The Relentless Pursuit of God

[Music]

Welcome to Grace at the Fray, a podcast that explores the many dimensions of God’s grace that we find at the frayed edges of life. Come explore how God’s grace works to renew your life and send you on mission in His kingdom.

[music]

0:00:22.7 Jim Lovelady: Hello, beloved. Today I’m taking you to Peru. Last December, I went down to Lima, Peru with my friend Michael, where we joined up with Serge missionaries, Ben Lewis and Daniel Eguiluz, along with John Thompson, the pastor of Union Church in Lima, for what is the equivalent of a Gospel-Centered Life Weekend that we do here all over the United States. Next one’s in Chattanooga, by the way. But this one was for folks in Lima. Ben and Daniel like to call these retreats “Hijos Amados” Beloved Children. It’s a perfect name. I had the privilege of giving two of the talks at the retreat and leading worship, and some of the songs were in Spanish. And man, my Spanish is rusty. It was a fantastic week, really amazing food and fascinating tours of the city. It even rained, and if you know Lima, you know that it doesn’t rain in Lima. And if you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you may recall the episode with Taylor Morris and her story of ministry in Cusco. And I’ll leave a link in the show notes for that episode. Well, you’ll be delighted to know that she’s now Taylor Taboada, and it was fun to see her again teaching in Lima and meet her husband Renzo, who took me surfing. And he’s a great coach, and the waves were perfect for a kook like me. Man, our missionaries. Everywhere I go, our missionaries are such awesome people. Well, at the end of my time in Lima, I sat down with Ben Lewis, who’s the regional supervisor of Serge’s fields in Latin America. And he related this story of his experience of the relentless pursuit of God. John 3:16 is the most famous verse in the Bible. Say it with me. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Sorry about the King James (version) there. So sometimes it just happens to me, for God so loved the world, could it be that God delights in you as a person? Is that too good to be true? And could it be that you are meant to love God in return in mutual delight and pleasure? We might understand that God loves us but not really get it until we’re sitting in the experience of it. What do you do when you don’t feel like John 3:16 is meant for you? Maybe the experience of being an unloved servant resonates more with you than a beloved child of God. Maybe you can think of too many reasons why you’re not included in the line for God so loved the world. If this describes you, or if you want to experience the love of God more deeply. Let me encourage you to listen closely to Ben’s story of the relentless pursuit of God.

0:03:18..2 Jim Lovelady: Well, Ben Lewis welcome to Grace at the Fray.

0:03:20.6 Ben Lewis: Thanks.

0:03:21.8 Jim Lovelady: It has been one amazing week. 

0:03:24.8 Ben Lewis: I’m glad, man.

0:03:26.2 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, you’ve been taking us around all over the place, and I could keep eating ceviche.

0:03:30.9 Ben Lewis: That’s good. I could too.

0:03:33.1 Jim Lovelady: But I’m full right now. I’m so full.

0:03:34.7 Ben Lewis: It’s amazing.

0:03:36.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, it’s been amazing. We’ve had like 47 different conversations throughout the week. It’s just kind of funny that’s like, what are we going to talk about in this podcast? Because there’s 47 things to choose from. But here’s what I want to do. I want to hear some of your story, how you and Jess ended up here in Lima. You’ve been in Peru for a while, but Lima, a short time. And we met actually at Sonship week in Hollywood, Florida. Was it last year?

0:04:01.4 Ben Lewis: Just over a year ago.

0:04:02.0 Jim Lovelady: Okay. I want to hear what that was like for you. I think I’m kind of making up for how we didn’t really get to hang out a whole lot.

0:04:09.0 Ben Lewis: Right, right.

0:04:09.0 Jim Lovelady: I’m making up for it this week.

0:04:11.5 Ben Lewis: That’s great. We made up for it.

0:04:12.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. And this has been pretty awesome. Anyway, so ready. Who are you? What are you doing here?

0:04:18.4 Ben Lewis: Yeah, so I’m a missionary with my wife Jess with Serge now eight years in Peru. And we have four kids. The youngest two were born here, but Elijah who is 11, Simon who’s nine, Gideon six, Lucy, who’s three. I moved here originally to be a pediatrician in non-profit Christian clinic in Cusco. And to make a very long story short, that all changed when the pandemic happened and all the restrictions were put in place in Peru and Cusco.

0:04:47.5 Jim Lovelady: ‘Cause it was pretty intense. 

0:04:49.1 Ben Lewis: It was super intense. It’s hard to even compare it to anything that the US lived through. It’s nothing like anything anywhere in the US. It was just completely different, completely different context, completely different culture, completely different reaction from the government. Was very much just the government, essentially just strong armed everybody and shut everything down for a solid three months. And then the borders were closed another four months. So everything was extremely restricted for the first seven or eight months. And as we lived that, we moved out into the countryside and then ended up living and serving at our then church’s mission center. So we lived there for, we thought was going to be a month or two months, ended up being three years. So that was quite different than we had originally planned. But the Lord was in all of that, and then used that time to grow us, to mature us as individuals, as a couple. Taylor Morris, now Taboada came to Peru during that time and to live with us and to support the work we were doing with our church. That led into 2022, where that was the year Taylor moved to Peru, to Cusco. I was doing a combination of mobile medical clinics in the rural countryside communities around Cusco. Twice a week we’d go out with a small team of people, a nurse Jocelyn, who came through us, through Serge to support the work. And then normally two or three other Peruvians from our church would go out in my Toyota Hilux, and basically just set up clinics in these extremely rural locations and use them as like an evangelistic relational evangelism tool. So I would take care of 10 to 20 kids on a given afternoon, and then Jocelyn and I would take care of the healthcare piece while folks with the church were either just catching up with people, building relationships. Sometimes direct preaching, sometimes Bible reading, it varied what the evangelism looked like a little bit, depending on the person.

0:06:52.8 Jim Lovelady: Every time.

0:06:53.4 Ben Lewis: Yeah, every time. Everything was great until, at least if we thought it was great until the end of ’22. The first week of December 2022 the then Peruvian president was removed from office after a scandal situation one Wednesday morning. And then the new president was sworn into office by Wednesday afternoon, followed by a couple of national holiday days, a weekend. And then the next Monday, the country slowly not slowly, rather quickly unraveled. Particularly the southern states. They’re called departamentos. The situation in Cusco, Arequipa and some other places really devolved into chaos and anarchy for about 72 hours. And so it led to uncertainty because we had flights for that Friday to return to the US. And fortunately in the midst of all the chaos and all the crazy, the airport being shut down and broken into then shut down we were able to get out as scheduled. But the airport had opened. It was a long story, but the airport opened about three hours before we actually left on our flight.

0:07:58.6 Jim Lovelady: Well, so Taylor was on the podcast, and so she tells this whole story. You were driving the Toyota? 

0:08:04.5 Ben Lewis: Yeah. Yeah. I was driving the Honda Pilot with Taylor and my family and another girl Ulisa to Cusco that night on a Thursday, the day before our flight. It’s a crazy story. But the Lord was with us all in that situation. But it was kind of stressful.

0:08:25.9 Jim Lovelady: You made it.

0:08:26.1 Ben Lewis: We made it, we made it.

0:08:27.4 Jim Lovelady: You made it out. 

0:08:28.1 Ben Lewis: So we were able to get to Lima that Friday night, and then flew back to the US for a normal home ministry assignment.

0:08:35.8 Jim Lovelady: And then after a bit of time looking for a new place ’cause going back to Cusco was not an option. That’s when you guys ended up landing in Lima. 

0:08:46.1 Ben Lewis: Right. It led to a very, very stressful couple of months. Some of the most stressful months of my adult life or really my entire life. What am I saying? I was very hopeful when we got out that, oh, this will all blow over, no big deal. And I thought, oh, yeah, this will last a couple days. They suspended any ongoing protests before Christmas and said, oh, well, we’ll reconvene and start protesting again 4th of January, 2023. I was like, oh, it’ll be no big deal. Those protests were one, two, maybe three days, and it all blow over. And when we saw the protests go beyond three days and then a week, and then two weeks, and then three weeks, I in particular lost the optimism that I had had about it being normal. And then once I started talking to our church members and leaders there in Cusco, they were like, yeah, this year’s not going to be normal. And we actually got told by the main pastor of the church that if you want a normal life, you shouldn’t live here this year. And so at that point we had already started thinking about like, not going back to Cusco or to the rural part of Cusco where we were. And we were thinking about, well, where can we go? After all ’20, all ’21 were virtual school for the kids. Parts of ’22 were virtual. And so we were like, we can’t do this again because that was already the normal reaction of the schools in Cusco was to go virtual anytime there was threat of protest. And so with that being the milieu or the situation we were looking at, we were like, we can’t, we emotionally, we just weren’t in a place to go back into that.

 We were done emotionally with that. And so Jess is a teacher. She has a master’s degree in teaching. And it’s been 10 years, had been 10 years since she’d been in the classroom since our oldest was born or then at the time he’s now 11. We just said, Lord, what can you do with this? How can you help us in this situation? Where could you have us be? And so we started looking at Bogota, Columbia, and kinda in that process realized Lima could be an option. And then yeah. To make a very long story short and a whole lot of stress, we went through Bogota on a vision trip for a week, and then flew to Lima. But yeah, I was stressed out. That was a very, very stressful time. 

0:11:21.0 Jim Lovelady: What I love is that you found yourself where we are right now in the school, which is also a church here in Lima. And Taylor works here. 

0:11:31.5 Ben Lewis: Right. And Taylor works here. 

0:11:33.4 Jim Lovelady: So, which is awesome. So when we first walked in, I was like, Hey, I hadn’t seen her in I guess over a year. It’s been a while and now she’s married.

0:11:43.3 Ben Lewis: She’s married to Renzo. That’s right. 

0:11:45.5 Jim Lovelady: It’s so awesome. 

0:11:46.0 Ben Lewis: It’s wild. Yeah. And she goes to the church where she initially thought she would be all along because she thought she was going to be in Lima. 

0:11:53.9 Jim Lovelady: With the previous team.

0:11:54.9 Ben Lewis: With the previous team. And then she thought she was going to be going to the iCafe, the church where she currently attends. And she’s going there. And that’s kind of where she met Renzo her husband. So it’s like kind of an interesting and beautiful story.

0:12:09.1 Jim Lovelady: Renzo, who took me surfing.

0:12:10.7 Ben Lewis: That’s right. 

0:12:11.5 Jim Lovelady: Great surfing coach.

0:12:12.7 Ben Lewis: That’s right. He goes to Jess and the kids every now and then. 

0:12:13.8 Jim Lovelady: So how much longer after that? Well, it was a year ago that you came to Sonship week. And so take all of those things, plus someone says like, that season was hard. That’s four words but is just packed dense with all sorts of emotional, spiritual, and it’s just hard. And so my question is like, what was it like coming to Sonship week? And then I guess the bigger question after that is, what was the impact of Sonship week. 

0:12:44.2 Ben Lewis: I can look back on it now and talk a little bit more freely about where I was in hindsight. Back then I didn’t have the words. And even when I went to Sonship week I didn’t have the words to say what I’m about to say. But when I moved to Lima with the family back in February of ’23, we just went into like, let’s find a house. Once we knew we were moving here, it was like, just straight up, let’s get moved here. We were in the same country from Cusco, complicated, moved geographically, but we just went into survival mode. It’s like, how do we move here? How do we make this transition? How do we take care of the kids, take care of Jess? How do we take care of the family? And so after that all went away. ‘Cause that took, to move internationally, even in the same country, there was a lot of logistics to coordinate. So after that busyness we kind of died down, probably by early May, that’s when I really started looking into, hey, what am I going to do here? Because I knew at that point that I was headed towards a supervisory role in Latin America, supervising our missionaries in Latin America. But I also needed and wanted meaningful on the ground work to do, Kingdom work as a missionary. But that’s not why we moved here. We moved here to Lima for just the, have meaningful work as a teacher in a Christian school and for the kids to have a school where they can be long term. And so for me it was like, well, I can work in renewal in Latin America, and we’ll talk some about that, I think. 

0:14:08.7 Ben Lewis: But I just had no idea. And so what started happening in May of 2023 is I started knocking on all sorts of doors. Christian nonprofits, secular nonprofits. I looked into the whole process of opening my own medical consult room to be a pediatrician. I looked into working with a large nonprofit that was working directly with Venezuelan immigrants here in Lima ’cause there are over 1 million Venezuelans here in the city of Lima. There’s a huge need with ongoing immigration issues.

0:14:39.8 Jim Lovelady: And your mom is…

0:14:39.9 Ben Lewis: My mom’s Venezuelan,  as well. So I really wanted to jump in and figure out a way to serve with the Kingdom purpose, make disciples amongst Venezuelans. I kid you not, like, every time I tried to do something from basically May until about August, it would just shut down. 

0:14:56.6 Jim Lovelady: So you’re pushing on all these doors… 

0:14:58.9 Ben Lewis: I’m pushing on all these doors, knocking on doors, trying to prop windows open. Just trying to make, Hey, guy, how can I serve you in this way? How can I do this in this way? And…

0:15:08.3 Jim Lovelady: You’re getting shut down. 

0:15:08.4 Ben Lewis: God shut me down. 

0:15:09.1 Jim Lovelady: God shutting you down. 

0:15:09.8 Ben Lewis: I didn’t realize it until later, but God was shutting all these doors in my face. ‘Cause some of the reasons were just inexplicable. We don’t need you working for this nonprofit as a doctor providing care for free. It’s like, what are we talking about? 

0:15:24.3 Jim Lovelady: Who doesn’t want that?

0:15:25.6 Ben Lewis: Right. But in the end, we stepped out in faith and said, Hey, we’re going to make a step towards becoming part of a different church community, a Venezuelan church plant in here in the city. And literally even before we attended for the first time, during just some quiet time between me and the Lord that week started showing me like, you haven’t believed that I’m good in a long time. I’d read Matthew 7 about a father giving good gifts, an earthly father giving good gifts to his children. How much more will our heavenly father give gifts to those that ask him? And I just sat back and was like, oh, man, Jesus is saying this. I haven’t believed this in a long time. 

0:16:05.6 Jim Lovelady: So you were sitting with that with the Matthew 7 passage.

0:16:06.0 Ben Lewis: Yeah. I sat with that, and I was like, I can’t argue with Jesus. I don’t believe this… 

0:16:14.6 Jim Lovelady: But I can’t argue with him. 

0:16:14.7 Ben Lewis: I can’t argue with Jesus. I was like, he’s saying this to disciples. And I’m like, I was on the sermon on the mount. And I was like I haven’t believed this in my heart in years. And so, oddly, we go to church that Sunday, got to church that Sunday. And that’s the text that the pastor was preaching on. And I was like, okay. Jesus, haha so funny. And then honestly, like that week, it was like nonstop renewal for months and months. And so that was almost two months… 

0:16:46.4 Jim Lovelady: In your heart, like revival in your heart.

0:16:48.4 Ben Lewis: Revival in my heart knowing like, oh my goodness. I haven’t believed in my heart that the Lord loves me, that God loves me as a father. It was always in my head. But it was more of like, I had drifted into this kind of unloved servant mentality. Unloved soldier, unloved… I wouldn’t say I believed I was an orphan. I didn’t believe I was an orphan. I just thought like, I’m an unloved missionary. I was like I’m just here to serve. It’s like, God did this to me. He’ll fix it whenever he wants to. That was my mentality. And then once the Lord showed me, He was like, now I want you to know my love in an intimate way. I want you to receive my embrace. That’s when He started really messing me up with love, with this grace showing me again, like you need to feel this. So that first week of September just sparked an incredible time of renewal. And I would say in many ways it continued to today. There have been some bumps in the roads clearly, but it’s something the Lord’s continued to do in my life. 

0:18:02.2 Jim Lovelady: Well, I just think about at Sonship week, one of the songs that we sang was the Maverick City song. What’s it called? But I’m already loved, I’m already chosen. I know who I am. I know who has spoken. And then later in the song, it’s how much more? It’s directly from the Matthew 7. So when you’re saying that, I’m like, hey, we were singing that at Sonship Week. And that was one of the moving parts for me singing that song in.

0:18:36.0 Ben Lewis: That particular song. Yeah. No, it’s a really powerful example that Jesus makes. He didn’t just make it back then. He makes it to us every day. Like, if an earthly parent is able to do this for their kids, like how much more is our perfect Father, not just able to do it, is constantly doing it to and for us. 

0:18:54.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. If he watches over every sparrow, how much more does he love you? 

0:19:00.2 Ben Lewis: Yeah. We can intellectualize it, we can forget it. We can drift. But it doesn’t change the fact that He just deeply, intimately loves us and wants to be in a relationship with us. 

0:19:09.2 Jim Lovelady: So you came into Sonship Week already, like… 

0:19:11.7 Ben Lewis: Oh man, I was already tilled up. 

0:19:13.7 Jim Lovelady: You were tilled up. 

0:19:13.8 Ben Lewis: But I was raw. I was super, super raw at that point ’cause I was beginning to realize during those first months of renewal, like I had a lot of baggage from emotional, spiritual baggage due to a lot of things. We can call it burnout, but it was a lot to do with the pandemic, a lot to do with previous ministry context. A lot to do with my own brokenness and my own sinfulness and forgetting the gospel and Father’s love. All those things were kind of balled up into this tangled up mess in my heart. And I began to untangle some of those things, like probably more like as we got into October, November. But right in the smack in the middle of that was when I went to Miami to Sonship week. And so I went into that time very, very raw, as I mentioned. 

0:20:01.0 Ben Lewis: But it was kinda like a jumpstart, honestly ’cause I’d gone through Mentored Sonship years ago with Richard Siegel way back in 2015 and 2016. And so I wasn’t really sure what to do. I was like, I know the gospel’s what’s going to fix this. I don’t really want to go, but I kind of should ’cause I know the answer is there. I should just go and see what happens. And so in the end, it ended up being like, literally like jump starting a car, dead battery. It was kind of like that. It was kind of like, oh, it reframed so much of the stuff that I had heard before with Mentored Sonship. And it was just, I was able to kind of like reignite and jumpstart so to speak my living out of the gospel. Man, I can’t even tell you multiple times during that week, I was just like crying during the sermons, during the teaching times. It was like, yeah, God loves me. He has been with me during this whole mess, like this whole time. And He loves me despite the fact that I’m broken, despite the fact that I’m a hot mess. Despite the fact that Renewal team asked me to speak on the stage. And I was like, just, I thought, I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry. Then I could barely get out my words. That slobbery mess up there on the stage. But despite all that mess, like the Lord was with me through it all. And one of our well experienced missionaries now renewal team member Eric Brauer gave a last talk. And what really messed me up was Eric’s last talk when he said, when Jesus talks to Peter and He says, Satan’s asked to sift you like sand. But then he said, but when you turn back, I think it’s like, help your brothers. Something along those lines. And when Eric said that, dude, even now it’s like, it makes me super emotional ’cause I was like, it was like literally Jesus was telling me that’s what… I was using all that to do in your life. 

0:22:01.6 Jim Lovelady: You’re being sifted.

0:22:02.0 Ben Lewis: I was being sifted. And all that I lived through over those years, I mean my entire life, but like specifically all the issues that I had lived through going through well, those first ministry years in Peru, particularly the last like three or four before that was like the Lord sifting me, preparing me to help people turn back to Jesus. And like, it’s still like, man, when I read that passage, I’m just like, bro, it really, really deeply moved me ’cause it was literally like the Holy Spirit was like, I’m speaking to you. Anyways, it was good times. But that was a hot mess.

0:22:47.1 Jim Lovelady: That’s fantastic. I mean, it’s like we’re all a hot mess and there are these moments where the Lord goes, Hey, I’m just going to give you a little bit of insight, just a little bit of an insight on just how much of a hot mess you are. And then just accompanying that with like what you said, it’s, but the Lord loves me. 

0:23:06.3 Ben Lewis: Yeah. That’s what he does with us. Even though we’re messes, he uses our mess. He uses our brokenness. He uses our struggle, our pain, our suffering. He redeems and helps us turn people back to Jesus. 

0:23:23.8 Jim Lovelady: I want to pause this conversation and invite you to join us in prayer for the Serge field workers that we at the headquarters here in Philadelphia are praying for each week. We meet on Tuesday and Friday mornings to pray. And this week we’re praying for our teams in Uganda. Would you pray with me? Lord, we pray that you would bless these folks. Give them joy in their work, in your Kingdom, and the pleasure of your joy as they follow you. Give them wisdom and let your grace abound in their relationships with one another and with family members and children, and with the people they serve. Heal all sicknesses and liberate the enslaved. Protect them from the powers and principalities of darkness and restore to them the joy of your salvation. And let your Kingdom come and your will be done in these places just as it is in heaven. We pray in your name. Amen. 

0:24:21.4 Jim Lovelady: Now, back to the conversation. Okay. Perfect segue to my next question of like what impact Sonship Week has had on you as you’re looking, like you said, you’re being brought into a role to oversee Latin America. The different fields that Serge has all over Latin America. When I was in seminary, one of the professors, the metaphor was, hey we’re all about looking for the counterfeit. The only way that you can spot a counterfeit is that you know the real thing so well. I can’t teach you how to spot all the different counterfeits. There’s just too many counterfeits. Well, what we’re going to do is we’re going to sit and we’re going to stare at the real thing over and over again, and you are going to have the real thing memorized so that anything that’s not the real thing you’re vigilant for that’s a counterfeit. And so it’s like you were given vision of this is the grace of God. This is the real thing. This is changing me, has been and is changing me. And so I don’t know. There’s something about like, okay, well, so what does it look like to move that out into the various contexts that you’re starting to oversee? Is there a question in there? 

0:25:39.1 Ben Lewis: I think there’s a question in there. I think sometimes that thing we look at isn’t Jesus. I think we look at the Bible, our theology, our doctrinal statements, and we’re not looking at Jesus. And so that thing you’re talking about sitting at and staring has to be Jesus. 

0:26:00.9 Jim Lovelady: It has to be the person of Jesus. Absolutely.

0:26:01.5 Ben Lewis: It has to be the person of Jesus. If we start staring at the Bible instead of Jesus, we start projecting our interpretation and often our own cultural preferences on others. And so we ended up enslaving people to our understanding of the scriptures and our understanding of like, I guess, reality. And we enslave them to our preferences.

0:26:25.1 Jim Lovelady: Right. Because it’s like, you have to read the Bible the way I read the Bible. 

0:26:28.5 Ben Lewis: Right. Or else you’re less than or not part of. And so it just became about Jesus again, in many ways. And honestly, my being okay with that, because part of the story is that I had drifted over the years towards like thinking that like I was the problem. Like I had drifted from being extremely, extremely Jesus centric in my faith to where I was part of different streams of evangelicalism. Not always, but in the past few years that or just around them, hearing them via social media, in person, wherever, that essentially thought it was weird to have Bibles with red letters. 

0:27:14.6 Jim Lovelady: Functionally speaking. 

0:27:15.8 Ben Lewis: Functionally speaking I thought, oh, well, this is elevating Jesus’s words over the rest. I would have to defend why I thought that was okay. And so I think in a way, even though I kept defending that and still defend it, I think it crept in to where like, maybe I doubted it. Maybe I doubted, is that the right way to be, to look at Jesus like that, to put Jesus on that sort of pedestal. And clearly when we talk about it in this context, no, duh, Jesus has to be on the pedestal. He’s the only one that can be on the pedestal. That’s why God sent Him here. That’s why He made Himself flesh. God made Himself flesh to be on that pedestal for us. 

0:27:49.8 Jim Lovelady: Right. Right. Yeah. He is the one that is highly exalted. 

0:27:53.3 Ben Lewis: Exactly.

0:27:56.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Not all of our doctrinal and methodological and all the other things that function as kind of a silver bullet for doing ministry or even doing religion, doing our Christian, and I say that almost like doing religion. We’re not doing religion, but there’s a temptation to just do religion. 

0:28:16.1 Ben Lewis: Correct. So that time of renewal, going back to the question, not question. 

0:28:25.9 Jim Lovelady: There’s a question in there somewhere. 

0:28:27.5 Ben Lewis: That time of renewal in Sonship week, I think set me up to go to Jesus with all the brokenness that I had that I had been carrying, made it normal again to not be okay and to go to Jesus with all my not okayness and all the mess that I was. And so I think that set me up to be like, I have to wait on him to provide healing. And He used a wide variety of things to continue the process of renewal in my life. Obviously Sonship, love child paradigm is like crucial, but just did a lot of other things in my life. And he’s still doing things to help me heal.

 0:29:01.8 Jim Lovelady: Like the love of the Father.

 0:29:03.3 Ben Lewis: The love of the Father.

 0:29:04.3 Jim Lovelady: The fact that you were a child of God.

 0:29:07.3 Ben Lewis: That’s like foundational to begin to be able to heal. If you don’t know that, like Yeah.

 0:29:12.2 Jim Lovelady: Living that identity.

 0:29:13.0 Ben Lewis: You gotta live in that identity. If you don’t live in that identity, the spiritual emotional healing’s going to be incomplete at best.

 0:29:19.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. And manipulated, coerced at worst.

 0:29:22.9 Ben Lewis: Faked, superficial, there’s all sorts of words that you could use to talk about if we don’t have that identity as we try to heal from wounds, spiritual wounds, emotional baggage. Like if we don’t have that as our identity, we’re just never going to find rest in Christ.

 0:29:42.4 Jim Lovelady: So you’re pushing all these doors, they were slamming in your face.

 0:29:44.2 Ben Lewis: Well, He kept slamming them in my face. That didn’t change. But what he showed me was that you have to know how much you’re loved before you start doing for me again. He was slamming those doors in my face because I would’ve found my identity in doing things for the Kingdom. 

0:30:00.0 Jim Lovelady: That’s right. 

0:30:03.1 Ben Lewis: ‘Cause my identity was an unloved servant. 

0:30:07.1 Jim Lovelady: Right. And He loves you too much to let you. 

0:30:09.4 Ben Lewis: He loves me too much to let me do that to myself. At least at that point, that was when he was like, no, this is going to stop. And so it’s a beautiful story. It was very painful at the time. 

0:30:21.0 Jim Lovelady: Oh, absolutely. 

0:30:23.4 Ben Lewis: It was very painful ’cause I thought like, I want to serve Jesus. Like I want to work in the Kingdom in Lima. Like there’s so much need here. There’s 11 plus million people and there’s so much brokenness here. But the Lord shut all those doors in my face and it was ’cause He loved me. He loves me enough to make me stop and hit the pause button and let things slow cook. 

0:30:41.0 Jim Lovelady: One of the things that is obvious to me after hanging out with you for a week is that you love Peru and that you love Lima and you love the one million Venezuelans that live in Lima and you love Latin America. And you have a hope for Latin America. And you want to see gospel renewal happen in Latin America. So take all the 47 conversations that we had about that and bring all into… 

0:31:17.1 Ben Lewis: And that question non-question ’cause this is where this should have gone. So yeah. If we look at Latin America, and this isn’t a judgment of Latin America, I think it’s more of a judgment of the human heart. But we all tend towards finding our rightness in what we do, finding our sense of identity in our actions and feeling good about yourself because of that. And so what has happened in Latin America, and you can maybe say most of the world within the evangelical movement, is that we’ve created this sort of structure of people that attest to the right form of belief without living the Jesus way. And so we call that legalism, people that are attesting to the right check boxes, to the right statement of faith, to the right beliefs just like the rich young ruler or the Pharisees, they checked all the boxes, but they didn’t have the right heart. And so that’s what’s happened in Latin America. And I don’t think uniquely here, I think it happens here maybe in a unique way. 

0:32:28.8 Jim Lovelady: It’s got a Latin American flavor.

0:32:31.7 Ben Lewis: Right. On the back of Latin American Catholicism and other things that have happened in the past hundreds of years, of history. But when you look at the larger evangelical movement, and it’s probably happened over and over and over again since He ascended to heaven. It’s happened time after time after time that our hearts turn towards being justified in our actions rather than the life, death and resurrection of Christ. 

0:32:56.3 Jim Lovelady: Rather than resting in our identity in Christ we’re going, well, look what I did over there and look what I can do over here and look what I don’t do. See, I value that you should value all those things too and that’s where we get our identity. 

0:33:10.0 Ben Lewis: So when you look at what’s happened in Latin America and in places that have different ideas of leadership structures, forms of hierarchy, how power is addressed publicly and privately, when you look at how institutions are held up and maintained, it’s led to, this is a perspective, there’s no objective fact in this or any research, but it’s led to a form of tribalistic Christianity that’s way worse than I’ve seen in the US. Christians are more tribal. Christians are more tribal here. Evangelical Christians are more tribal here than I would say, than in the US generally speaking. Some might argue differently and I’d be happy to have that argument. But it feels that way. It feels like they’re more defined by their works. Because why? Because honestly, what evangelicals did said, Hey, you Catholics, you need to not believe like that you need to believe like this. You need to change your belief about soteriology, change for our belief about soteriology. 

0:34:06.5 Jim Lovelady: That’s right. 

0:34:07.8 Ben Lewis: So they just said, attest to this and you’re good. 

0:34:14.3 Jim Lovelady: And the box that you’re trying to check off is not a very good one here. Ours is better. 

0:34:17.8 Ben Lewis: This soteriology is biblically correct. Right? 

0:34:22.6 Jim Lovelady: Right. And look at how good we are because we have the correct soteriology. 

0:34:28.5 Ben Lewis: Right. And so we all do that. It’s not uniquely Latin American. We all do that. 

0:34:33.8 Jim Lovelady: Well, in Sonship language, in the Mentored Sonship curriculum, we talk about like what kind of righteousness you have. Do you have turn signal righteousness? Do you have I’m a nice guy righteousness and I use proper grammar righteousness, and… 

0:34:47.8 Ben Lewis: We might have soteriology righteousness.

0:34:50.9 Jim Lovelady: Right. Exactly. That’s exactly right. And how meta can this get where it’s like, oh, I have gospel righteousness, my gospel is better. 

0:35:00.0 Ben Lewis: Right. Gospel centered righteousness or whatever.

0:35:03.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Jesus, rescue us from that please. 

0:35:03.9 Ben Lewis: Jesus, rescue us from that. He’s the only one that can. ‘Cause what he does for the rich young ruler, for the Pharisees, for Nicodemus, for all those types that tried to be justified by their actions, He went to their heart. 

0:35:17.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. And he says, come follow me. Give up all those things come follow me.

0:35:22.1 Ben Lewis: Give up all the things that you identify in. Give up the things that you love more than God.

0:35:30.1 Jim Lovelady: So what do you see that looking like? What do you hope it looks like?

0:35:34.3 Ben Lewis: As I’ve began to talk to our teams that are in Guatemala and the Dominican Republic here in Peru and Chile, what I want it to look like, what I think is a vision from the Lord, is that I think we’re called to preach Jesus to evangelicals. I think we’re called to go into these evangelical spaces that tend towards legalism and to remind them of the love of the Father. I think we’re called to do that. Kind of like Paul had Judaism to go throughout the Mediterranean area. And he went to the synagogues and preached, I think in some ways, like that’s what we’re supposed to do as an organization, as a missionary community of Serge. Like we gotta find these places where the Lord’s opening the door for us to go and preach the love of Jesus, to preach the love of the Father, to have people, they already believe that Jesus is divine, but show them like, no, Jesus isn’t just divine in your head. He came to be an example for you on how to relate to the Father. He came to be that big brother for us to show us the way to God, to the Father. And I think that’s what we’re called to do. That’s what I’m called to do. And I think that’s what we’re all called to do. At least in Serge, at least while I’m regional supervisor.

 0:36:48.1 Jim Lovelady: That’s right. That’s right. So that’s what we’re going to be about. 

0:36:51.4 Ben Lewis: We’re not going to do my vision. I’m not here to implement my vision. I’ve discussed this somewhat with I think all our teams now, but it’s not about doing my vision. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

 0:37:09.8 Jim Lovelady: And it’s not that it’s your vision, it’s that living out the gospel in this way is… It’s like Peter says, Lord to whom shall we go, you alone have the words of eternal life. And so how that gets worked out in the particulars is what you’re saying is up for grabs. But this, he’s the only one who has the words of eternal life.

 0:37:31.9 Ben Lewis: He’s the only one that has the words of eternal life. And so, like, that’s what we need to be doing as we think about, as an organization, all of our teams are keen on not coming in and taking control. None of our teams lead that way. Not a single one. So as I’ve talked about it, as none of us want to be in positions where people expect coercive leadership. People don’t expect that out of us. At least we’ve tried to never set that precedent in any of our contexts where we are. 

0:38:00.1 Jim Lovelady: Maybe they’re learning not to have to expect it. 

0:38:02.2 Ben Lewis: Yeah. So like now we get to come in and say like, well, what are we going to do for these contexts, these church contexts that we’re in, or maybe these ministry contexts where we are, and we get to preach Jesus through living out, “reach, renew, and restore”. So we get to Lord willing, see ourselves as that incarnational, embodiment or that embodiment of Jesus’ presence, whether it’s Guatemala, Dominican Republic, here, Chile, we get… 

0:38:28.9 Jim Lovelady: Or a Renewal Team leader in… 

0:38:30.7 Ben Lewis: Or a renewal team leader. That’s right. And yeah, that’s right. Well, I’ll take it six years. 

0:38:35.9 Jim Lovelady: God loves you and Ben has a wonderful plan for your life. 

0:38:40.7 Ben Lewis: I’ll tell you if you want one. 

0:38:42.9 Jim Lovelady: If there’s anybody on renewal team right now who feels the slightest inkling to come start a renewal team for Latin America. 

0:38:51.7 Ben Lewis: Let’s talk. 

0:38:52.0 Jim Lovelady: Let’s talk just saying. That’s awesome. 

0:38:58.0 Ben Lewis: No, like, everybody needs to pray. Everybody needs to listen to the voice of the shepherd.

 0:39:03.2 Jim Lovelady: Absolutely. 

0:39:04.1 Ben Lewis: So, like, I’m not saying like, this is my vision, we need to do this. In some ways it is that, but I’m happy for that to be my personal vision too, but I just think like that’s what we need to be doing. And if you look at just the history of the organization, history of Jack Miller. The way that it happened, and I don’t even know all the details. Some of the people come from Philadelphia know all the OGs so to speak. They know all the history, but it started as a renewal movement of the gospel in the hearts of conservative presbyterianism. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s an incredible thing what the Lord did and a stream of evangelicalism that had forgotten the love of the Father. And so if you just think about who we are as an organization, who we’ve been for the past 40 years now, like it makes sense that that’s just true to who we are as a people, as as a group, as an organization. We’re a movement of grace moving through our hearts, and we’re taking that to people that have forgotten it. And not just people that have forgotten it, people that maybe have never known.

 0:40:08.4 Jim Lovelady: Right. Right. So, well, to be a Christian for a long time and then discover the love of the Father, I mean, that was my story. So, I mean, it’s many people’s stories, but it’s this classic story of you come to faith now get to work. Earn your keep, you’re in the house of God now earn your keep. It’s like, man, the parable of the prodigal sons is a wonderful example of one guy who was really good at earning his keep, the older brother. I did everything you ever asked. And then the younger brother was one who’s like, you know what, I don’t care to live in this house. I’m going to do my own thing. But then he comes to his senses, but he doesn’t do a very good job of it. His repentance is not great. The younger brother goes, ah, you know what, I’ll go work for my dad. I’ll go try and earn my way back into his good graces. And I love that story because it’s like, no, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work like that, the Father loves unconditionally and invites and put the robe on him and let’s throw a party.

 0:41:16.1 Ben Lewis: 100%. Both developed a servant mentality. Both thought, oh, the younger brother thought it’s better if I just go back and work for my dad. The older brother said, I’ve been slaving for you all these years. Both drifted into this mentality that the father didn’t loved him. They became convinced of it. 

0:41:34.2 Jim Lovelady: And that was my story as a minister of the gospel, as a missionary, as a long time Christian oh, wait a second. Hey, you know God loves you. Right? It doesn’t matter but does he? Yeah. 

0:41:50.7 Ben Lewis: He does. 

0:41:52.7 Jim Lovelady: And you forget. So we forget.

0:41:56.6 Ben Lewis: We forget. 

0:41:57.6 Jim Lovelady: Here we are reminding ourselves because we need to. 

0:42:01.8 Ben Lewis: Yeah. No, we have to remember, and I think that goes… I think one thing that makes us forget is we forget that God made us in his image before we were corrupted ,the original sin. Like we were corrupted and broken through Genesis 3, but first we were made in his image. And that’s a beautiful, beautiful reality of the narrative that scripture tells about us. So we can never focus on the consequences of sin without telling the whole story that we were made in his image first. 

0:42:43.8 Jim Lovelady: The Bible starts with Genesis 1 not Genesis 3.

0:42:46.5 Ben Lewis: Exactly. And a lot of times we start it in 3. At least the way we tell the gospel story. And that’s not good news ultimately.

0:42:53.8 Jim Lovelady: That’s right.

0:42:55.4 Ben Lewis: Because it doesn’t make sense that God would love us if he’s always angry.

0:43:01.9 Jim Lovelady: It becomes confusing.

0:43:04.4 Ben Lewis: It’s super confusing.

0:43:06.9 Jim Lovelady: Like, no, no, you belong to Him. He loves you. He’s always… For God so loved the world. That’s where it starts. He loved the world that he gave his only Son. It was out of love. 

0:43:18.6 Ben Lewis: That’s right. 

0:43:21.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Oh man, what? Okay. 

0:43:23.8 Ben Lewis: Preaching to the choir. 

0:43:25.9 Jim Lovelady: Preaching the choir, I love it. But the choir needs the gospel too. They need the gospel too. So it’s been fun to be here. I came down to do a Sonship weekend with you. And so that was a huge honor to get to do that and then to hang out with Pastor John and just meet everybody who’s doing stuff here. It’s been fantastic. 

0:43:49.1 Ben Lewis: No, awesome. I’m glad you were able to come down, hang out, see what’s going on. 

0:43:51.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Bought a bunch of alpaca stuff. 

0:43:54.4 Ben Lewis: That’s right. Alpaca stuff. 

0:43:56.6 Jim Lovelady: Ate a bunch of ceviche. 

0:43:58.5 Ben Lewis: Oh man. That’s right. You’ve been trying a lot of Peruvian food. 

0:44:02.1 Jim Lovelady: As much as I can. 

0:44:02.1 Ben Lewis: Lomo Saltado, tacu tacu . 

0:44:04.4 Jim Lovelady: That was amazing. I never had the Guinea. 

0:44:07.4 Ben Lewis: Oh, the Guinea pig ey. Yeah. Next time. 

0:44:10.5 Jim Lovelady: I never had. Yeah. Next time, we’ll figure out, next time we do an Hijos Amados or any kind of…

0:44:16.9 Ben Lewis: Lord willing we will be doing Hijos Amados on the regular, at least once a year, if not twice a year. 

0:44:22.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. It’s like contextualizing Sonship for this culture. 

0:44:28.3 Ben Lewis: Right. So we want to start with where people are. People believe Jesus is divine. People believe Jesus is the son of God, but I don’t think they believe that Jesus’ life applies to them. Latin Americans tend to focus on Jesus’ birth and Jesus’ death, but they don’t focus on the lived life and they don’t focus on the resurrection. There is some talk of the resurrection, but as much as Jesus is esteemed, venerated, even worshiped it’s not as if he lived a life that we can actually imitate, that we can actually like see him being the perfect human example that God sent to the earth to model what it means to be perfect. And I would say even truly human.

0:45:18.4 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Paving the way, he’s the firstborn of a new creation. He’s paving a way of a new a new way to be human. The Switchfoot song, it’s great for the Switchfoot song.

 0:45:31.9 Ben Lewis: Right. That older brother that is leading us back to the father. They came here to rescue his family. And so when you think about it that way, as we contextualize it, it’s really just starting with what they believe. They believe Jesus is divine. It’s more of now it’s like, oh no. Like Jesus modeled what it meant to rest in his identity as a love son. Jesus modeled it and kind of like I did with Matthew 7, I was like, no one’s going to argue with Jesus. If I came in and try to put some theological spin on Paul’s words or even Peter’s words, that could just sound like mumbo jumbo radio noise, white noise. But if we start with Jesus, people aren’t going to fight. Like, literally not… I don’t mean this as a pun or make it sound anabaptist, but like Jesus is literally disarming. People aren’t going to fight with Jesus. And maybe that’s why Jesus started with Matthew 7 with me ’cause it was like, I can’t argue. I’m like, man, I can’t argue with you Jesus? 

0:46:42.1 Jim Lovelady: Right. Right. 

0:46:44.2 Ben Lewis: It’s like if I argue with Jesus and it’s like I’m not following him. I don’t want to believe that. It’s not easy that Jesus is right. 

0:46:55.3 Jim Lovelady: I totally understand what you’re saying. 

0:46:57.0 Ben Lewis: It’s not easy, but it made me, makes us all the time have to choose, are we going to follow his example of his words and lived out life or not? And that’s where we start with what we’re doing with Sonship. It’s like Jesus modeled an example of what it meant to rest in his identity as a love son. We gotta start there and finish there. 

0:47:19.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. And then know or start to learn how to experience the fact that the spirit is with us guiding us in that direction. It’s not like Jesus goes, Hey, I’m over here. Good luck getting over here. No He’s like, I’m over here and I will be with you as you find your way over here. And that’s the beauty of walking with Jesus. Anyway. Right. Well, alright. 47 amazing conversations all week. Well, that’s one down 46 to go. 

0:47:55.5 Ben Lewis: That’s right. That’s right. 

0:47:57.1 Jim Lovelady: And we’ll figure something out, but thank you so much, man. Thanks for sharing. It was awesome. 

0:48:01.7 Ben Lewis: Yeah. Great having you this week. Thanks for being here.

0:48:12.0 Jim Lovelady: This is the relentless pursuit of God. His love is chasing us down with goodness and mercy, and it creates in us a response of love. But let me be honest with you. Lately, my issue isn’t believing God’s love for me. It’s actually my refusal to love him in return. And it’s really ugly when I say it out loud. It hit me when Ben quoted Luke 22:31, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift each of you like wheat. But I’ve pleaded in prayer for you, Simon, that your faith should not fail. So when you’ve repented and turned to me, again, strengthen your brothers.” and I thought about how in a very real way, my mornings start this way. Right after I hear Psalm 143:8, let the morning bring me word of your steadfast love. It’s as though the next thing I hear is news of the sifting that is going to happen in my life today. And Jesus says, but I’ve pleaded in prayer for you, Jim. So when you have repented and turn to me again, strengthen your brothers and sisters. And so I go about my day, which is full of temptations and failures and frustrations until I come to the end of my day and I realize the story of Simon Peter, the story of the relentless pursuit of God is also my story. It’s as though Jesus sits me down by the fire and he says like in John 21, do you love me? And my first response is, not really. I mean, just look at my day. Look at the day I had. But thank God he asks again, do you love me? I mean, I suppose I do somewhere in there, somewhere in my heart you know I love you. And it’s wonderful because he asks a third time, because he keeps pushing into the deepest places of my heart, past the unbelief, past the fear and doubt into the truest reality of my union with him. The place where the spirit dwells and sings songs of love that resonate with my soul. Do you love me? And I don’t even have to answer because he knows and I know we love because he first loved us. And this is the dynamic of mutual love that I discover in repentance. Think about how much God loves you, just how deep his love is for you. Now, do you love him? Can you be honest about your lack of love for him? And repent of that and receive his undaunted transforming love. You know Jesus I love you, but only up to this point. And it’s as though he says, I want to teach you a greater love than that. Leave your lesser loves and follow me. This conversation with Ben was very good for my soul along with the 47 other conversations we had the week I was in Lima. The joke we had between us was God loves you and Ben has a wonderful plan for your life here in Latin America. And it was his way of talking about the great need for more workers in the Latin American fields. So I’m going to keep that going. Okay. God loves you and I have a wonderful plan for your life. Maybe it’s to consider God’s call to join our folks in the work of reaching, renewing, and restoring people in places in Latin America. But if Ben’s story of feeling like an unloved servant resonates with you, I want you to go sign up for Mentored Sonship and start a journey that will change your life. Then join us for Sonship week in Chattanooga, Tennessee coming the week of November 2nd through the 7th. What Ben described in our conversation about Sonship week is normal for basically every Sonship week. But if you can’t wait until November and you’re in the Chattanooga area, join us for the Gospel-Centered Life Weekend Retreat Friday and Saturday, March 21st and 22nd. And in the show notes, I’ll leave links for resources like the Spanish version of the 𝘛𝘩𝘦-𝘎𝘰𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘭 𝘊𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦 book and other resources we provide online for your pursuit of God. But I want to leave you with this reminder. The Lord is pursuing you with his love. He has set his love on you. And here is his blessing for you today. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to smile down on you. May the Lord be gracious to you and turn his bright eyes to you and give you his peace. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, life everlasting. Amen.

---