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 how to bless a city. Ruth and her husband Orion are the founders of Abide Ministries in San Diego.
Setting a firm foundation
Ruth:
We were having dinner with Henry and Heather one night around the fire pit. And I’m like, “What is this even all for? Why are we doing Abide? I feel like we’re supposed to quit. Where’s this going anyway?” And Henry’s like, “Are you freaking kidding, Ruth? Like what is your problem?”
You need friends that will do that in your life. That will go, “Here’s what I see for you. Here’s where I see God taking this. And here’s what I see God doing. Just keep going.” And I’m like, “Okay, I guess I can.” But then I sat with Maria and I got some more deliverance.
I was like, “I need to get out of this because we’ve been prophesied over that we are going to speak into those who don’t have a place or don’t belong or who have been rejected. And I can’t speak into someone’s life and encourage them, if I’m sitting under the same thing they’re sitting under.”
So I got that dealt with, and that’s a daily battle. It’s not like, “Oh, it’s all dealt with and now I never feel rejected.” But I understand when that feeling comes, “Oh, that’s not God, because like I’m so loved and I have all this going on around me.” So I don’t sit in rejection anymore. It’s not that I don’t experience it, I just don’t sit in it.
Gina:
I don’t want to breeze past that. Because something we talked about before we started recording was the fact that you had a super painful kind of split from a church that you were in, and there were some hard things for you.
If any of us are in church, in ministry, especially serving on staff, you are in an imperfect place with imperfect people, and eventually you’re going to get hurt. You just are. That can be difficult and traumatic and you can be very justified in your pain whether they intended to bring pain or not. It can be very difficult and very harmful and very hurtful to go through that.
Like you said, “That can either shut you down or propel you,” but in order for it to propel you, it requires something of you. It requires you to be able to face your pain.
It requires you to be able to sit in that place and let the Holy Spirit speak to you and choose to allow healing, to renounce and repent from aligning yourself with offense and bitterness, and not staying in that place, because you can’t build on a foundation of offense and bitterness.
That foundation won’t be strong. And eventually it’s going to come back in on itself. So in order for us to be able to partner with the purity of what Jesus is calling us to and partnering with his vision, then we have to lay our stuff down.
We have to trust Him and know He’s the safe place to take all of that junk. Know that His love is sufficient to heal and bring deliverance. So like you said, “If you don’t deal with your stuff, then you can’t be a voice of influence in that area.”
Growing Requires Trust and Obedience
Ruth:
Not at all. You attract what you are… Until you aren’t that anymore. So in 2018 we had Craig Muster and his crew come. That was the first time we’d brought someone different into lead. So up until that point we’d had Henry and all the people in his circle, which is awesome.
It was exactly what I needed to make me feel safe, and I needed to feel safe. God is so cool. So Henry was great because I felt safe, I know someone’s coming, I know he loves us, I know this is good. I knew all these things… until I didn’t know.
And then Rick calls me one day and he is like, “What do you want?” And I said, well, I really would like Craig and Carla Muster to come lead, because I love what they carry. We kind of connected with the Musters briefly before they came and led. So they came, and prior to them showing up, we’d have anywhere from like 75 to maybe like a hundred people coming to the house.
And mind you, I did not have friends when we started this. They came and that night something broke open in the spirit. It was really one of the most powerful times. I think it was really powerful when Henry first started with us, something broke then, and then to get to another level, someone else had to come and break something else.
They were the people that did that. We had probably 150 people, and we cannot believe the amount of people we had. Rick calls me the next day and asked, “Do you want to plan out the rest of the year?” And I was like, “I’m still deciding if I want to commit to this, and you’re asking me for the rest of the year.”
And he says, “Well, let’s get the dates on the calendar.” I’m sitting and God said to me, “Ruth, you can keep doing things the way that you’re doing them, super organic, super fly by the seat of your pants, and plan it when it works, and I will bless your house always, you will have a blessed house. Or you can put some structure around what I’m doing and I can bless the city. What do you want?”
Gina:
I love that. I want to pause there because I don’t think people realize that a lot of time, God gives us a choice. He will let you stay right where you are, and He will bless it. But then He will say, “Or we could do this.” He’s a gentleman, and that’s what free will is, that’s the beauty of relationship.
There’s this invitation, but there’s also this, “But if you want to do that, you can, and I’ll be with you.” It was funny, I resigned from the church I was at a couple years ago, and the Lord just called us out, and there were reasons why I was. I was ready to be called out, but It was a big step of faith.
It was a paycheck. We had insurance when I was there. It didn’t really feel like I was supposed to go out and try to get a job at another church. And God didn’t say go get a job, we really felt like there was a ministry that He was going to do that was different.
So I was already itinerant, more with worship leading, and had my prayer training, just different things I was doing, but both Norm and I were like, “You’re not supposed to go grab a job yet.” And that season, for that first year especially, God was really working a lot of fear and insecurity out of me.
I’m almost a 50 year old woman, for crying out loud, what do I have to say? What do I have to do? Where’s my authority? Just so much stuff. Talk about rejection, and feeling unwanted, and all those things that I was working through.
And I have a mentor, Bruce, who actually you’ve met with. He’s awesome. I remember one time I was just freaking out about something, and I honestly don’t remember what it was. And he said, “Well, Gina, if that’s what you want to do, you should have left the church. You should have stayed there. I mean, God, would’ve let you do that.”
And I was just like, “Wait, what?” He said, “Or why don’t you just go get a job and go do all this stuff for somebody else. God will let you do that, If that’s what you want to do.” And I just remember it was forcing me to that place of asking myself, “Do I trust God enough to say yes?” Do I trust God enough, that I can take a step and he’s going to be there when I step?
Ruth:
Even when you don’t know what you’re saying yes to.
Building an Apostolic Movement
Gina:
So back to sitting at Bethel and hearing Bill Johnson, and the Lord saying, “You don’t love people.” To you as a sales manager realizing this isn’t about you.
You had no idea where you would be sitting right here right now, but God did. So let’s go back to, “Ruth, start thanking me for what you don’t know yet, because I do. Because I know what’s coming right here as a sales manager in this place, I’m going to teach you how to love.”
Ruth:
“And I’m going to give you free leadership training. I will teach you how to be a leader. I’m going to teach you how to have difficult conversations.” That’s when I first learned about interacting with different personalities.
Gina:
“I’m going to teach you how to deal with when you start receiving healing and others don’t.”
Ruth:
“And when people say no, it means no, but sometimes it means not now.”
Gina:
So, just to see His hand, to see Him moving, and all of those things were preparation, all of those things were laying a foundation so that you could. Then His love and His care to bring you there. He doesn’t give us more than we can handle. It feels like He does sometimes.
When you’re in the middle of your house being upside down and in the middle of financial hardship, but then His faithfulness and His love to bring you a Henry to that safe place and those safe people. He laid that foundation, and then, “Okay, we’ve done this for a while now, let’s go to the next level. Let’s bring in Rick and Maria. Now let’s bring in Craig and Carla.”
Ruth:
Roy broke something, then Henry broke something new, and then the Musters broke something new.
Gina:
And everyone has a purpose, but be okay when those people come and they have their role and then they move on because their job isn’t to set their tent peg here. Their job was to come and help bring provision and bring encouragement and supplies and reinforcement, and go, “You good? Okay. Now I’m going to go do that somewhere else.”
Ruth:
God said to me, “Do you want my presence for two months? Or do you want my presence for a lifetime?” I said, “A lifetime.” And he said, “Well, if you’ll be diligent in building this foundation of vulnerability, authenticity, trust and love, then whenever I choose to pour all of myself out, you’ll be able to sustain revival for a lifetime.”
Because what I think happens is we are chasing after a moment or we’re chasing after a feeling and God is looking for a firm foundation. We just said, “Okay, we’re going to be diligent with this foundation in everything we do, if it doesn’t come into alignment with those core values, we’re going to get rid of it, and we’re going to be so focused on just the Lord.
This is the foundation we’re laying. So that when our worship leaders walk in, it’s easy for them, because all we’ve been doing is cultivating these core values. Those are the foundations of freedom. I want free people and free thinkers. I don’t need everybody to think like me, I don’t need everybody to do what I’m doing.
So understanding that Abide is an apostolic house. When I say that, what I mean is very few people are actually going to be with us for a lifetime. Most people are going to come in for a season and then they’re going to go out and become greatness.
And that’s hard for me because you start to love people and you get attached, but when you understand that, just because you’re not in my house, doesn’t mean you’re not in my life. Well, that’s the kingdom and He called us to build the kingdom.
The Keys to Bless a City: Vision and Structure
Ruth:
So we’re practicing what that looks like. I don’t have it all figured out and I don’t have it all right. We just go one worship night at a time. We did a vision night this year for the first time, because the Bible also says without vision a people will perish.
So a lot of people don’t know what to attach themselves to with Aide because it’s not what they’ve always known. Well what do we do? So in that moment when I said yes to God, and that I would put structure around what we’re doing; I started that’s all the un-fun things, the websites, the 501C3s, the marketing, all the things that are not fun.
But what’s cool is even in doing that, I knew someone that did marketing. I knew someone that had put together nonprofits. I knew someone that did websites. He gave me all the resources because of all the people that were already in my life that I knew and made it affordable.
Because those things can get very expensive. So just my journey with always coming out of all these structures on Sunday mornings, I was repulsed by the word “structure” until I had a friend in ministry talk to me.
They run The Missions at Rancho De Sus Ninos down in Mexico. She says, “Ruth, I want you to understand that structure is not a bad word. It allows God to work within something.“
Gina:
Boundaries bring freedom.
Ruth:
So I said, “I know you’re right in what you’re saying, but I’ve been so wounded by structure.” So I had to get healing around what structure meant versus the theology that I was taught. When I did, I realized that God was giving me the blueprints to bless the city.
So we communicated that really clearly this year for the first time. Our heart is to worship, but our family dinner started last year, because God said, “How do you capture people?” We’ve been pastored to death, now we need to be mothered and fathered in love.
So Orion and I, we’re not professional pastors. We have not gone to seminary. We have not done any of these things. I’m a mom of three kids. So He builds and I’m mother, and it’s like, God, doesn’t need you to go and do all of these great theological things.
Should you know your Bible? Yes. Should you be in relationship with Him? Yes, and not out of duty. Should you have encounters? Absolutely. Should you pursue the great things of God? Yes. But He’ll use who He’s built you to be. I was built to be a mother.
The thing I can’t stand the most is mothering, but I’m so good at it. I got into it going, “This isn’t that amazing.” But, that was also part of my brokenness. God had to heal that aspect of me so that I knew how to properly mother what was coming my way, and love them, and see them see who is in front of me, regardless of everything they bring or say. It’s like, “I know who you really are,” and give them space just to be themselves.
Ruth:
And now Ryan builds, he just keeps building. Like we needed a bathroom, he built a bathroom for Abide. We needed a guest bedroom, and he built a guest bedroom we needed. I mean, he just builds. He does more than that. I mean, he’s learning how to father and lead. He walks hand in hand with men, and men especially need a safe place where they can just be super vulnerable and get out all of their garbage.
So he’s creating that with a group of men. He’s got a men’s group now that he does every other week and it’s not just for anyone to show up, because creating safety means that every man in the group has to be okay with someone new coming in because they’re choosing vulnerability.
It’s really beautiful what God is doing with these men and with my husband. He is teaching him and walking him through and healing parts of him. So Abide is as much about God desiring connection with Orion and myself, authentically in who He has designed us to be, as it is about Him wanting that with an entire city of people.
Check out the rest of the conversation: Foundations of Audacious Dreams & Finding Your Authentic Sound of Worship
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
