Ten years ago, I read a report that impacted me like a tooth ache. I couldn’t escape it and the information in the report became pain that would not go away. My wife irritated me when she asked, “Does he ever answer you?” I was irritating her as I walked around the house groaning, “Oh, God!”

I concluded that we could either put people on the curb in a Hefty Bag or we could find ways to release redemption in them. Isn’t that what Jesus came to do? To redeem the lost? Redeeming the terrible and growing lives of productivity and health. I began to think through what the process would look like and our ordained role.

We ate lunch each Sunday for a couple of years with a multi-generational group of stuck people. They were stuck in anxiety, addictions of various types, depression and self-loathing. The question persisted. What is the process, what are the steps from where they are to where God wants them to be?

In a section of my prayer list are the names of eleven people. Some are teens, some are in their twenties. A couple have done prison time, and others have no addiction problem. Others, are solid students and show up on the “Pretty People” page. But, they are living below their potential and are struggling with personal relationships. Their healing and movement forward demands the same process with some specialized application.

How did I get here? Is not one of the first questions to come to the stuck person. And for a large segment, the urgent desire to participate in their own healing is resisted. What is the process to jar them loose from the industrial strength glue that keeps them stuck?

After forty-years of wandering about, God says it is time to enter the inheritance He promised to Israel. When he told Joshua to “Listen and take notes,” he gives the ageless directives and guidelines for accomplishment. They work for anyone who will work them. Addicts on their way to sobriety and productive contribution and to the achiever who is ready to move to the next level. God’s instructions to Joshua are the principles that move us to our destiny.

“Most people remain relatively unconscious, unaware of the forces that shape their lives.
“In every society, however, there are extraordinary men and women who, for a variety of reasons, stand outside the social consensus, shatter the norms and challenge the status quo…. They bring new creative energies.”

Sam Keen wrote those words in 1992.1 I read them a couple of years later. Looking back two decades, I can assess them as profoundly forming the way I view people I get to know. I see them standing outside the mediocre and shaping their world.
How does that happen? God’s words to Joshua (Joshua 1:1-9) outlines the principles.

Welcome to Seams to Me. Eight chapters, eight group sessions. If you would like to join us online, or desire information let me know.