Home

Lea and I have always talked about the slim chance that we may adopt some day.  Turns out, it was always in God’s heart for us, as it is in His plan for all of our lives.  Before you were born, God’s heart for you was adoption.

Adoption is a beautiful thing!  It is the means by which we inherit the Kingdom, the tool that God uses to call us into His family. Gateways Beyond Northwest has entered into an extended season of learning about this mystery. We are leaning in to receive everything that God wants to teach us.  Let’s make sure we have ears to hear.   Early in 2011, the Gateways leadership in Jerusalem felt a greater call to the widows and orphans in our ministry.  Our International Director and his wife, Matthew and Serah Rudolph, are in the middle of receiving their long awaited little ones from Ethiopia and Lea and I are in the process of adopting our son.  During our “Why Stand with Israel” conference in November, we felt a greater release of the Spirit of Adoption.  And just last week, a new ministry under the GBI umbrella was launched.  ’Pure Religion’, will connect Ethiopian orphans in poverty to people who care.  It is no coincidence that all these things are being stirred up simultaneously.  It is the Heart of our Heavenly Father to bring us into His family.

Out of darkness and into His marvelous light!  Samuel Isaiah Williamson joined our family on Thanksgiving day, 2011. Although  he was 10 months old when he came to us, God had been joining our spirit with Samuel’s for a number of years.  It has been a whirlwind of a journey.  The call to adopt, the response of obedience and the revelation in it all.  Adoption often makes us think of mistakes or broken families or plan B, but that is beginning to change.  God’s desire has always been for fathers to open their hearts wide for their children and sons and daughters to respond in like spirit .  Let’s partner with Him to see this happen. Below are some of the things that the Lord has been teaching us.

The Orphan Spirit.  During our “Stand with Israel” conference, the Lord began to reveal some things in my life.  He began to show me that somewhere along my journey, I had picked up an orphan spirit.  The orphan spirit is usually accompanied by poverty thinking and a distorted view of family.  All too often, the mistakes of our earthly parents open the door for the enemy to come in and spread his lies about our heavenly Father.  More and more we see our culture embracing this orphaned spirit, calling it independence and treating it as healthy or even a desirable thing.  “You have to be your own person.  Don’t rely on the help of your parents or the generations that have come before you.  Question authority.  Question everything.”  We are taught that the highlight of our lives were the high school years.  Satan’s great desire is for a generation of youth to learn nothing from their elders.  God wants us to honor our parents and take the wisdom He has imparted through them and write it on our doorposts, talk about around our table and teach it to our children.   As we embrace a culture of honor, we receive from those who have gone before us.

We love Him because He first loved us.  We experienced this first hand with Samuel.  Lea and I had the word of the Lord and the confirmation of that word long before we got to meet our son.  We began working with the State of Washington to make everything legal and as we walked through the process, we got this feeling that they wanted us to meet Samuel and to make sure he was a fit for our family.  Kind of give him a test drive.  We understand why they do this, but our family thought very differently about this process.  It didn’t matter what he looked like, if he was well behaved, or if he was behind in his development.  We knew he was our son because God told us.  We loved him no matter what baggage he came with.  God too, loves us with all our “stuff”; past, present and future.  He loved us, after seeing every foolish mistake we will make in our lifetime.  He loves us first.  While we were yet sinners He sent his son to die for us.  Wow!  God so loved us, the pre-adopted ones, that He offered up His son to be brutally tortured and killed, so that we could live as His children with Him for eternity.  Just as our commitment to Samuel doesn’t end in 18 years, God’s commitment to us will never end either.

Joint heirs with Jesus.  This is a really big one to swallow.  God, our adopted father, says that we are joint heirs with his son Jesus.  We get to share the good, the bad, and the ugly with our brother (Romans 8:17).  Samuel, too, is a joint heir with our biological children.  We have told our kids from the beginning, that Samuel will get all the benefits of the other children.  The inheritance, the blessings, the work…all of it.  There will be no difference between them.  Not only did God give His son for our sins, but He also gave us everything that belonged to Him.  Let us walk in this understanding.  Our daddy loves us and has good and perfect gifts for us.  He has given us all things that pertain to life and Godliness so we can live the abundant life as His children.

He releases His authority over us.  Before Samuel came to live with us, he had all kinds of issues.  Asthma, severe acid reflux, he couldn’t eat much solid food, couldn’t have milk protein, and at 10 months old, he couldn’t crawl.  Before he arrived, I shared with Lea that I felt the Lord telling me that many of these things were going to fall off of Samuel when he came into our home.  Being in right standing and under our authority would release him from every deficiency as he takes the Williamson name as his own.  Within 3 weeks, Samuel was drinking milk, sleeping on a regular pillow (for 10 months he had been on a special pillow that helps with reflux), was eating solids and had learned to crawl, wave, clap, etc.  He was a completely new boy!  Although his foster parents were great people, they couldn’t release him into this freedom because they didn’t have the proper authority.  There is also an authority that we carry as children of the King of Kings.  Matthew 8 tells us of a “Man under authority” that really understood this concept.  This is what released healing into his servant and Jesus said he had the greatest faith in all of Israel because of his understanding. We get to live in the confidence that our Father is the Lord of Lords and the Creator of All things.  His thoughts for us are good.  He is our author and He has promised to be our finisher.  He wants to give us hope and a future without end.

His name is our name.  Lea and I have been declaring our name over our son.  He is a Williamson.  And as a Williamson, he gets the blessings and protection that the Williamson’s get.  Just as we get everything that comes with the name of God.  It is easy to see how natural traits are passed down from birth parents to their children.  These same traits are passed to our adopted children, just as we receive these traits from our Heavenly Father.  He is a creator, we are called co-creators.  He is righteous, we are called righteous.  He is eternal, we are eternal.  These traits are ours when we believe what our Father has said about us.

Adoption Is our story!  Throughout all time, our Father has woven this story in and out of the lives of men.  It is the way of redemption.  It is our destiny and a beautiful demonstration of the Father’s love.  Let us put on the Spirit of Adoption.  Let us cry out “Abba Father”.  And let us see the transformation of the world as we release this revelation to others.

Sage Williamson

“Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith…” (Hebrews 12:1,2a)

How many times do we hear about the lukewarm teen that goes to a summer camp and encounters God? They recommit their life and live for a short time on fire, only to return to their previous state or, sometimes even worse. It seems many people have extreme highs as they encounter the Lord and then expect, at some point, to drop to a low. Many of us may have even had similar experiences, possibly even just in a regular weekly meeting. We come into places of an intensely focused and faith-filled atmosphere and we do our best to lay aside every distraction and focus on the Lord. In these times it seems somehow easier to encounter the Lord and hear is His voice.  We find with in this context, we are at our best and able to live and function in the way we desire. But so often we lack the necessary discipline to maintain consistency. We step out of these environments and struggle to stay focused or hold the same standards. Maybe we find ourselves falling into old patterns of behavior or thinking.

Many people are on a spiritual roller coaster, living from one conference to the next, or one meeting a week with no consistency in between. It is not that these meetings and times are not good, quite the opposite. I believe these are times where we learn form or technique, but we must choose to consistently continue this form when we leave. If we can do this we will find that down the road what started off as a disciplined choice has become a natural response. In athletics you train your neuromuscular pathways to build muscle memory. The idea here is that through breaking down the detailed techniques required and focusing on perfecting each one through repetitive motion, when you put them all together your brain does not have to tell your body what to do. It will have become like second nature. The top athletes, performers, and dancers do not have to think about every detail of their body mechanics and technique while they are performing. In the big moment when it is needed most they just do it, and to the rest of us they usually make it look so easy. This is because they have spent countless hours thinking about, practicing, and perfecting every detail and technique. How much more should we as believers dedicate ourselves to our spiritual development?

Today, it is becoming unpopular to talk in terms of repetition when it comes to our spiritual walk, but I am not talking about mindlessly going through motions. I am talking about seeing a standard raised in our generation where we are training ourselves spiritually with the same type of dedication as high-level athletes. This does not in anyway neglect or replace the grace of God. It is only by His grace that we can run and obtain the prize. He is our trainer and our coach, but no matter how good the coach, there must be determination on the part of the athlete to keep showing up and keep working. I believe this is all we can do, we cannot make our selves perfect but we can look upon the one who is and determine to not look away. Paul said in Philippians 3:12,  “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.”

I believe this must be our aim. We are not perfect and we are bound to make mistakes but we should not stay in those mistakes. We must continue to get up time and time again and learn to get up quickly. If we are holding on to Him we cannot stay down long. We cannot afford to live with the expectation or acceptance of the spiritual roller coaster lifestyle, where one day we are up and the next we are down, letting our feelings dictate our actions. We have a very clear training guide with an outlined regiment (the Bible).

So no matter where we are right now or our previous track record, let us like Paul “forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Messiah.” (Philippians 3:13,14)

Jahi Evans

“Well, you have a healthy 11 lb. 13 oz baby boy!”  ”In my 30 years of nursing, I have never delivered a baby that big!”  ”Doctor, have you?”  ”Only by c-section!”

So, I guess that is my claim to fame!  Even though our girls were 10 lb. 10 oz, we were completely shocked when they told us how big our baby was!  What a feeling of joy to see our healthy baby, Zemichael (ze- mikiel) David.  You may be wondering where we found his name and decided on it.  It is an Ethiopian name.  ”Ze” is a prefix they put on names that attributes honor to the name.  In a way it’s like saying “saint” before a name.  Michael is Gabriel’s middle name.  It is a special way we can remember and honor Zemichael’s older brother while still giving our new baby a special name of his own.  We also know a precious man of god in Ethiopia with this name.  His middle name David, is after his Saba, who is such an amazing man of faith.  He is a delight and perfect in every way!  His sisters, Yerus and Aliyah, can’t wait to see him in the morning and run to see him as soon as they come in the door!

January 23, 11:01 am is a wonderfully precious moment in history for us!!

Shersti Rudolph

This morning in our worship we were singing the famous hymn “Oh Come Let Us Adore Him”.  While we were singing I was thinking about what adoration actually means.  To honor, esteem highly, love, respect, and worship are all part of what it means to adore.  To adorn literally means to dress with beauty or to make more attractive by decorating with ornaments.  So, when we adore the Lord through our worship we are some how making God look more beautiful?  How could this be possible?  He is ”all together lovely” Solomon writes in his Song of Songs.  I began to think:  when we  worship, we are acknowledging His beauty.  When we make known His beauty to the world, they see what they were previously blinded to.  They see Him the way He really is!

Over this holiday season I was blessed with various new clothing items from both my friends and family.  I was also given new cologne. Those closest to me care about what I look and smell like when I go out in public.  They adorned me with beautiful clothes so that my appearance was both pleasing to them and to others.  Like a good mother who sets out clothes for her child to wear the next day for the best possible presentation, my thoughtful friends were a big part of making me look good.  In the same way, we also have a part to play in making Yeshua look attractive to the world.  When you highlight one of His many glorious characteristics through a lifestyle of praise, you are picking out His outfit for the day.  The testimony you share with your friend that gives honor to His name allows His goodness to become more visible in the earth.  Your friends, family, and co-workers will see the Jesus that you dress and model for them!  Let’s make Him look good in 2012!

The start of a new year is, as we all know, the ideal springboard for transformation into your “better” self.  Your thinner self, your debt-free self, your more organized self, or any other projected self-image might be your goal as you plunge into a season of greater self-discipline.  Plenty of New Years in the past have propelled me into very good things, things like daily exercise or extreme nutrition or daily journaling.

This New Year’s weekend I searched for that ambition and resolve within me, and felt a growing frustration at myself when I couldn’t find any… anywhere.  As a young mom with a son entering toddler-hood, it’s a pretty good day if I can eat three meals, shower, spend some time with Jesus, wash a few dishes or run an errand, and sit and talk with my husband for half an hour at the end of the day.

Lord, I said, I just don’t feel up to it.

I don’t feel up to conjuring grand ambitions and aspirations right now.  This is not a bad season at all.  I just don’t know how I could manage putting one more thing on this plate without having the plate and all its toppings topple off the table.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere on New Year’s afternoon, I heard a whisper:  “Just keep it simple: walk with God.”  I thought “Aww, that’s a good quote.  That almost sounds like something the Lord would say.”   I paused and reflected a few more moments.  Then a humbling awareness came over me as I realized it was the Lord speaking.  And then a wave of relief washed over me.  “Okay, Lord, you know me so well.  You know that I self-impose all these pressures because I measure myself by a measuring stick that’s not yours.  You know that the only thing I really need is to know you and be known by you.”

What does it mean to “walk” with Him?  Literally, what does it mean to take a walk with anybody?  Walking together means a lot of things.  It means you’re moving together, in the same direction and at the same pace.  It means you’re viewing the world from the same vantage point.  It means you face steep hills together as well as the level places.  Even if the climb sometimes makes you pant and gives you blisters, and doesn’t appear very impressive to onlookers, there’s joy in the climb if you’re in it together.  Or it may mean that you’ve chosen to “waste” time on each other, simply because you take delight in their company.  It means that you share in the experience of  beauty.  And the more walks you walk together, the fewer words are required in order to know what the other is thinking and feeling.

For my New Year’s resolution, I resolve to practice awareness of His presence.  I will practice engaging in dialogue with Him throughout my day.  I will practice keeping it simple, and will allow Him to help me rid that closet in my soul of all those other measuring sticks.  How joyous is a walk in communion with Him!   What a glorious ambition to be the Lord’s companion!  So even if walking with Him is the only thing I aspire to this year, I’m relieved to know that’s what He really wants of me anyway.

Micah 6:8

He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, and love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

Alicia Williams