Title: My Jacobsen Story
Tags: Books, author, spiritual, conversation
Blog Entry: You may have heard the name before, especially if you have visited my page, but I had a unique and wonderful opportunity to join a group of people last week, in a “Conversation Group” with one of my favorite authors. His name is Wayne Jacobsen, and his home is in California. Being that we live “up north”, in the land of “snow and oil”, as the media like to refer, I never considered it to be a possibility to meet him in person. Some years ago, Wayne was a pastor of a mega city church, but always questioned if all the work he was doing in the church, sometimes at the expense of his family, was really what was intended for his life. Many speak of God’s love, and all the things that are required to experience God’s love, but much of it didn’t make sense to him. Finally, after years of “unrest and discontentment”, he pulled away from the “corporation”, formerly called the church, to search for answers himself. How did I learn about him? It was an unexpected and timely experience, shortly after an unfortunate and painful experience we had within our own congregation. My daughter-in-law gave me a “just because” gift (no occasion, just because she thought I would enjoy the gift), a book titled ‘The Shack’. I had heard about it because the author came from a town in Alberta, where we used to live. He wrote it specifically for his children, with no intention of ever having it published, because he wanted them to know who God is, who Jesus is, and who is the Holy Spirit. He wrote it as an allegory, but sent the manuscript to two known authors, asking them to review and edit as they saw fit to keep it authentic and factual. One of the authors was Wayne Jacobsen. After getting over an early hurdle in my attitude, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It was “different” from the usual books written in the categories of Religion or Spirituality or Christian, so I looked to see who was endorsing it on the back cover. A couple of names were familiar to me, but I had never heard of Wayne Jacobsen, so went to my computer to “google” him. He also wrote books, listed on his site, and the first title is was gave me a jolt. “So You Don’t To Go To Church Anymore” was the title, and because we had already decided that we were “done” with church, I had no desire to buy the book because I was just going to read how bad I was for leaving, and that God will likely “whack” me for my decision. Then I learned that if anyone would like to read the book, it could be downloaded at no charge. That’s more my style, so I did download it, AND READ IT. That was the beginning of my new spiritual journey, learning to live in the Father’s Love. I was reminded of the many times I had heard that God loves us, but didn’t understand that He IS Love. He cannot love me any more or any less than He does right now… no matter what I do or don’t do. There is no way for me to earn more of His love by trying to earn ‘gold stars' to earn His love. Last week, I met the author iin person and learned that he is a humble man who is not special, just another guy learning to live in the Father’s love. Any questions?
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