"There are moments of clarity in our walk with the Lord when his presence and leadership are so tangible and visible that they are undeniable. Our weekend with Philly was such a moment. We went with very little agenda—no big meetings or presentations planned. We brought ourselves (10 of us), a small booklet of songs written in our church based on experiences of the Lord we’ve had together, and a clear sense of the Lord’s passion and compassion for His Beloved in Philadelphia and for the brothers and sisters that make up this church.

"We arrived in three waves, the first Friday around noon, the second Friday evening, and the third Saturday morning, each group greeted with warmth and excitement at the airport. Food and conversation were abundant the entire weekend. We ate great food the saints prepared for us, and got to walk through the neighborhood and see the houses where the families in the church live now, and those where families and individuals that are precious to us once lived. We spent Saturday afternoon sightseeing in downtown Philadelphia, in particular learning more than we ever imagined about Ben Franklin, God bless him.

"But in all of this something larger, higher, more profound and beautiful was happening. This came into focus, I think, in the times we stood together in a living room and sang and spoke to the Lord and spoke the Lord to each other. It was then that I began to realize how passionately the Lord feels about this group of people—about all those that belong to Him. How literally it is true that He weeps with us, that we are inseparably His, that nothing can separate us from Him, that His purpose is immovable and that He does accomplish, always, what He sets out to accomplish.

"How literally true it is that He holds us in His loving arms, that He shelters us within Himself, that He comforts us with His physical presence. I know because He used my eyes to cry His tears, my heart to burn with passion for His people, to melt with kind intentions toward them. He used my arms to hold them close, and the arms, and eyes, and hearts of my brothers and sisters from Lithia. He is alive and well and well-able to function as the literal head of His church. And we are His actual body, acting at the impulse of His thought and feeling and purpose.

"I saw this weekend that His church is His concern and He does not abandon her. He guides her through difficult and dry and perplexing seasons, but His purpose for her is unswerving. With my human eyes I cannot always discern how this is true, but I left this weekend in Philadelphia with renewed assurance that the Lord is trustworthy, beyond kind, and thoroughly in love with His people."