Courage: the next step

        Another day. Another Comfort Inn. This time after having enjoyed Ottawa and Quebec. We came, we saw, we met a missions committee, we left. We’ve enjoyed old friends, made new friends, and asked for new prayer partners. Now we’re in Waterford, NY and heading west again toward “the barn” in Michigan, through Ohio to visit family.


Yesterday’s sermon by Rick Reed at Metropolitan Bible Church was inspiring. Made me want to be a better man. Here are some thoughts from it:

“God doesn’t want us to be shy with His gifts, but bold and loving and sensible.” II Tim 1:7 (Message)


Our goal is to respect and reflect courage, even tho we have a family propensity as people toward fear. II Tim is a primer on the courage that it takes to face the possibility of losing face, friends, family, freedom. We were meant for more than ducking and dodging. He meant us to fear Him so we wouldn’t have to fear anything or anyone else that would keep us from doing what He wants us to do. Courage is the antidote to fear. Courage is fear that has said its prayers.

Courage is interior character that is impelled by the Holy Spirit to: “keep calm and carry on”, like the old poster from Britain during WWII.

Courage has power, love, and self discipline as its three building blocks:

1. Power is the ability to take action, to do the right thing, to just sometimes only do the next thing. The next thing may be small and inglorious, but essential.

2. Love is the availability to give help, even when it costs you plenty. This is Jesus’ primary take-away lesson for living.

3. Self discipline is the stable sensibility to control yourself under the Spirit’s influence, especially the interior self of thoughts and feelings.

Canada here we come!

Vance and Bethyl Joy here. We’re now a couple of hours east of our new address here in Michigan. We just moved our stuff in yesterday to our friend’s barn. Worked all day to stash the stuff up high and tight along one wall after building shelves with a local carpenter from their church. Looks great, if I do say so myself! Pix is of Bethyl and our friend of over 40 years, Marian, in whose home (with her husband, Keith) we now have a place. We spent the day before getting MI residency requirements met: new driver’s licenses, vehicle registration for our 17 yr old camper van, voter registration, MI state insurance for the van, a bank account and HSA at the local credit union. We were able to get our same personal ID license plate that we had for our Honda in CA: NCOURGR. Like to be encouragers wherever we go .

We left our new address yesterday after packing and have weathered over in Flint on the way to Ottawa. We’re meeting with the missions committee for Metropolitan Bible Church there on Sunday. This is the prior church of a good friend of ours in So Cal, Gary Stubblefield. We traveled with him and his psychologist wife, Suzanne, last summer to India and Nepal. Along the way we trekked with the chair of this committee, Chris Shadbolt. We’ll stay with his family in Ottawa. Pray that our time will go well.

On the way back south we’ll stop with friends in Rochester and then move on down, perhaps, to just say hi to the folks at Interserve HQ at Upper Darby, PA. That would be somewhere from the 23rd to the 25th of the month. We were wanting to check in with them for a bit before we hop our one way flight to the UK out of Chicago on Oct 7th. I might be able to hop a short flight to Atlanta and back to visit my sister and my “adoptive” mom, Harriette, before flying out of Chicago.

All for now from rainy Flint at the Comfort Inn. Blessings to you all. Vance and Bethyl Joy

You Must Be Present to Win

August 28, 2010


A scene from Scenic Byway State Road 12 up and over Boulder Mountains:  green and glorious stands of quaking aspens up to and over the summit of the Utah highlands at 9300 ft. The quaking was filled with awe, excitement, and glory to the Creator: “and the trees clapped their hands, with vigor.”

Those massive red slate rocks jut straight up thousands of feet from our campground, striated with lines of terracotta, cream, and blood-stained layers. Park rangers told me that rains on the forested crests percolate down through porous layers of rock. This sandstone holds up to 20% of its weight in water. So the waters trickle downwards in the dark, and emerge, sometimes as long as 3,000 years later, into the weeping mountain base. I imagine that the water is weeping with relief that its finally been released from within the mountain :).  As I consider these truths I must consider the One who imagined, created, and sustains them. He not only made the blueprint, but also the building; not only the map, but the territory.

It’s been a good day of travel through this glorious territory. Often we became aware of our unhurriedness. We would stop and walk, inhaling deeply the extra oxygen from all this green. My lungs are barely adjusting, shocked at the absence of smog. In spite of these withdrawals, my whole body gives praise to the God who keeps us all on life support. Bethyl and I would read to one another, pray, sing from the hymnal, and commit verses to memory.   We are the "Human Factor", as I'm pointing out here, in the midst of the God Factor.

I’ve enjoyed continuing to read Rachel Naomi Remen’s book, Kitchen Table Wisdom. In it she relates many instructive teaching stories. One tells the tale of a woman who had a successful heart surgery for angina. Prior to that time she would experience physical pain, but also more instructive, subtle pains. Her heart hurt when she compromised her own sense of personal integrity, skated across a deeper truth, caught herself going along to get along—“times when she allowed who she really was to become invisible… (p 76).” After her surgery these subtle signs became fewer and although she was physically more comfortable, she missed “her inner adviser.”

Another story is of a group of physicians sitting at the feet of the great mythologist, Joseph Campbell. He was showing slides of different faces of the Divine. One was of God dancing joyously with one leg raised high in the air, the other planted on the back of a small, naked man busily examining the veins of a small leaf. When asked what this meant to him, Campbell replied, “Why, my man, it’s obvious. This is a naturalist such as yourself, who is so absorbed in his science that he doesn’t even know that God is dancing on his back.” I recognized myself at various points past and present and ask my Lord for his forgiveness. I’m grateful that school’s open every day that I wish to attend. But I must show up, be sentient, aware, conscious. Like the big sign in the Florida senior center recreation hall--where bingo games are played daily--“You must be present to win.”

Birth Announcement

We were delivered on August 24th, 12:35pm, two newlings bleating hallelujah as we slid through the birth canal from California to the rest of our lives. We were between Las Vegas and the Virgin River crossing into Arizona when the phone call came. The hospital looked like a title company; the obstetrician, an escrow officer. The news was that escrow had closed; it was delivered, complete, fini, done.

It had been a long pregnancy of 17 months and four days. We were overdue. But 2112 Pioneer Avenue is now someone else’s responsibility and we are free folks to pursue a new life. The pregnancy had been long one and coincided with my memorization of Romans 7:15-8:31 (Message version), part of which says, “All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. And it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We too are feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for complete deliverance. But that’s why waiting doesn’t diminish us any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what’s enlarging us, but the longer we wait, the larger we become. And the moment we grow tired in the waiting the Spirit comes alongside to help us along….”

We have been delivered from our house and our practice, our children and our friends--our past enlisted in preparing us for the future. We grieve the loss of the familiar friendships, the tried, tested turf of “home.” The relationships that have mattered will continue on with us, just configured differently--more seasoned, mature, and able to adapt with the times.

This new life is as yet undefined. We can be sure that it is “not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike, ‘what’s next, Papa?’ I find that I breathe my way one Spirit breath at a time into the future: “when God lives and breathes in you (and he does as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered…” The labor that went into the delivery was painfully instructive, shaping our character in ways we had not imagined. But we are grateful now to be set free after 25 years and a few months in that particular address with that particular mission. Now both mission and geography change. God bless you for reading; and us in the living it out with a heart of love for the Father who gave us birth.

de-clutching

August 14th 2010


Love this thought from George McDonald in his book, Diary of an Old Soul: “In holy things may be unholy greed. Thou giv'st a glimpse of many a lovely thing, Not to be stored for use in any mind, But only for the present spiritual need. The holiest bread, if hoarded, soon will breed The mammon-moth, the having-pride, I find. 'Tis momently thy heart gives out heart-quickening.”

I want be free of this clutching, looking over my shoulder, saving up against a rainy day, rearing up on hind legs to keep treasure from the gnawing wolves. Let me gladly give my house, stuff, car, clothes if I get You in the bargain. “Leave all to follow me,” You said. Give me guts and gumption enough to do that.

Letting God hold us in mid-air

Hi Folks,

After more than 25 years in our delightful home-sanctuary, we are moving on… Following in the steps of our Old Testament mentors, Abraham and Sarah, we’re packing up, moving on – even though we do not yet know where we are going! God said “pack up” – we are. God said “start walking” – we are. They asked “where are we going?” God said “I’ll tell you … later.” Eventually, we trust we will be on foreign soil… teaching, counseling, responding in tangible ways to the needs that God lays in our path which does include being partners with Interserve missions www.interserveusa.org



What this looks like is: While we expected closing of escrow to be finished, it remains delayed. Both buyer and seller are motivated to make this deal happen ~ pray with us this will come together “In His Time.” The buyer is having glitches with a trust account for the older children he adopted when his sister and brother-in-law died, both to cancer. Our movers packed all our belongings on August 5th. On this particular Saturday, August 7th, we are sitting in patio chairs, borrowed from our backyard, in an absolutely empty house save our frig, which will walk out the door next week to a Jewish buyer family from Craig’s list. With the close of escrow, Lord willing we’ll head eastbound in the Roadtrek camper van we’ve had since July 1993. Bound for Zion & Bryce Canyon National Parks [favorites of ours since Bethyl’s Dad, Eddie, died in 1991]. Our sized-down belongings will be delivered to their new home: an insulated, finished barn on the property of our dear friends, Keith and Marian Hoezee in Hudsonville, Michigan. They are supporting our missionary work by storing our earthly stuff. We are blessed “sojourners!”



On Saturday, July 17th the 3rd anniversary of Jonathan Edward’s home-going (Bethyl’s disabled brother), we shared a delightful meal of food, sharing, and anointing prayer with about 40 dear friends who represent marked altars in our life experiences during our 28+ years of marriage. Our former Pastor Graydon & his wife, Judy, (previously pastoring in Alaska) joined to place His blessing upon us. “thanks to God… for times… now but a memory…”

We’re intending to honor “a call to rest,” a Sabbatical that we have preached but not practiced much until recent times. It’s now time to obey. Lord willing this will be in the north of England as God opens the way… perhaps in September. We’re praying that we listen well to The Voice of the Lord – as we go… as we rest… and that sometime during this period, God will heighten our hearing to the place He is preparing for us. We won’t be surprised if it’s India – but … He may well surprise us… as He’s been known to do. We do know this: “they who dwell in the secret place of the Most High shall remain stable and fixed in the shelter of the Almighty [whose power no foe can withstand!” Amplified. Psalm 91:1].

For now, you can reach us on our cell phones: Vance @ 714 350 8100. Bethyl @ 714 615 0379. OR with our current e-mail: vshepperson@sbcglobal.net or BethylJoy@sbcglobal.net . However, our e-mail addresses also are already updated to vanceshepperson@gmail.com and bethyljoy@gmail.com which is what we will have after disconnecting our present phones. Feel free to follow us on our blog: http://thesheppersons.blogspot.com Our forwarding address is: 950 28th Avenue. Hudsonville, MI 49426-9630

We hope to use e-mail and our blog to connect with you – we also would appreciate your input to us – up-to-date email addresses, current events in your life, and prayer needs. We hope you will want to partner with us with prayers and perhaps financially if you’re so led. We will use our own savings for living expenses and are just looking for financial support with  health care and mission related expenses (missionary counseling, de-briefing, training, consulting, and teaching). We were saddened this morning to hear of the missionaries in Afghanistan being killed; two were partners with Interserve So, “If you think of us, don’t just think, go to God immediately with your thoughts and He will create just the response to us that your thought was intended for.” We will do this for you as well.

Shalom!

Vance and Bethyl Joy

Getting De-Stuffed

July 18, 2010


The process of downsizing, two shrinks shrinking, is sensationally bittersweet. I sense with my eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin both the bitter and sweet of letting go. Our house, packed to the gills for 25 years, now echoes when you drop a pin. It’s getting that empty. The moving van shows up on the 28th to take our remnant of stuff to a dear friend’s barn in the Midwest for storage. We leave at close of escrow on the 30th.

I love seeing stuff walk out the door. Mostly. My massage chair hurt to see go. But overall, there’s a visceral lightness of being that goes with being de-stuffed. The smell of obedience rises like jasmine on the breeze of a crisp new morning. “This resurrection life we have received from God is not a timid grave tending life. It’s adventurously expectant as we greet God with a child-like, “what’s next, Papa?” (Rom 8:13, Message)

We had a prayer meeting of about 40 folks here yesterday. It was good to be prayed over, supported by long time friends who know us and like us anyway. As we quest into our unknown future it’s best not to go alone. The Africans have a saying, “if you wish to go quickly, go alone; if you wish to go far, go together.” We need you to go with us as we travel. When God brings a wisp of a memory of us to your awareness, take that as a mandate to zip off a bullet prayer for the Father to assist us in that very moment wherever we are and whatever we are doing. We would be most grateful. Stay tuned to the Spirit. He’ll remind you of Jesus, always, and us from time to time.