We left off in a little bit of a cliff hanger, (To listen to part one of this conversation click here: Foundations of Audacious Dreams) a moment where it seemed like everything had lined up and finally there was fruit for all the sacrifice.
Then the bottom fell out a little bit and they found themselves in a split with the church that they were attending and a really painful departure. They lost all their friends and were left in a place that was very hard. Yet God met them there and used that situation to propel them into what was next.
This episode is part 2 of Gina’s conversation with Ruth Ruckle about finding your authentic sound of Worship, getting over yourself and saying yes to Jesus. Ruth and her husband Orion are the founders of Abide Ministries in San Diego.
From the Ashes
Ruth:
Our experience with that place ended abruptly and for us unfavorably. It was a moment in time where a situation could have taken us out or propelled us forward. People are still people and we’re still growing.
I’m still growing. I still don’t understand that I’m a challenger. I still don’t understand that I’m a truth giver, even though I know it in my head, and from people around me who said, “I love you because you’re honest. I love you because you speak the truth.”
Belief was one of my top five strengths. Why would I have no reason to believe you? And my truth at this point, isn’t coming out laced with bitterness or unforgiveness. It’s literally laced with “I love you.” This has been a couple years of healing and process.
So it’s not the old Ruth anymore, it’s a different Ruth, I am visibly different. What I also learned in that season is people love truth until they don’t. There’s nothing you can do about that. Doesn’t mean that I need to change.
It meant that I had nobody mothering and fathering me through a difficult situation, or spiritual things that I was seeing. No one had language or understanding around what I was going through.
It was such a great learning experience, and it sucked at the moment, but it propelled us into where we are now. We lost everybody. We had nobody that would come and be our friend anymore.
This isn’t a sob story, this is a God story, because we looked at each other and we said, “Well, what’s important to us? What do we really value?” And I said, “Look, I have been conferencing for 10 years. I have been going to Bethel, and we’ve been going to all the Bethel worship nights.
We’ve been doing all of these things because I’m really wanting to be in the presence of God. I’m wanting to cultivate that. I said, “I feel like this point, I should be able to do that.” Conferences are great and they’re awesome for learning, but if you don’t ever use what you learn in a conference, you’re like a dead sea. It just goes in and never comes out.
Gina:
Yes. And amen.
Ruth:
That’s what they’re meant for. They are meant for you to go back and be a catalyst for change in your community, not to go to another conference.
Impacting a City with Worship
Gina:
But it also doesn’t mean that you’re supposed to go and try to replicate that. So many people go to a conference and then they come back and they try to be exactly like that ministry in their own community, but then it doesn’t translate.
Those are meant to fuel you, to encourage you, to bring you closer to Jesus, to expose the things that need to be exposed and dealt with, to give you courage, and trust in who God actually is and who you are, so that you can fully be that where you’re planted.
Ruth:
Knowing your city, knowing your region and knowing the people that you’re called to influence is super key. I could have said, “My worship night needs to replicate all of the Bethel experiences I’ve had because they do it so well.” I want to do that.
And in one aspect, I said, “What they do well is cultivate the Presence of God, and I want to do that.” I want to cultivate the Presence, but understanding what that looks like from the people that God has placed around me, with their capacity and with where we’re at as a city.
This is going to look very different than it’s going to look in Redding. I can’t even compare. It’s not even apples to apples. So we said, “Let’s do a worship night.” And it seemed so easy. We have no community, no one that we know that would even say yes and come, but we knew Lane and Laura.
I had reconnected with them randomly at a baby shower a year before. They had dinner with us and they encouraged us in our pursuit of all things “Holy Spirit.” I still have a card on my refrigerator from Laura that I got in December prior to everything that went down with us that said, “We’re so proud of you. We love you. We’re for you and we’ve got your backs.”
So in that moment, I’m like, “They play instruments and they’ve got our backs. Let’s call them.” So we called them and then a few other people that we knew from our old people group, we weren’t super close to them and they would not have ever known what was going on with us.
So we just said, “Hey, these are anointed people. Let’s see if they’ll say yes.” And they all said yes. So we got them all together and we started doing practices and we were like, “God’s in this.” And I’m like, “What are we going to even call this?” And Orion’s the one that actually came up with Abide.
So just so you guys all feel very encouraged, I am daily getting over myself, and God still uses me to impact a city. So Orion came up with that and it stuck. And so we’re getting ready, and we have these practices, and we are thinking, “Oh this is so easy. God is so in this, and it’s amazing.”
And then two days before we actually have our worship night, we get calls from both of the musicians that were singing and bringing all of the equipment, and they said, “Sorry, we don’t know what’s happening with you and this place, but we’re not allowed to partner with you. If we do, we won’t be welcome.”
They weren’t going to be welcome to do worship in this place. And I’m sitting there like we lost everything. I call Laura and she goes, “Oh honey, it’s okay. You can be mad right now. But this is what God showed me. Here’s how God set you up for success.”
If we backtrack a little, God said, “just say yes to me.” So in saying yes, it means doing a lot of things that you don’t want to do when you don’t want to do them. Like driving to Carlsbad on a Friday night for a house concert in someone’s home that you don’t really know because Laura asked you to because she thinks you need to meet them.
And that’s why I met Roy and Christine Cochran. I’m tired, I don’t want to be here. What am I doing? But Laura said, “come” so I’m here. Well, we connected with them the weekend prior and Laura’s telling them all about what we’re doing and all this stuff. We had a connection.
So when Laura called, she said, “Oh, I already called Roy. He’s bringing musicians down and he’s got all this equipment and it’s just going to work out exactly the way that it’s supposed to do, honey, don’t you worry about a thing.”
Roy shows up and it was his joy to be there. We had no idea what we were doing. We just knew we wanted to cultivate the Presence and we did it. It was incredible. I think we had scorpions bite someone that night, we had all of our chickens get killed by raccoons that night. I’m telling you, you don’t know the curses that people have put out over you.
So after that night, Laura says, “Hey, I think you should walk your property and pray over it.” Because you actually don’t know the words that have been spoken out against you guys, and so just do that for me. We did that and we’ve never had a problem since.
Like not anything to write home about. That’s how Abide started, with that one night, and the right people saying yes. The rest is just sort of like trial and error. I feel like a lot of times we get stuck in needing to have everything worked out and figured out before we start. It’s almost like we never start.
Letting go of Expectations
Gina:
There’s a couple of things that I don’t want to breeze past, first of all, it’s a seemingly risky thing to dream with God, but a powerful thing to dream with God. There’s a couple of themes I am finding, as this is my second season of Sacred Space. This is the first season with themes that kept coming up and things that God kept showing me.
So the theme this season is about expectation. It’s about dreaming with God and having great expectation, while holding how that manifests in the process and what it looks like very loosely; so that we aren’t disappointed because we think it should look like this, but it doesn’t, it looks like this over here, so that we don’t miss the beauty and the miracle that’s happening in front of us.
Because we’re so busy thinking it needs to be something over here and we’re completely missing the ball. The verse that God gave me is Jeremiah 33: 2 – 3, “Thus says the Lord who made it, who formed it, to establish it, the Lord is His name.
Call to me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things you do not know.” God started challenging me in October of this year. “Gina, start thanking me for what you don’t know yet. Because I do know.“
Ruth:
Such a good word.
Gina:
There’s something really profound about the fact that you had this dream and this idea to tear down your house and rebuild it, but you had your own expectations and plans on what that was for and what it was looking like.
That you were building this for where you were now, but God was building this for where He was taking you. And there’s just something so beautiful about saying yes to Him, even when we’re in that imperfect place, even when we’re still getting all the things worked out.
Like you said, those are getting worked out through our whole life. This sanctification, this transformation, this being transformed more and more into the image of Jesus is a lifetime pursuit, until we’re standing with Him face to face.
If we wait until we’re “ready”, spiritually ready, maturity wise ready, then we’re never going to go. That’s not to say to run ahead of God, you need to have the wisdom to know when God’s speaking, and when He’s not. But the beauty is that He redeems all of it.
He turns our dependence and our surrender, our repentance, all of those things into something beautiful. That’s Him working all things together for our good, for His glory. That’s Him taking Joseph, who says the truth without wisdom, and brags to his brothers about a dream and gets thrown in a pit.
But then that pit leads to eventually him having this place of incredible influence. Even in that place of influence, he has to wrestle with God in his heart in his own bitterness and all the things he is going through, so that he can be a vehicle of blessing back to his family.
The Church Has Left The Building
Gina:
I just want to encourage people, if you have a dream, first of all, it isn’t always meant for within the four walls of the church.
Ruth:
Let’s redefine that sentence. The church is people, it’s me and Gina sitting here on this podcast. It’s not necessarily meant for the structure that you attend on a Sunday morning, I’ve got nothing wrong with that, but I’m just saying we as people are the church.
Gina:
That corporate gathering is powerful and significant, but it’s meant to equip you and shore you up so that you can go out and be the church in community. Because when we stay within those four walls, we aren’t going to transform the world. But when churches empower people to be healthy in their understanding of God and their identity, then there’s no stopping what God can do.
Whether that is your home and you’re in construction and you can build a place that can be a place of meeting, or whether you are an attorney and you’re on staff at a law firm, and you can bring the light of Christ into very dark places.
There’s a purpose for how God made you. There’s a purpose for how He designed you. There’s a purpose for where He’s placed you.
So I just want to encourage you with that. Whatever your dream is, whatever your gifting is, wherever you are planted, lean in and listen to the heart of the Father who made you, because He has something for you. It’s an invitation to partnership.
Ruth:
It is. And be encouraged, you don’t have to have it all figured out. I mean, gosh, we still are figuring things out. I’ve had to overcome a lot of fear. I’m a very fear based person. That was a very big overtone in my home growing up. I was still sitting under so much rejection, until I wasn’t, until I recognized that.
Check out the rest of the conversation: How to Bless a City & Foundations of Audacious Dreams
For more information about Abide visit abides.org or follow them on Instagram and Facebook.
Check out the Truth with Ruth podcast.
Check out the Dwell Meditations
