TATTOO on the HEART

Something I’ve never heard in church before…

// July 21st, 2009 // 6 Comments » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

In this transition from megachurch youth pastor to missional church planter, I’ve learned tons about myself.

One thing that I’ve learned is that maybe I’m less of an extrovert than I always thought of myself.

If you saw the Paul Dabdoub of just a few years ago, you would’ve seen the center stage, funny, witty, passionate communicator, or maybe (by chance) you would’ve been there the night with 600 students packed in an ever-shrinking room and Paul rappelled out of the ceiling.  I assume you could have made up your mind about that guy.

It’s amazing who you can appear to be when you own your own turf, and it’s on your own terms.

It’s funny – the amount of vulnerability that it requires to walk into a neighborhood or a bar or a coffee shop and humbly ask for friendship or at the very least a conversation.  It’s so far away from those days of audacious direct mailers, cool cover songs, video promos, and “no-strings-attached” service.

In my final couple of years as a megachurch youth pastor, I saw so much numerical success while at the same time I had such a horrible spiritual bellyache to be outside the 4 walls connecting with people in a natural, uncontrived kind of way. We all worked so hard for the weekend, but there was something wrong when I sat at a computer in isolation from the rest of the world trying to “find ways to connect.”

Is it just me, or is it a strange thought as to how we do so much work and bang our heads against the wall and read books and go to conferences and still find ourselves frustrated with trying to figure out how people can connect.  It seems too simple to think that we could just go connect with people, see where God’s at work, and just respond to what He’s doing.

But that would just take too much time.  It’s much easier to develop a community on some sort of steroid.  And that body will look sexy, strong, and impressive.  Sure you’re going to have to deal with the damage later by unnatural things that you do – specifically with regard to heart problems – but you’ll get the results that you want for now.

I’m still furiously passionate.  I’m still pretty witty I think.  I’m still ambitious: I want to reach every single person in my community and the world. I count my days and I want them to count for God’s Kingdom.

But I’m a lot more humble.  Shortly before walking out my house, I ask God for favor with people.  My youngest (she’s 5) prayed last night. We’ve spent the last few days walking up and down our street walking house-to-house while I pulled Jadyn behind me in a radio-flyer.

I’m just reminded that Jesus came to earth with little or no fanfare.  At His height, He rode a donkey.

And, I’m learning that walk of His – person-by-person, conversation-by-conversation.  Like Him, I walk in my community easily resisted and even rejected, bringing the Kingdom.

SOMETHING  I’VE NEVER HEARD IN CHURCH BEFORE…

One startling reality that I had within the last 24 hours has been the graciousness of people.  Most doors that I’ve knocked on bear a “no solicitation” sign.  I recall that in the old days, I could’ve never gone up to those houses with my slick postcard.  Nowadays?  I knock and ring the doorbell with a clear conscience.  Because I genuinely want a relationship with my community.

{Just a reminder that Jesus only wanted relationship with people.  Relationship was the point.  If He didn’t have it with them, they still die in their sins regardless of what kind of encounter they had with Him.}

What I thought might take me an hour or so, has taken me 3 days so far.  Night falls so quickly when you spend time in conversation with people.

And in this whole experience, I received something quite peculiar – something I never received in all the years of ministry:

“Thank you.”

“That’s so thoughtful that you invited me.”

“That is so nice.”

“Welcome to the neighborhood.”

To my heart, those are the palm leaves and the “Hosannas.”

In all the years of gimmicks and thousands of invites, I doubt anyone ever felt special.  They didn’t feel treasured. No one felt like you’d pointed them out among all the people in the world to say, “You matter.  I want you to be there.”  No one ever said we were thoughtful.  No one ever thought we were nice.

God, I hope I can love this community like You do.  And I desire that when people see me walking down their street or standing at their door, that they know Your love and Your Kingdom has come with power, grace, hope, and redemption.

If the church could learn this…

// July 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

from the movie: The Big Kahuna

Phil Cooper: It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling Jesus or Buddha or civil rights or ‘How to Make Money in Real Estate With No Money Down.’ That doesn’t make you a human being; it makes you a marketing rep. If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids. Find out what his dreams are – just to find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore; it’s a pitch. And you’re not a human being; you’re a marketing rep.

Why we don’t have community in the Church/why it’s easier to form community outside it:

• We don’t care enough to begin to ask any of these questions.
• We don’t even exist as a community in the first place.
• When was the last time you made a friend at an event?
• Church is a bounded set that defines who is and who is not a part by more definitions than just faith.
• There is no truly neutral  ground at church.
• We have no relationship/friendship with the community.
• How can you create a community when you’re strategy is to pull people out of the only community that they know and make them a part of the community.  Your one and only connect to the community was spayed and neutered.

And various other reasons & rants.

What is missional? Part 2: Missio Dei

// July 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

Missio Dei is a heavy Latin phrase that brings a smile to my face everytime I hear it or see it in print.

When kept in the context of the Scriptures, missio Dei correctly emphasizes that God is the initiator of His mission to redeem through the Church a special people for Himself from all of the peoples (τα εθνη) of the world.  He sent His Son for this purpose and He sends the Church into the world with the message of the gospel for the same purpose.

Furthermore it means that God is not a passive God, but that He is actively at work throughout the world trying to bring the Kingdom (His rule and reign) into the world and upon people.  The result of His Kingdom means that people are set free, they are transformed, they are given a new identity, and they live empowered by the Holy Spirit and out of a heart repaired by the overwhelming love of God that enables them to, in turn, love and reach out to the world.

This is who’s mission?  It’s God’s mission.  He started it.  And He will finish it.

Now when Jesus walked the planet He was the “sent one.”  He proclaimed this Kingdom of God not just with words, but His very deeds demonstrated the power and love of God and left no question as to His love for the world.

But what most people don’t take notice of is the fact that Jesus lived a life of relationship and dependency on the Father as He was on mission with God.

John 5:16-19

Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill Him; not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.

Would you have said that Jesus’ life was normal? You might be thinking, “No, it’s not normal.” It really depends on who’s saying normal. Because in Jesus life and times, what He did on a daily basis drawing crowds to Himself of the people who just wanted to hear Him speak, blessing kids, feeding thousands of people with a kid’s meal from Long John Silver’s was normal. People walked who’d never walked. People gained hearing who’d never heard. People saw the sunrise who’d never seen the light of day. People dead and in their graves – rigormortis had settled in; they were stinking and somehow their lungs expanded and the blood flowed through their veins again – this was all a day in the life of Christ. It was normal.

RELATIONAL RESPONSE

How did Jesus live out this life? If you notice, no place was safe when He was walking the planet. He did a few things in church (the synagogue), but the whole of His ministry was spent among real people, among the broken, in a broken world. Things broke out when Jesus was walking into cities, attending weddings, fishing – even when he was 3 days late for funerals. And the reason wasn’t just because He was God in the flesh.

Jesus modeled a way of relating to God as He did ministry. Jesus remained intimately connected to God the Father. He got away if that’s what He needed to do. But the important thing is that when He left those times of solitude, He didn’t walk away from the Father. He remained with Him.

The very nature of being sent was to reveal and represent the Father.

We toss this term “incarnational” along very loosely these days and thereby render it powerless.  Truly being incarnational doesn’t mean you hang out in coffee shops and that you do social justice in your community.

For Jesus it meant:

“You want to see the Father? Then take a good look at me.”

“Do you want to know how the Father desires to respond in this situation?  Then take a look at what I’m doing.”

Jesus wasn’t trendy, or cool, or hip like the Church often tries to be.  Jesus simply intimately connected to the Father; He knew what God was doing, and God’s heart desire was the engine that propelled the heart of Jesus.

Anything that is NOT initiated by the heart of the  Father is religion; because all mission is birthed out of relationship.

If it’s not what God is up to, then it’s just what we are up to and trying to initiate in the absence of God.  And, quite frankly, it’s not just religion, but it’s sin.

Do you want to be incarnational?  Then speak the words of the Father.  Do precisely what God desires to do in the moment.

That’s scary for a lot of people, for a lot of reasons:

• They are afraid to assume that they know what God wants to do.
• They aren’t hearing the voice of God so they have no clue what to do.
• They’re pretty sure that God hasn’t sent us the same way He sent Jesus.
• They think it’s audacious to say, “You want to see what the Father desires to do at this moment? Then take a look at what I’m doing.”

I think Scripture has made it abundantly clear that God reveals what He is desiring to do in a relational way just like it was for Jesus.

John 15:15

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think Jesus is holding back anything.  But often I do question our desire to actually seek and sometimes to wait for the Father to reveal what He’s wanting to do.

And the  other matter with regard to audacity is simply this:

The world already thinks that you speak for God.

The world already thinks we’re audacious.

And I think it’s pretty audacious how we’ve assumed that God wants a distant, general relationship with humanity that is so superficial that it causes us to be so uncreative and distant in the everyday places where God was once known to work, to heal, to transform, to save through the life of our Master Jesus Christ.

And if you think it’s pretty dangerous to send people out like Jesus with them doing the works and speaking the words of the Father, then you probably wouldn’t be comfortable with Jesus’ discipleship program:

I am sending you just as the Father sent me – John 20:21

Misso Dei.  Seek to save what has been lost.

Join God in what He is doing.

Make the unseen Father seen in the moment.

Allow every moment and every space the place where we pray: “Father, let your Kingdom come right here, right now.  Whatever is not what you’re desiring, let it be undone.  It has to stop.  And Father, whatever it is in Your Kingdom, let it me so in this place in this moment.”

What is missional? Part I: The Wrong Question

// July 8th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

What are you guys doing?

In my opinion, the question often precedes the deathnail in the coffin for a church or ministry.

What are you guys doing for evangelism?
What are you guys doing for disicipleship?
What are you guys doing…

And we go to conferences to hear professionals who’ll sell us their next book or give us the step-by-step so that we can do what they’re doing.

What are you guys doing?

Is it just me who feels like there is something wrong with that question?

What is who doing?  You guys?  Them?

What about the question: “What is God doing?” Or an even better question: “God, show me what You’re doing.”

I’ve been blessed to have the opportunity to speak at various churches and youth events across the country.  I’m still genuinely in awe of the fact that I get to do this.

And when a pastor or youth pastor calls me to ask me about coming in, I always ask them: “What’s God up to in your ministry?  What do you see Him doing?  What has God been speaking about specifically?”

And this isn’t a shot on anyone, but, you know, I almost never get a clear answer (if one at all) when I ask that.  I hear some stories about the group and where they’ve been and what they’re trying to accomplish, but I never hear: “God’s at work doing this…”  “God has told us to…”  “God has put _____ in our hearts.”

I almost never hear that.  It’s the norm unfortunately.  And it speaks to a much deeper issue.

Because if we don’t know what God’s doing, if we aren’t hearing His voice on a regular basis, if we don’t even hear Him for ourselves, how can we possibly know what He’s doing in our communities?

And so, because we don’t hear Him or have a clue, we go to conferences, seminars, workshops, blogs, podcasts, etc.  Because someone out there has the answer.  Surely Rick Warren or Bill Hybels or Alan Hirsch or Brian McLaren or Alan Roxburgh is hearing from God.

And I wonder if these guys are feeling the pressure to hear from God for your community.  Because what God is doing in their community may very well NOT be what He’s intending to do in your community.

Listen: a core value, an essential, a mark of being a follower of Jesus – of being His – is that we hear and know His voice.  Look at this:

JOHN 10:3-5
The watchman opens the door for this man, and the sheep listen to his voice and heed it; and he calls his own sheep by name and brings (leads) them out. When he has brought his own sheep outside, he walks on before them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will never [on any account] follow a stranger, but will run away from him because they do not know the voice of strangers or recognize their call.

Here’s Jesus:  “You can tell which ones are Mine, because my voice is unmistakable to them.”
But we don’t know God’s voice often but we know Rick Warren’s PEACE plan, and we have an acrostic for the 5 Purposes.

I’m not knocking great men of God; I’m only saying, why is seeking God’s voice so worth it to them and it’s not to us?

Are we afraid He’s not going to give us a mega ministry?
Are we even more afraid that He’s expecting too much of us?
Are we just afraid that God’s not going to speak?

No offense, but if you’re not hearing from God, you don’t have any business directing people towards a vision He hasn’t given you.

And how can you move forward if you haven’t been lead? How can you not ask the question: where is my Master going?

God’s not general and He’s not hiding His will from anyone.  He’s incredibly generous with details.

EPHESIANS 5:14-17
Therefore He says, Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine (make day dawn) upon you and give you light.Look carefully then how you walk! Live purposefully and worthily and accurately, not as the unwise and witless, but as wise (sensible, intelligent people), Making the very most of the time [buying up each opportunity], because the days are evil. Therefore do not be vague and thoughtless and foolish, but understanding and firmly grasping what the will of the Lord is.

It’s God’s mission.  He started it.  He’s already at work around us.

Being missional or being “sent” means that we have to know what the Sender is up to.  We must know His intentions.

Father, Sender, show us what You are doing.

to be continued…Look for Part II

Smashing Success

// July 7th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

I’m becoming more and more convinced that the modern expression of the church has effectively ripped the arms and legs from the average Christian.

I was talking to a new friend of mine who told me how there are a lot of people in her church who are ready and willing to reach out to the
community, but they are “looking for a place to do it.”

And that’s the tragic thing that we have modeled (taught).

Because of egos and because of our insecurity as to need proof of God’s blessing by the number of people showing up on a Sunday, we’ve convinced them that the only thing that counts is our weekly gathering.

We don’t validate the spaces where stories collide in the everyday.

We’ve left them unprepared for a life that’s mostly lived outside the church.

And, in so doing these things, we’ve claimed the exclusive right to the presence of God to only been in our midst.

We’ve mistakenly not emphasized that the life Jesus lived was on dusty roads in the commonest of places – that God’s Kingdom comes  not in the large, gaudy, and audacious things, but in the foolish, simple, weak, and underwhelming ones.

I indict myself in this matter because while, for many years, I talked about the Kingdom being in us and God showing up anywhere and at anytime, I overemphasized the need for people to connect their friends with “what God was doing here.”

Discipleship reality check…

// June 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

“…whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple”

- Jesus; LUKE 14:33

At times, I think I’ve made “disciple” and “Jesus follower” so simple, so weak, so shallow.  I think all too often it means something drastically different than what we’ve seen lived.

Being a disciple doesn’t mean that you live some teachings of your master.  It means you take on the life and lifestyle of your master.

In Luke 14, Jesus shares a few examples of what that looks like: taking up a cross, loving Him so much that the way you treat your life in sacrifice would suggest that you hate your life.  He talks about the cost involved.  He’s very specific, concise, clear, and speaks pointedly.

Because this is what HE did.

And He wasn’t asking people to merely follow Him because He did it, but He was asking them to do the same – to lose everything as He had for the sake of others.

Be my disciples.  Take on my life and lifestyle.

“Do as I did” – it’s really the simplest way to put it.  Jesus was saying, “What you see me doing, you go do.  I’m giving you authority and power and a mandate.  That’s all you need.”

But we don’t think of making disciples who do those same things.  Heck, our “disciples” don’t even do what we do.

So we’re not truly making disciples.

Or maybe, we’re not disciples ourselves in the first place.

These days the Church doesn’t have a reputation for dying for its people.

1 John 2:6

Imago Dei…

// June 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

We can’t be truly hospitable; we can’t invite someone into our lives, we can’t truly love someone, until we live in a place of sameness and equality.

I think I’m the frustrated writer right now because this is much depper and profound that my ability to describe it. The statement just doesn’t manage to convey all that I’m trying to say.

If others are “weird” or have strange ideas, does that mean I’m calling myself “normal?”

And if I’m calling myself normal, then it’s probably what I think everyone else should aspire to be. The ideal is somehow myself.

And it suggests that I’ve figured out a lot or I have fewer needs than other people.

It’s impossible to identify with the poor and needy if I’m not poor and needy.

It’s impossible to extend grace if I don’t feel that I need it, and if I’m not in an ongoing process of receiving grace from God.

I’ll never be able to accept the beauty in all creation as long as I have an overstated, exaggerated view of my own beauty. I will never value the beauty of God’s very personal creation as long as I’m trying to conform it to myself. If I do, I’ve misunderstood God as Creator and my place here if I’m trying to create people in my own image.

It shows that I’ve failed to seek God to know His vastness, beauty, and peculiarities if I can’t see how others reflect – in a different kind of way – the image of God.

When I truly understand:
my own brokenness
My own weirdness

And God’s value, worth, acceptance, and love from me that embraces me despite AND because of it, then I’ll be unable to look at anyone in the world and not see value and worth.

Stools are easier to pull up than pews…

// June 11th, 2009 // No Comments » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

Yesterday, Jessica and I managed to sneak out of the house and go to the Farmer’s Market in OB.

The Farmer’s Market is every Wednesday, and it is one of the most well known things about Ocean Beach.  Food, crafts, and llama rides is one way to describe it.

Jessica and I love to just walk around and be surrounded with the eclectic mass of humanity.  It’s wonderful and beautiful.  We just find ourselves at home.

Coming off my foot casualty – and really not knowing whether it is indeed fractured or not – we ducked into an Irish Pub that has always grabbed my attention whenever I’m on Newport Ave.

Jessica and grabbed a stool next to the glassless, screenless window which provides an invitation for the rest of the world to be a part of what is going on inside.  I can’t help but to think that it’s a great testimony to the rest of the world: here’s who we are – we’ve nothing to hide.

In mere moments we were in conversation with a bar maid (hope that’s politically correct) who didn’t think I could possibly know where she was from in Indiana.  Funny thing is, I have friends who are from that precisely that little town no one’s heard of.  She’s been in OB for 6 months.

The Yankees game was on a few of the flat screens and the guy next to me cheered them in understated kinds of ways.  He’s from New York originally – the accent still lingering.  He misses the old Yankee Stadium, described its mystique and the feeling of history as he walked into its bowels.  But he wasn’t bitter.

It’s a phenomenal feeling to be fully alive.  To love and embrace life around us.  To join people exactly where they are living.  I sensed the presence of God so strongly in that place.  Coming from a background where we didn’t even go to Pizza Hut because they served beer, I wasn’t in the least conflicted.

I wasn’t because I know Jesus wasn’t.  He was there with me.

As bad as some people want Jesus to be awkward in society and as much as we paint pictures of His followers holed up in places that are separate from the world, Scripture tells of a Jesus who was all to familiar with the margins, the places forgotten, but mostly the people who were on the outside.

It was so difficult for the religious to embrace Him because He just kept doing things He wasn’t supposed to do.  He was just too familiar with brokenness.  He was too familiar to those kinds of people.  He was just too….familiar, really.

“If He was really a prophet, He’d know who He was hanging out with.”  Luke 7:36-50 (slight paraphrase)

Yep.  That’s my Jesus – at home being God and man.

And I’m trying to join Him in those places we’ve often forgotten.  The steps of Jesus are often pretty dangerous to follow because some of the things that you have to do aren’t just foolish in the eyes of the world, they are foolish in the eyes of the Church as well.

So I snapped this picture with my phone yesterday: a cross emblazoned on wood.

And in the wider shot, we find something that seemingly doesn’t belong: a pew from a church with a table pulled up to it with 2 guys with 2 Heineken’s.

I wondered about the story of these pews.  Were they once a part of a now-defunct church?  What sermons were heard by the people who sat in them?  Is the church still going but the pews were no longer welcome?

Funny how the cross blends in and finds a home in that bar.
Funny how Jesus always left the 99.
Funny how the 99 didn’t follow Him.
Funny how the presence of God left the temple only to be found in “unholy” places.
Funny how Jesus is still showing up wherever He can find a resting place – IN US {the living temple}

Limited imagination…

// May 26th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

“Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us…” Ephesians 3:20

Honestly, most of us have never seen God do anything either we haven’t imagined or could not imagine.

This says nothing about the limits of God, but the limits that we’ve constructed around Him.

We’ve often misunderstood Him I think.

I think we might pray to a different god than Him. Because the god we’re praying to is too weak to be Him.

I think we pray for smaller things because we can keep God from failing us or at the very least disappointing us.

We need our imaginations redeemed. We need them stretched. Truth be told, we need a lot of it to be razed and totally leveled .

When Jesus taught us to pray for His Kingdom to come, it had heavy implications. Because when Jesus prayed, His intimate connection was with a Father who had zero limits. And Jesus’ prayers matched the desires of the heart of the Father.

I wonder what’s in the imagination of God.
I wonder what He’s dreaming about.

When we ask God to let His Kingdom come, we’re saying whatever is going on up there is how it must be here. We’re asking God to unlock the mysteries. To make His hopes and dreams a reality right here, right now.

I wonder if we’d dare to ask God what He’s dreaming about and to allow precisely those things to be the purpose of our life.

I wonder what would happen.

Life would certainly get a lot more dangerous. We’d be a little more fearless. I think our stories be a lot more interesting. We’d constantly shake our heads in disbelief when weren’t scratching our heads. We’d laugh – you know those goofy laughs when the unexpected happens like winning the lottery.

But then again, that’s too easy to imagine. It’d be much better than that.

Here we go again…

// May 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

 Every now and then I leave the house at the exact same time as my neighbors.  Our driveways are literally 2 feet apart and when I encounter them, I typically give them a polite greeting before pulling on my helmet and starting my scooter.This morning the wife of this couple responded to my “Good morning, how’s it going?”  with a “Yep, here we go again.”

My instantaneous response was, “Yeah, I guess we get another chance to get it right today.”  And I smiled as I squashed my mop of hair into my helmet.

I didn’t plan the response.  I think somehow I was subconsciously referencing the movie, “Groundhog Day.” 

In the movie, Bill Murray is a weatherman sent to cover Punxsutawney Phil – the famous groundhog in Pennsylvania who predicts the beginning or delay of spring every year – on Groundhog Day.  Trouble is, every day that Bill Murray wakes up after that day is Groundhog Day.   

In the movie, he moves from taking advantage of the situation and wreaking havoc to growing bitter and suicidal.  But by the end of the movie, that same day brings about a miraculous change in Murray.  And the funny thing is that Murray actually brings change in that set in stone PREDICTABLE day.

So my response to her probably sounded like the most religious thing I’ve ever said if you’re a person who thinks of God as one of punishment and regiment.  Actually I don’t see Him that way at all.

I guess I see life – predictable or unpredictable – as a place where God is ever present and where the desire of His heart is for what is already in His Kingdom to be so here right now in that moment.

But I think the problem is that we as broken people usually look around at life as a constant form of repetition at many levels oblivious to the fact that God’s presence is so near and He’s desiring to bring about change in us that changes the world.  We’re guilty if we don’t see Him because He’s there.  We’re guilty because we’ve accepted things as they are or we’ve accepted the lie that this natural world as we know it is how it is to be.

If we don’t see change – either in us or in the world around us – then it’s a sure sign that something is wrong. 

The answer isn’t to seek change though.  That’s backwards. The answer is to seek God.  We seek God and change happens.   We have no life to give the world if we aren’t receiving Life.

Maybe our prayers change, “God, here we go again, but I know that’s not your purpose.”  Whatever you see in heaven, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.  And whatever you see on earth that’s not that way, it’s got to stop.  So how’s God choosing to bring that reality?  Through us – today.  Right now even.

You’ve got another chance today – that so-called predictable life of yours.  God is so stubborn that He’s not going to give up on you.  He wants to do something stunning and jaw-dropping and He just seems intent on not doing it without you.

So seek Him and say yes.  And keep your eyes open to what He’s doing.