve the leadership. Children (parishioners) “are to be seen and not to be heard”.

IN CONTRAST:
The Ephesians 4:11 model, states that the gifts Jesus gave to the church are men given for the purpose of equipping of the saints. Given so that the saints may be trained and sent to do the work of the ministry. Dave Richards shares the story of William Wallace who spent five years of his life hidden, under water ,confined in a diving bell and breathing fresh air only through a hose attached to his helmet. William personally hauled thousands of bags of concrete under water to rebuild the foundations of the Winchester Cathedral. Dave goes on to say that the men that are Apostles and Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers of Eph. 4:11 need to do the same thing. We need to get under and to serve the saints (so that they can do the work of the ministry) not the other way around.

Salt & Light, plants churches by the score, (this is not accomplished by warning all young people that they have a “my ministry” devil), but rather by telling them, that they have but one life to live and that all their strengths and weaknesses, yes, especially their weaknesses are to be given back to their Savior and King to carry the Gospel of the Kingdom into the world. That is after all, the essence of the Great Commission.

We have more than a small shift to make if we are going to build an apostolic (church planting) center in Mankato.

We might want to include the book “The Little Engine That Could” in our required reading for Sunday School, and ministry preparation. But first we need to get back to a correct picture of the Church, the Body of Christ, the FAMILY of God.

I had some questions, I am sure you do too.
What did the Basingstoke model look like at the very beginning?
Does a circle of churches all have to come out of the loins of the same father, in order to work in unity?
Can sons of different fathers build a circle of churches across a city? Across a region?
What do the first steps of a (new work) planting look like?
Before the sending actually takes place?
Does the planting of a new work have to come out of MY church?
Can it be a cooperative work of more then one house?

Who could we send today? Next month? Next year?
Especially if we worked with them to serve them and we did not measure for ten years?
If we took David Richards model of 100% commitment and 0% control?

The Bottom Line
What does God want us to do now? This month? This week? Today? The next hour?
What choices do I have to make to day to align myself with the purposes of God starting today?

I Am Optional

I had a eureka moment this morning while lying in bed.
It is not as though I had not been aware of the concept. In fact I know I have shared it with others in both business meetings and church meetings.

OWNERSHIP = PASSION
No Ownership = No Passion
Little Ownership = Little Passion
Medium Ownership = Medium Passion
Huge Ownership = Huge Passion

Without ownership there is no passion,” it all comes down to purpose.
However this time it had a little different application, in me and therefore the ahh haa response, out of which I write this journal entry.

I asked myself a couple of questions:
1. Do I have a purpose?
2. Would I be missed if I didn’t show up?
3. What if anything, do I contribute?
4. What is my part?

I determined that I am optional, (little or no impact). And because I am optional therefore I have little or no ownership, which means I will have little or no passion. If I am truly optional to some entity, human or institutional, then they are optional to my passion.

With that in mind, every leader who wants to build substantially should be asking the obvious question; how do I get more people involved at increasing levels of ownership? The answer: build a bigger team, give every person a place that gives them purpose.


I am optional in the Church: 2000-present
I was thinking about why I find no inner drive to attend church gatherings and even church services. I simply have no place, no purpose, no value. I have no responsibilities to fulfill. I have very little connection with others in the pew or with those in leadership. I go out of the duty. I feel it is good to attend as a family. It is good to support my wife, to honor that inner voice of my parents, reminding me that we should go every time the church doors are open. My lack of interest in the rituals of weekly church life, are bothersome to me. But what is missing is the passion of years gone by, when I had a reason to prepare myself for service. I remember being passionate about church life and it used to be the center of life for me, but that changed with the events of 2000.

But perhaps even more so, since 2002 with Pat’s arrival in Mankato and the dissolution of the ‘church council’. Eldership was remote, Tony In Kirksville/Heartland, MO and Doug in Pittsburg KS.

Maybe, it is just that now, I am on the outside looking in. Maybe this is the way it has always been, and all that is different is that I have simply changed positions, moving from the in-crowd to the crowd on the outs. I don’t have many conversations about spiritual things with anyone except with David R. and Don Millican. Are we moving forward or just keeping the church balloon inflated. I wonder what Steve Youngblood would say now about Mankato and what changes he might make if he could go back to the fall of 2000.

I am optional in the school: 2003 - present
The first three years of the church school here reminded me of how the public schools treat parents as the runt of the litter when it comes to education; ”You have entrusted us with your kids and we are the new authority.”

I am optional at home: 2003 - present
Here too life goes on around me, if I am not here, it is not changed much. My wife Diane has everything well in hand. And all my kids relate with her for all their needs. Only my oldest two have made a request to spend time specifically with me. I realize it takes some time to appreciate Dad. It usually comes later in life.
In early life it is mom that gets all the attention and all the work in the home setting. My life is full outside the house but it leaves little energy at the end of the day for inside the home. But then again I am optional … no ownership = no passion

Notes: this was written September 12, 2006 just three days before David Richards came to town and released me from the apostolic lock down from Steve in 2000. See my article the invisible man.
If I wrote it today it would read a little different now, but that too scares me because now the I have simply gone back to being a insider, has anything changed in the church?
Are there those who feel on the outside, that they are optional like I did?

I Corinthians 12
“He himself has placed every member in the body just where He wills”

The Message of the Arrows - Chapter Three

There are two things that pierce the human heart, wrote Simone Weil. One is beauty the other is affliction.

And while we wish there was only beauty in the world, each of us has known enough pain to raise serious doubts about the universe we live in. From very early in life know another message, warning us that the Romance has an enemy…

The sense of being part of some bigger story, a purposeful adventure that is the Christian life, begins to drain away again after those first love years in spite of everything we can do to stop it. Instead of a love affair with God, your life begins to feel more like a series of repetitive behaviors, like reading the same novel over and over. The orthodoxy we try to live out, defined as “Believe and Behave Accordingly” is not a sufficient story line to satisfy whatever turmoil and longing our heart is trying to tell us about. Somehow our head and our heart are on separate journeys and neither feels like life…

Eventually this division of heart and head culminates in one of two directions. We can either deaden our hearts or divide our life into two parts; where our outer story becomes the theater of the “should” and our inner story the theater of needs, the place where we quench the thirst of our heart with whatever water is available…

I chose the second route, living what I thought of as my religious life with increasing dryness an cynicism while I found “water” where I could: in sexual fantasies, alcohol, the next dinner out, late night violence videos, gaining more knowledge through religious seminars—whatever would slake the thirsty restlessness inside. Which ever path we choose—heart deadness or heart and head separation—the arrows win and we lose heart.

This is the story of all of our lives, in one way or another. The haunting of the Romance and the Message of the Arrows are so radically different and they seem so mutually exclusive they split our hearts in two. In every way that the Romance is full of beauty and wonder, the Arrows are equally powerful in their ugliness and devastation.

The Romance seems to promise a life of wholeness through a deep connection with the great Heart behind the universe.

The Arrows deny it, telling us “You are on your own. There is no Romance, no one strong and kind who is calling you to an exotic adventure.”

The Romance says, “This world is a benevolent place.”
The Arrows mock such naïveté, warning us, “just watch yourself—disaster is a moment away.”

The Romance invites us to trust.
The Arrows intimidate us to self-reliance. We become broken hearted (comments mine)

The deepest questions we ever ask are directly related to our heart’s greatest needs and the answers, life gives us shapes our images of ourselves, of life, and of God.

Who am I?
The Romance whispers that we are something special, that our heart is good because it was made for someone good;
The Arrows tell us we are a dime a dozen, worthless, even dark and twisted, dirty.

Where is life to be found?

The Romance tells us life will flourish when we give it away in love and heroic sacrifice.
The Arrows tell us we must arrange what little life there may be, manipulating our world and all the while watching our backs.

“God is good” the Romance tells us. “You can release the well-being of your heart to him.”

The Arrows strike back, “Don’t ever let life out of your control,” and they seem to imply with such authority, unlike the gentle urges of the Romance, that in the end we are driven to find some way to contain them.

The only way seems to kill our longing for The Romance, much in the same way we harden our heart to someone who hurts us. If I don’t want so much, we believe, I won’t be so vulnerable. Instead of dealing with the Arrows, we silence the longing. It seems to be our only hope. And so we lose heart.

Which is the truer message? I f we try to hang on to the romance, what are we to do with our wounds and the awful tragedies of life? How can we keep our heart alive in the face of such deadly Arrows? Is we deny the wounds or try to minimize them, we deny part of our heart and end up living a shallow optimism that frequently becomes a demand that the world be better than it is. On the other hand, if we embrace the Arrows as the final word on life, we despair, which is another way to lose heart. To lose hope has the same effect on our heart as it would be to stop breathing. If only there was someone to help us reconcile our deepest longings with our deepest fears.

In my thirties, I didn’t know that the One who answered my religious prayer of my mid-twenties ( “God, help me, because I am lost”) was the same One who wooed me so long ago in the magic of the singers (by the stream as a boy) and even in the harsh coldness of that November day. (when everything seemed so pointless) If I had known, the years of my religiosity would have been filled with much more joy and confusion, mourning and hope, patience and spontaneity, and conviction and uncareful love than they have been. I would have lived with a confidence that the Arrows are not the final word. But I had lost my own story with the loss of my family as a boy, and along with it any sense of a larger story that would reconcile the two messages my heart had known.





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Dealing With Arrows - Chapter Three (cont.)

Excerpts from The Sacred Romance by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge

The deepest questions we ever ask are directly related to our heart’s greatest needs and the answers, life gives us shapes our images of ourselves, of life, and of God.

Who am I?

The Romance whispers that we are something special, that our heart is good because it was made for someone good;
The Arrows tell us we are a dime a dozen, worthless, even dark and twisted, dirty.

Where is life to be found?

The Romance tells us life will flourish when we give it away in love and heroic sacrifice.
The Arrows tell us we must arrange what little life there may be, manipulating our world and all the while watching our backs.

“God is good” the Romance tells us. “You can release the well-being of your heart to him.”
The Arrows strike back, “Don’t ever let life out of your control,” and they seem to imply with such authority, unlike the gentle urges of the Romance, that in the end we are driven to find some way to contain them.

The only way seems to kill our longing for The Romance, much in the same way we harden our heart to someone who hurts us. If I don’t want so much, we believe, I won’t be so vulnerable. Instead of dealing with the Arrows, we silence the longing. It seems to be our only hope. And so we lose heart.

Which is the truer message? If we try to hang on to the romance, what are we to do with our wounds and the awful tragedies of life? How can we keep our heart alive in the face of such deadly Arrows? Is we deny the wounds or try to minimize them, we deny part of our heart and end up living a shallow optimism that frequently becomes a demand that the world be better than it is. On the other hand, if we embrace the Arrows as the final word on life, we despair, which is another way to lose heart. To lose hope has the same effect on our heart as it would be to stop breathing. If only there was someone to help us reconcile our deepest longings with our deepest fears.

In my thirties, I didn’t know that the One who answered my religious prayer of my mid-twenties (“God, help me, because I am lost”) was the same One who wooed me so long ago in the magic of the singers (by the stream as a boy) and even in the harsh coldness of that November day. (when everything seemed so pointless) If I had known, the years of my religiosity would have been filled with much more joy and confusion, mourning and hope, patience and spontaneity, and conviction and uncareful love than they have been. I would have lived with a confidence that the Arrows are not the final word. But I had lost my own story with the loss of my family as a boy, and along with it any sense of a larger story that would reconcile the two messages my heart had known.


My Dream Site...Please feel free to share this with a friend by sending them a link. Why not e-mail me with your comments.