We met a nice man named Larry Williams in a dot-on-the-map town called Dix about thirty miles west of Sidney, Nebraska. It was an unplanned stop in what most would call the middle of nowhere. We had pulled off I-80 looking for a service station because Belle’s volts gauge was reading zero. I knew the van didn’t have long, and given my experience driving both OTR heavy trucks and local tow trucks, the last thing I wanted for my family was a long hitch on the shoulder of one of the busiest Interstates in the country. The alternator was a challenge, but the fact that it was a Sunday in Nebraska was a bigger deal. Unlike the godless PNW, where everything is open all the time—even on Christmas—the Midwest resounds to a different, more traditional rhythm. Everything was closed. But Larry Williams was out for a walk. And while we’ll get to Tomika by the end, I want to begin the story with Larry.
Little Miracles Are Miracles Nevertheless
It turns out Larry is in his eighties. I told him he looked more like he was in his sixties. His rejoinder was, “I feel a hundred.” That was how the exchange went. It was enjoyable.
Mr. Williams politely dove into the troubleshoot with me, interrupting his habitual five-or-six-mile daily ramble to check fuses and chat, in his charming down-home patois, about how to solve our dilemma. He volunteered to walk back to the house to get his diagnostic tool, an OBD II code scanner, to see if the van’s computer had thrown a code (it hadn’t). We would discover later that the alternator was indeed, as seemed likely, dead. But he gave me a hand-scratched number on a torn remnant of paper that reminded me of my grandparents’ handwriting, and he directed me to call a guy he knew.
It turned out most people around those parts know and love Larry Williams, or at least those whom we met in Sidney seemed to. The gist of the solution to our challenge was that we would have to drive ourselves out of trouble, and the man I talked to on the phone recommended we take U.S. 30, which parallels I-80 but is far less busy, in case the van quit on us before we got where we needed to get to. A guy he knew had a tow company, and he would be happy to help. Even on a Sunday.
The Extreme Tour staff were extremely helpful in getting things resolved for us in Nebraska so that we could get back on the road with Belle, which is to be the tour van for the west leg this summer. Ted Bruun, the founder, actually called me to apologize. I was like, “Bro. Not necessary. It’s not like this is a surprise.” Belle has seen some rough days and has missed more than one appointment on her maintenance schedule, for sure, but none of that really matters. Mainly, I was unimpressed with what I categorize as a blatant attack by an enemy desperate to stop or at least delay anything he can, especially when it has to do with the light. What Satan can’t admit is that, even when he does seem to gain ground for a moment, God purposed before the event to turn what the enemy meant for evil to the glory of God, which is to the eternal benefit of His people. So if the devil pops up unexpectedly in various circumstances, it’s just time to punch him in the face again with the Truth, like, “Oh, you wanna do this again, and you wanna do this right now?” and Christ in us sends him running back to his corner again, however many times a day we must go through the exercise of sticking him back where he belongs: in deepest darkness. His end is inevitable, and he will never rise above tool status, so like I said: it’s not like it’s a surprise that we broke down. Even if Belle was in much better shape, I wouldn’t have been surprised. The devil is a bastard. But he’s also a coward. Resist him and he will run and hide.
I prayed the whole way from Dix to Sidney that the battery had enough guts to get us at least to a hotel, and that was more than thirty miles. I may be off base here, but I think it’s at least slightly miraculous that a twenty year-old, one-ton, fifteen-passenger van was capable of such a feat. I mean, I’ve seen Roadkill, and I know about roadside fails. They’re hilarious. On television. What we experienced was miraculous.
Several days later, when we eventually got to Nashville, I would tell people, “We drove this van, we broke it, and then we drove it some more.” Belle has a shiny new alternator. We picked it up in Sidney because that was where we were supposed to pick it up. God brought us more than 2,000 miles, and every one of them was predestined. Thanks, Mr. Williams, for being there when we needed you. You, like us, are one of the millions of moving pieces in our journey, God works in all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, and not one piece is nonessential.
There is no such thing as coincidence.
Divine Appointments
The line for registration at The Objective in Nashville was several hundred people long. It curled around in a gigantic checkmark, following the sidewalks and curbs at the Jackson Center for Music and Worship Arts at Trevecca. We lined up behind a couple of people we would have the pleasure of getting to know pretty well over the next few days: a young man from New York named Jammal, and a local young lady who introduced herself as Gabrielle but who quickly endeared herself to us as simply Gab. These were divine appointments.
I love the mystery inherent in meeting people and enjoying the moment with them but entrusting the details and outcomes to God.
It’s the same for the many artists we met at The Objective, which is a four-day, sixteen-hours-a-day tour de force of passion, art, and instruction in the fulfillment of the dream in the mind of God for all His apostles and prophets in and around the music industry. It’s probably the last place in the industry that artists in earnest can find any kind of development opportunity. One industry pro stated the status quo as plainly as I think it’s possible: “In America, when the industry evaluates your potential as an artist, they don’t even listen to your music. They just look at the numbers you generate.” In other words, sales. The Objective moves in an opposite spirit to this.
At The Objective, there are no breaks in the schedule. It is relentless, and I had to learn quickly to self-regulate, stepping away from the firehose for a walk and a thirty minute session with my voice notes app just to process and try to retain some of it. I mean, you can use a shovel as a spoon if you want to, but at some point you’re gonna have to chew. That puts certain limitations on your potential for intake.
When we breakfasted with my in-laws on the morning of the final day of The Objective, my mother-in-law said that she felt a heaviness about us that hadn’t been there a few days before. As we talked that one through, she quickly seemed to have come to some kind of decision or revelation about it. She said it was the Shekinah, that we had seen things only God reveals, and only in His presence. Indeed, there is a weight of glory that only the apostles and prophets really feel. They feel it because they’ve said yes when God called them to go, and they have opened their mouths in faith that God would fill them with His word. That’s how it is, at least for me, and I’ve got nothing in my hand but attempted obedience. Sometimes when what I have seems to be little, all that’s happening is this: God is bringing what I need as freshly as it can be brought. Why? Because He supplies all I need. Even the practical stuff. And all I know is that the last thing I want is to stay inside where it’s safe. I want to be in the wild where it’s not, and Jesus is.
Filled to Be Poured Out
“A lot of you in here think and say that you’re Christians, but you’re not.” That pull quote might very well be from the best sermon I’ve ever heard. It was preached by a man I didn't get the chance to meet, and it was less than ten minutes long. This was what we were given to feast upon on the final morning of The Objective, and it was all about God exploding all the boxes we put Him in.
It was the pin in what another man named Jeremy Yoder had made clear for us a few moments before, when he had given his testimony about how God is so very faithful to break us in all the right ways until we’re ready to serve. Sometimes it takes years. These exhortations were laid out to feast upon right before we headed up the road about a mile to a neighborhood called University Court that lies between Trevecca and downtown Nashville.
I’m told that most people who live in University Court, or UC, are born there and die there. It’s low-income housing. The projects. Some families have been there for four generations, but that doesn’t imply longevity. A woman not yet fifty years old has a daughter in her early twenties who is already a widow. This is common. That young woman’s husband died on their couch in their living room of a heroin overdose and was discovered by her kids. They still use that couch. There is no alternative for them. Drive-by shootings are common, as is domestic violence and substance abuse.
Nashville wants to gentrify itself, and UC is such a blight that I’m told the city’s proposed solution is to just tear it down. I’m told they would give $1,000 vouchers to the evicted, which would make them instantly homeless. Once a year, Ted Bruun and The Extreme Tour put on an event inside UC called Rock the Block, and while it is a finale to The Objective, it is also meant to kick off and serve as a demonstration of what The Extreme Tour is all about: serving those whom the world would consider the least of these, if it considers them at all. Rock the Block at UC places the sharpest focus on why we do what we do, not just as artists affiliated with The Extreme Tour or as attendees of The Objective but as children of the Most High God. This event brings hope through music. It’s a block party on the surface, but really it is an injection of hope through the forging of community, and that's a process that's been going on now for about ten years. This year a few local churches partnered to give away free food, plus toys and bikes for the kids.
April and I met a woman at UC named Tomika who lives “on the inside,” which makes it seem like a trap, not a neighborhood. Tomika wanted to learn how to play guitar. We talked with her for quite a while, and April taught her a couple of chords. She was a quick study, and clearly gifted for it. April sang for Tomika, an audience of one, in the grass at UC. I never dreamed that she would debut her new song Battlefield for one person, but having met Tomika, I wouldn’t change a thing. It’s a song of hope that we’re not alone. The lyric talks about how the mind is a battlefield, and it’s worth contending for because you’re not worthless but priceless, that you’ve been made for glory. I wept in this moment with Tomika and April, and I remember offering her encouragement and feeling the Father’s purpose and call and destiny all through the moment. Later, Tomika and April danced together to the music of artists like K-Drama and Gallery Cat as UC rocked, kids danced and painted faces, a football game broke out, and kids played with squirt guns.
Sweet Aftermath
If I were to invite you to come along with us, I might tell you to “come get wrecked,” or I might say that if you’re coming with us you’re going to have to walk by faith like us, that the only sure thing you’ll have on the journey will be Jesus. You can’t be here in this place without faith that’s doing more than surviving. It must be living and active to be a functional shield. This place is not for pretend Christians.
And we’re thousands of miles from “home,” but are we really? What we are is thousands of miles from wherever we were camping out under the sun for the last little while. Home is people, not place. I miss the people, but what's crazy is how God gives you more when you obey.
As I reflect on people like Tomika “on the inside” at UC, young artists like Gab in Nashville and Jammal from New York, and what Jeremy Yoder shared—a story precisely aligned with my own journey—my perspective is enlarged.
I find that I have absolutely no desire for what most of America is so absolutely bent on chasing. The fire is coming; why are you accumulating to yourself so much fuel for it? Why are you wasting all you’ve been given? Don’t you see people like Tomika? Don’t you see the twenty-something widows, the drive-bys, the heroin overdoses, the desperation? Don’t you care that there are some who live in and wrestle daily with practical hopelessness, that they have no resource for desire, and won’t you share with the hungry even a tiny slice of what the Father has given into your hands? Most of us command vast empires of wealth, and we’ve failed to learn the obvious: that it will never be enough. We keep chasing money and trampling the poor in our pursuit of it. It may be that carnal prosperity is spiritually flammable and only becomes fireproof when it's submitted to the One who gave it in the first place. So if you're building your own little fiefdom with what God gave you, you're walking the edge of the line between life and death. You're clothing yourself with fuel for the fire.
I don’t want you to feel guilty, man; I just want you to do something about actual injustice. Start giving away what you have to those who need it! And cut all your strings from it too! Church culture is so weird. Don't try to get people into buildings and programs. Just give a starving man an actual meal, give a thirsting woman an actual drink, and not once but again and again because that’s how Jesus takes care of you. Don’t pray that He would send someone else when you are the answer to your own prayer, and don't think that a check for ten percent buys you amnesty from the wrath of God. Either do the work or shut the #@&* up about how you’re a Christian. Yes, I’m doing you a favor. Storing up all that fuel is heaping up judgment against you. Turn loose of it and put it to work where it matters.
God’s purpose for you and me isn’t to build for ourselves. That’s not stewardship, it’s self-seeking. It is the deepest chasm of wickedness.
Having seen and heard now, and only processed a fraction of the revelation of God’s heart that I’ve beheld at The Objective, I am convinced that we here in America who call ourselves by the Name of Christ are entering a season of winnowing like no other. God will separate and divide the priceless from the worthless, and He is a consuming fire—only the precious will remain. Nothing can stop it. God’s vengeance is on a triphammer in favor of those whom He has chosen, and what I realized standing there in the projects at UC is that it’s holy ground. God is jealous for that place. It’s where Jesus would go, and go first. UC is filled with people whom God favors. And every stop on the tour this summer is another UC.
I’ll put it like this: When we were driving in from our host house (thanks for all you’ve done for us, Martee and Rachelle!) to our second full day at The Objective, the young lady God chose to send with us on this journey, miss Haley Wood, said something I recorded in my quotes note. Mind you, that note is mostly filled with wisdom from Tozer and Spurgeon and Chambers. But what she said was worthy of inclusion.
She said, “The Extreme Tour is an extreme gift.” This is the essence.
God is gonna prove it to us again and again this summer. What we’ve seen so far has already wrecked me. And we haven’t seen anything yet. So people get ready.