Sound Mind
In light of Covid-19 and the times that we are all navigating together, our community has been reflecting on 2 Timothy 1:7 and discussing what it means to take hold of God’s promise of a sound mind. In the video below, Jonathan and Melissa share their hearts and what the Lord has been speaking to them in this season. We encourage you to check out this video and receive the Lord’s promises over your life!
Before our home state of North Carolina issued a Stay at Home order, we felt the urgency to gather together - to worship, sing and pray over our nation and the nations of the world. Our only agenda was to get Heaven’s perspective and the mind of the Lord for this moment in time.
We didn't come with a set list or a group of songs to sing.
We took a few hours and sang over homes, families, hearts and minds, playing and prophesying through our instruments - because as musicians, we believe that this changes the atmosphere.
Our desire is that the sound of this worship and prayer FILLS your home with HOPE, releases faith and propels you to contend for your communities and families as we all wait for breakthrough. We are praying for you and believing for Faith to RISE in these days.
"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." 2 Timothy 1:7
"We Bow" Now Available!
The second installment of our brand new studio album is now available! We Bow is the follow up to this summers’ We Rise and features five new songs from the Cageless Birds. These songs reflect our personal stories, our friendships and the years that we have spent fighting together for the next generation. They are songs born from our testimonies and personal victories, and many of them have become anthems of our 18 Inch Journey schools and retreats over the last several years. As a complete work, We Rise We Bow was curated as a gift to you, the listener, as a collection of songs to declare as your own. We hope that they inspire fresh courage, faith and belief in your soul as you sing them confidently. Our new album is available digitally for streaming and purchasing, and physically on both CD and Vinyl. Find these and additional album related merchandise at shop.cagelessbirds.com.
Along with the release of these five songs, we’ve also released a new podcast episode! In this episode, Jonathan and Melissa sit down to walk through the stories behind the new songs and share about the artists who wrote them. You can find our podcast on our website or search “HELSER” wherever you listen to podcasts.
Finally, we’re also excited to announce our last Carolina Worship Night of the year will be on December 6th at the Carolina Theatre in Greensboro, NC! We hope you’ll join us to celebrate the release of both installments of We Rise We Bow with a beautiful night of worship in the heart of North Carolina. We will open the night with aVIP Breakout Session with an acoustic set led by the Cageless Birds and a Q&A with Jonathan and Melissa Helser from 3-5 pm. For more information or to purchase tickets visit www.carolinatheatre.com.
We cannot wait to share these new songs with you and hope to see you at the Carolina Theatre on December 6th!
We Rise / We Bow
We’ve got BIG NEWS!
We are releasing our first Cageless Birds album in five years! Our new studio album is titled We Rise We Bow and will be released in two parts. We are releasing We Rise on June 21st and We Bow on October 11th. Our dream for this album is that when you hear it, you would hear the sound of North Carolina and feel the heartbeat of our community.
One of our favorite elements of this album is the unique theme of declaration and testimony. This album is a compilation of songs that reflect our own personal stories, our friendships and the time that we have spent fighting together for the next generation. They are songs born from our testimonies and personal victories, and many of them have become anthems of our 18 Inch Journey school over the last several years. We Rise We Bow was curated as a gift to you, the listener, as a collection of songs to declare as your own. We hope that they inspire fresh courage, faith and belief in your soul as you sing them confidently.
To celebrate the release of this new record, our first Carolina Worship Night on June 29th will be a Surprise Album Celebration! If you’ve already purchased tickets, get excited because this night is going to be a party! In addition to worshipping and sharing songs from the new album, we will have brand new Cageless Birds merch available! At this event, we will be releasing our first ever Cageless Birds vinyl record. We’ll also be introducing our first tote bag, baseball hat, pocket tee and sweatshirt! In addition to all of these we’ll have some new t-shirts featuring the album artwork. You’re not going to want to miss out on these incredible items.
As if that weren’t exciting enough, we’ll also be bringing back our Carolina Worship Night tees and tank tops! You can also expect our table to be well-stocked with our handmade leather goods, pottery, coffee, Cultivate and our previous albums. If you’ve had your eye on something in our online store, this is a great chance to interact with it in person and get around those shipping fees.
If you don’t have tickets yet, we still have some General Admission tickets available online. You can find them at www.carolinatheatre.com or on our website at www.cagelessbirds.com/schedule. We cannot wait to share these new songs with you and hope to see you at the Carolina Theatre on June 29th!
Rest is a Weapon
Written by Jonathan David Helser
Photography by Jonathan David Helser and Sydnee Mela
"Rest is a weapon." This is something we say over and over during the 18 Inch Journey. Learning how to rest well is a huge part of our school. In the midst of a full schedule, we teach our students the value of slowing down and starting each week from a posture of rest. One way we walk this out is by setting aside every Sunday for Sabbath: to rest and delight in the Lord. We do this because we believe that rest is an essential component to living a whole life and is what God modeled for us from the beginning.
This week, we wanted to share our value for rest with you, just like we do for our students. "Rest" is a piece written by Jonathan Helser for Cultivate Volume Four. In this piece, Jonathan explores why rest is a Kingdom principle and shares from his own journey of learning to slow down and make space for the Father. As you read it, may you be inspired to open up a conversation with the Father about His heart for your rest.
In our home we like to call the Sabbath "Family Day." One of my favorite things to do on a Family Day is to wake up early and surprise them with a huge home-cooked breakfast. I love the quiet moments when everyone else in the house is sleeping. There is something so holy about those early morning hours, and it fills my heart with deep joy to serve the ones I love the most. As the aroma of coffee, pancakes and bacon fill the air, it’s amazing how these smells seem to awaken everyone in the house. I love watching my kids come down the stairs on those mornings. Instead of seeing their dad rushing out the door to work, they see me in an apron, behind the stove, serving them. When they see me flipping pancakes, they know that my agenda for the day is to simply be with them.
Recently I started thinking about the first morning that Adam awoke in Eden. What if Adam smelled the same aroma of home-cooked breakfast when he awoke: French press coffee, pumpkin pancakes and maple syrup filling the garden. Sounds likes paradise, yeah? I think he awoke to breakfast in bed, his Father’s smile and these words: "Adam, my Son, I have taken the whole day off work today. I have cleared my whole schedule for you. This whole day you have my full attention." I know the pancakes and coffee are not in Scripture, but the Bible does reveal to us that Adam’s first full day in the Garden was the seventh day of Creation.
GOD TOOK THAT WHOLE DAY OFF WORK TO HAVE A FAMILY DAY.
At this point in Adam’s life, he had accomplished nothing, yet he was already enjoying a rest day. Before he could work the garden or subdue the earth, he was given the gift of rest with his Father. Life begins by receiving. God’s design is to work from rest, not for rest. It is easy to slip into the rat race in our performance-driven culture and work for rest, instead of from it. But God flips this idea upside down. This is the nature of God: God loves us for who we are, not what we do.
You can clearly see this same pattern in the life of Jesus. When He is baptized at the Jordan, He has done nothing in ministry yet—no sermons preached, no blind eyes opened, no miracles performed. Yet the Father declares this over His Son when He comes out of the baptism water: "This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17, NIV). The Father’s pleasure was in His Son’s being, not in His doing. Everything that Jesus did in the next three years of His ministry came from the overflow of this relationship with His Father. Jesus did only what He saw the Father doing and only spoke what He heard the Father saying (John 5:19 and John 12:49). Ministry is meant to be an overflow of relationship with the Father. This is the easy yoke that is offered to us. We don’t work for His pleasure, we work from His pleasure.
I have discovered that my greatest inspiration for creativity comes when I slow down and allow God’s creation to inspire me, to speak to me and to restore my soul. When I stop and let His creation serve me, creativity always begins to flow afresh in my heart. When is the last time you have stopped and allowed His creation to inspire you, to serve you and to fill your heart with wonder again?
Prompt: Carve out some time to stop long enough for His beauty to wash the busyness off your weary feet. Find a place where you can slow down and immerse yourself in Creation. It may be a mountain top, a beach, a walk through the forest or even a quiet place in a park.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning said, "Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes, The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” After you have found a place to be still in creation, take off your shoes, like Moses before the burning bush. There is something wonderful about bare feet on the earth. Whether your feet are in sand, in a stream or on a mountaintop, let your heart be soft and vulnerable before God’s presence like your feet on the earth.
Coming Up for Air
Written by Allie Sampson
Photography by Gabriel Ramirez
What does it mean to love yourself, and why is it essential to the Christian life? This is what we explore with our students in the second part of the 18 Inch Journey. The first three weeks are spent learning the Lord’s nature and how to engage His voice, and from there we practice buying into what He is saying. This process isn’t easy. It takes practice and requires an abundance of humility and self-compassion. As we learn to be corrected and affirmed by the Lord simultaneously, we build true identity.
Jesus modeled all of these things—self-compassion, grace, boundaries—and we believe that cultivating them is essential to living a whole life. Learning to love yourself is to come into agreement with His thoughts about you. Simply put: it is not enough just to hear His words over us. We must actively practice believing what He’s said. This practice, when rooted in the words of the Father, confronts our pride and shame and builds true confidence.
These are things that we teach our students to practice in their everyday lives. Over the span of two months, they regularly practice being patient with themselves and their process. After we dive deep into self-awareness, whether in a teaching session, a correction moment or a one-on-one conversation with a leader, we practice “coming back up for air”. We frequently take smile breaks, charge them to take a step back from processing and encourage them to not isolate and spend time having a lighter conversation with a friend. We teach them to take ownership when they make mistakes and to forgive themselves. We make space for them to be vulnerable with their roommates and small groups and to practice verbal self-compassion by acknowledging where they’re at in their process without engaging shame. These are simple practices of self-compassion and at the core they say, I am not in a hurry. I am wonderfully in process. There is space for me to fail, to learn, and to try again.
Self-awareness without landing in the Father’s voice and self-compassion can quickly become a crutch we lean on to avoid growth. The goal of true self-awareness is to confront us with Truth so that we have space to repent, grow and make sustainable change. This is where we connect with our great need for the Holy Spirit. We cannot make change in our own effort. It will either lead us to shame or striving; often it leads to both. But when we engage the Holy Spirit and practice compassion for our own process, we become participants in our own story, connected to hope and the reality of the Gospel: that with Him, we are capable of beautiful change.
We invite you to ask the Holy Spirit this question: Holy Spirit, how can I grow self-compassion and awareness of my need for you? What are some practical steps I can take to grow in this area?
Sustainable Friendship
The first three weeks of the 18 Inch Journey are always dedicated to getting to know the Trinity. We spend a week focusing on the Father, a week on Jesus and a week on the Holy Spirit because we believe we cannot love ourselves or others well without have a clear foundation of love and friendship with God. During the third week of our school, we dedicate our focus to building friendship with the Holy Spirit.
We kicked off Holy Spirit week with a teaching from Melissa about Holy Spirit the Friend. As we gathered as a school for dinner that night, one of our students blessed the meal and prayed, “Father, thank you for teaching us about your Holy Spirit through Melissa. It is so good to be introduced to a friend by a friend.”
Here is a small part of what Melissa shared with our students about friendship with Holy Spirit. As you read her words, may you be inspired to continue building friendship with Him.
It was a meltdown of epic proportion, as we sat in our car at 11:30 at night, Cadence age six, Haven age three and me. We were waiting for Jonathan to finish packing up his gear after leading worship. It was one of those moments where both children are crying and you are asking yourself, Why in the world did I keep my kids up this late? This was a terrible decision. I tried for about 45 minutes to calm them down, meanwhile getting more and more frustrated at Jonathan. Where is he!? Doesn’t he know I am in here with the kids who are totally exhausted. Every mom knows exactly what I am talking about…your patience is stretching to its thinnest point, you’re breathing heavy and getting louder and louder. Exasperated, I prayed, “God, please help me.” Of course it wasn’t a sincere prayer, but a prayer of desperation and total irritation. Immediately I heard the Holy Spirit say, “Ask them where I went.” I honestly thought, What a stupid question, but at this point I will try anything. I turned around in my seat and said, “Guys, where did the Holy Spirit go? He is the Prince of Peace and I don’t think He is in the car.” They looked at me, totally confused and through tears said, “We don’t know where He went.” I replied, “Should we ask Him to come back?” Cadence said, “Yes. I think so.” “Holy Spirit, please come back…Yes, Holy Spirit please come back,” came out of their mouths through the most pathetic sobbing. Instantly the atmosphere shifted and they went from crying to laughing. I am absolutely not exaggerating, it was so crazy and shocking. They shouted, “He’s back, He’s back!” As I sat there, totally dumfounded watching them shift from sobbing to laughing, my first thought was, Wow, it worked.
Friendship with the Holy Spirit is like that. It is practical, full of inspiration, ideas and correction because the Holy Spirit loves to help us. He is the Helper, the Comforter, the Friend. In fact, I would say that the Holy Spirit is the crescendo of the Cross. It was not enough for Jesus to die for you. He wanted to be in you. In us. “God with us” forever. The Holy Spirit is the greatest gift we’ve been given—He is the Gift that changed everything.
Friendship with the Holy Spirit is something you build and cultivate. It takes time, but it will produce good fruit in your life. You want to come to a place in your life where you interact with Him from a posture of friendship instead of just trying to reach out and grab fruits of the Spirit when you need them.
Can you imagine having a friend who you only fellowship with in crisis? A friend you only talk to when you have an emergency? That would be such a bummer! Your friendship would lack intimacy, joy, depth. If the only time you interact with the Holy Spirit is in corporate settings, then you’ve missed the gift. You’ve missed friendship. If you only cultivate friendship with Him in crisis, then your friendship will feel strained, because you’re only engaging Him when you feel out of control. We have to be a people who invite the Holy Spirit into every moment of our daily lives. Who are practicing daily submitting ourselves to Jesus so that when we get in a moment where we need to make a powerful choice, we can. Instead of reaching out and trying to grab the fruit of the Spirit that we haven’t cultivated, we’ll be able to feast from the orchard that is growing in our lives.”
This week, we invite you to ask the Holy Spirit this question: How can I practice building intentional friendship with you? Where do you want to meet me in my daily life and bring help, correction and comfort?
Building Fascination
Written by Allie Sampson
Photography by Sydnee Mela and Gabriel Ramirez
Week Two of the 18 Inch Journey is one of our favorites. The whole second week of our school is dedicated to the person of Jesus Christ and falling in love with Him again. Every year, our dear friend Adam Cox comes to teach our students and lead them through the God Story. Adam and his wife Juli lead Navah Church in Kansas City, and Adam is one of the most passionate lovers of Jesus that we know. The way Adam communicates about the heart of Jesus is electric as he pulls the story back into historical context and the cultural realities of Jesus’ time. Against that backdrop we begin to understand how bold, how humble, how loving our King really is.
As Adam shares, we find ourselves undone as our assumptions unravel and the word of God comes alive. For three days, we dive deep into the Gospels as Adam unpacks Jesus the Son and Jesus the Christ. Beginning with His birth and moving all the way through His baptism, His ministry, His death and resurrection, we walk through the weight of His life and what it means for us. Together we marvel over Jesus’ humanity—the depth of His emotions, His compassion, His love for people—and invite the Holy Spirit to help us move from familiar to fascinated. This week is essential to the school as we go back and rebuild foundations of our understanding of Jesus.
One of our favorite parts of this week is coming together in small groups and reading the book of Mark aloud together. All across our campus, we gather together, invite the Holy Spirit to come reintroduce us to Jesus through the Scripture, and lean in close as we hang on His every word. In hearing one another read, we find different parts of the Word coming alive, often catching our hearts for the first time. For many of our students, this is their first time reading a whole book of the bible out loud with a group, or together in one sitting. By drinking in the Word this way, we get caught up in the story, moving past what we’ve assumed we know to let ourselves rediscover Him like it’s the first time.
Reading Mark aloud with a group filled our hearts with wonder at who the man of Jesus really is. It made space for us to receive the story from one another, building fascination and connection in our hearts. This simple exercise is something you can do any time. This week we want to encourage you to gather with friends or family in your home and invite the Holy Spirit to reveal the person of Jesus to you and move you beyond what you’ve grown familiar with. Ask Him, Jesus, are there places in my heart that have grown tired of the Gospel? Will you fascinate me again with who you are? Let Him reveal Himself to you through His word and through your friends and family. Let your heart get caught up in the story again.
Your Thoughts Define Me
We are one week into the 2018 18 Inch Journey and we are loving this year's school. As the Journey progresses, we'll be posting about what's happening here and some of the things our students are learning. The first week of the 18 Inch Journey is all about the Father and centers around letting Him reintroduce Himself to us. In doing so, we find Him redefining us, calling us by our true name. This is where identity begins.
In honor of Father week at the 18 Inch Journey, we wanted to share a writing from Cultivate Volume One on the Father’s heart, written by Jonathan Helser. "Your Thoughts Define Me" is inspired by one of Jonathan’s teachings during the 18 Inch Journey and ends with a journaling prompt. As you read through this piece, may you encounter the Father re-introducing Himself and defining who you are. We hope you enjoy this window into our school and we can't wait to share more with you in the weeks to come!
I had this amazing experience one day after Melissa took my little daughter, Haven, shopping for the first time. She let Haven pick out her own dress. When they returned, I was in my room reading in my favorite chair. I heard my little girl’s feet run up the stairs to her room above me. I could tell by the commotion that she was either wrestling an alligator, or that she was furiously changing into her new clothes. Then I heard her little feet come back down the stairs, and she burst into my room. Without any words she ran up and stopped in front of me, wearing a new dress she had picked out. This was one of those moments when time seemed to stop. She stood still and time stood still. I realized it was one of the greatest moments I would ever have as a father. She was waiting to be defined by my voice. Her little heart was like clay, waiting on my thoughts to shape her. With everything inside of me I looked deep into her eyes and said, “Haven, you look more beautiful right now than you have in your whole life.” Each day for the next week, Haven would put on her new dress and come find me. No matter what I was doing, she would pause before me and wait for my voice to tell her again that she was beautiful. It was like her little heart was saying over and over to me, “Do it again, Daddy...tell me who I am.”
Identity is discovered through the voice we listen to.
We have all been created to be defined by a Father’s voice. Every girl is made to hear the words, “You are beautiful,” and every boy is designed to hear the words, “Well done!”
My words over Haven are but a shadow of the radiant thoughts that the Father in Heaven has for her. Until we each have an encounter with our Father in Heaven, like my daughter had with me, we will spend our lives broken and in search of our identity. Go and find a quiet space and spend a few minutes getting still and relaxed. Read the passage below.
“How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand—when I awake, I am still with you.”
Psalm 139:17-18, NIV
Prompt: Pray this prayer out loud a few times until your heart begins to resonate with His love. This prayer is like going to the dressing room of Heaven and putting on the gift Jesus bought for you. Pray: “God, you so loved me that you bankrupted Heaven and gave your only Son to give me abundant life. Holy Spirit, I raise my hands to you like a child, and ask that you take off any of my old rags of fear, shame and guilt. Clothe me with the Father’s tangible affections. I confess that I am no longer a sinner; I am a child redeemed by love. I wear a robe of righteousness on the inside and outside. I am in right standing with God. I am a fearless child, you are a very happy Father.”
Speak this scripture out loud a few times: “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16, NIV).
Picture yourself opening the door to the Father’s room. Remember the Father is waiting on you with joyful expectation, so don’t be afraid to approach His presence. Stand before His throne of grace as Haven stood before me and ask with brave confidence, “Daddy, what are your thoughts about me?”
Now pick up your journal and write with faith the thoughts you hear your Father speaking.
Overflow
The Father is our source for all connection. If we want to pursue healthy relationships with those around us, we must first go to the Source and allow Him to fill us to overflowing.This week we are featuring a writing from our most recent issue of Cultivate : The Art of Connection, Part I written by Jonathan Helser. As you read his words may you be inspired to engage the Father in a new way and allow Him to become the source of your connection with others.
One of my kids’ favorite things in life is what they have affectionately titled a “Daddy Date.” A Daddy Date is exactly what the title suggests—a special date with just their dad. What makes this so significant is that there is no one else allowed on a Daddy Date; it’s just one of them and me. Whatever adventure we go on—from seeing a movie to getting ice cream or going to the park—the one thing they can always expect on these dates is that they have their father all to themselves.
Recently, while I was on one of these dates with my son, I started thinking about when Adam had God all to himself in Eden. We don’t know how long that moment lasted before Eve entered the story, but I like to imagine it was an extended time of friendship between a Father and His son. I believe they shared many long walks, the Father showing off His creation to His son. Days were filled with delight and joy unspeakable as they discovered one another in a world without sin and shame. There was even a wild date to the zoo when God brought all the animals of the earth to Adam, for His son to name each one.
After these sacred moments of a Father and son enjoying one another’s company, the story shifts as God places Adam in a deep sleep and pulls a rib from his side. From this rib God fashions a woman. Now, we see another date begin between the Father and His first daughter. We don’t know how long this moment lasted either, but remember we are talking about a God to whom one day is like a thousand years. I imagine Adam passed out in a deep sleep in the corner of Eden, while the Father takes His daughter all over creation showing off His handiwork. Just as Adam had his own time alone with God, Eve shared her own moment with the Father before she met her husband. I personally think that God savored this moment and stretched it out as long as possible. God had to know that once Adam saw Eve, Adam would be so head over heels in love with her that it might be a while before God could have a date like this again.
The scene shifts again when God “brought her unto the man” (Genesis 2:22, ASV). Just like weddings have replayed ever since, the Father walks His daughter down the aisle of Eden to meet her groom and lifelong companion. Adam awakes from his deep sleep to see the desire of his heart coming toward him. Both Adam and Eve have had their hearts filled up in relationship with God, and they begin their marriage loving one another from that overflow. In this first marriage we see God’s design and dream. Marriage is not two broken halves becoming one. Marriage is two whole hearts becoming one. In this detail of the creation story is hidden one of the greatest keys for marriage and relationship. We are designed to love one another from the overflow of our relationship with God. True relationship is not about what we can get from one another, but what we can give to one another.
A wise man once told Melissa and I in our marriage counseling, “You will never meet all of your spouse’s emotional needs in marriage.” I have to be honest that his statement sounded kind of crazy to both of us. We were in our early twenties and so madly in love with each other that we thought our young love could fix any problem. We were both politely nodding our heads as our mentor shared, but we were both thinking, What in the world is marriage for then? We had both assumed that in marriage all of our emotional needs would get met. Our mentor went on to unpack this truth: God’s love is the only thing that can fill the deep places in the heart of every person. If we demand our marriage to meet our every need, we will be greatly disappointed. These words of wisdom have saved us many heartbreaks and have set us up for so much success in our relationship.
Recently I was having a rather rough day. It all came to a head while I was trying my best to be a “good” husband and get dinner ready for my family. I was getting frustrated at the smallest little thing and letting everyone know it through my very passive-aggressive huffs and puffs. It had been a very busy week and I hadn’t taken much time to be alone and center my heart with the Father. Right in the middle of another round of huffs and puffs my beautiful bride gently placed her hand on my shoulder and said, “Babe, I think you need to go take a walk and spend some time with the Lord. I will finish up dinner. Just come back in twenty minutes.” After eighteen years of marriage, I have learned to listen to this wise woman. I wasn’t always so quick to listen, but over the years I’ve learned that God really knew what He was talking about when He said, “It’s not good for man to be alone.” My wife can see the blind spots I can’t see about myself, and on this evening she was seeing right through my outer frustration into the deeper need my heart was crying out for. When I returned to the dinner table twenty minutes later, I was a different person. I was filled with the joy and love of the husband and father I was meant to be. I am so thankful that my wife knows me well enough to know when I am running on empty and need to be refilled by the Father.
Love began with a Father choosing us and daring to give everything to save us. He made the greatest sacrifice the world will ever know to prove His love to us. “We love Him, because He first loved us” (I John 4:19, NIV). The beautiful invitation in every relationship is to love others with this love He first gave. The words of Jesus so beautifully sum up this design of overflow: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34, NIV).
Prompt: Set aside a block in your schedule this week for a date with your Father. Carve out a time when you can turn off all the distractions and just be with Him. Think of something that you will really enjoy doing with just Him. Don’t let it be a stuffy, religious quiet time, but allow it to be a time filled with joy like Adam and Eve experienced in Eden. Maybe take a long hike or find a quiet place to watch Him paint a sunrise or sunset. Let His peace fill you where there is tension; let His joy kiss the places that have become dull. Pour out your heart to Him and let His presence refill your heart, so you may love others from the overflow of His love. Toward the end of your time with the Lord, take a few moments to pray out loud for the relationships in your life. I have found that when I cultivate time alone praying for my wife, my children and my friends, my love for them increases in incredible ways. As you re-engage your relationships pay attention to how this time with the Father affects the way you respond to your spouse, children and the people around you. Remember, you were made to love from overflow of His love.
Charleston Carolina Worship Night
We have exciting news!
For our third and final Carolina Worship Night of 2018 we will be welcoming special guest and dear friend, Amanda Cook, who will be leading worship alongside Jonathan and Melissa. Join us downtown at the historic Charleston Music Hall on November 30th for this special night of worship as we lift our voices together and close out a beautiful year!
The Cageless Birds will open the evening with worship and will be followed by a set with Jonathan David and Melissa Helser, the Founders of the Cageless Birds collective, and special guest Amanda Cook.
Amanda Cook is a part of the Bethel Music collective based in Redding, California. As a worship leader and songwriter, we love how Amanda gives honest language and imagery to what it is like to live honestly and passionately connected to God, discovering greater fullness and wonder in every season with Him.
For tickets or more information, click the link below to the Charleston Music Hall's page.
Slowing Down
Writing and Photography by Melissa Helser
With summer on the horizon we want to share about our communities value of slowing down and rest. We believe in the importance of sabbath — talking time to reset your heart with the Lord and with the people around you. This featured blog is an excerpt from Cultivate : Fly High Build Home written by Melissa Helser, as you read her words may you be inspired to invite the Lord into your pace and receive the gift of slowing down.
Slowing down has completely changed the way I do life. The greatest place I have learned to stop and recognize beautiful moments is in my role as a mother. Our pace of life can dictate so much. We sometimes stop being present in moments that really matter and rush through moments that are intended to build foundations for our children that only we can build.
I remember the moment we stepped onto the white rock beach in the South of England. We looked left and right and were astounded by the towering white cliffs of beauty. The air was crisp and clear. The waves slowly approached the shore. As they hugged the white stones, water became cloudy and took back a part of the shore with it. An invitation came to me as I walked down that beach: “Will you slow down…will you build home in this moment?” Slowing down takes a very intentional effort. It requires an honesty of acknowledging that you are in a hurry. Most of the time I think we don’t even know what we are hurrying for. I am growing in my love for the invitation. The Holy Spirit is always sending us invitations. He is always desiring to teach us how to live and breathe and engage this glorious life. He isn’t pushy. He is incredibly patient. The more I mature in my understanding of who the Father is and what He is like, the more I love the moments when He comes and invites me deeper. The fruit of my slowing down is an awareness of the presence of a loving God in every second of my life, no matter how grand or how simple.
Each of us went into our own way of processing the beauty of the beach around us. Jonathan sat and stared. Cadence began to build and chisel and see if he could break the rocks open. Haven got dirty discovering that the stones were balls of chalk and would rub off on everything. I took pictures, lots of pictures. We were all astonished, and as I looked around, I knew we were in a slow-motion moment. Each of us was pulling life out of the silence. It goes down in our family history as one of the most breathtaking experiences we have ever had. Every time I make a choice to listen to the still small voice, I lay another stone on the foundation of our family. Every time I don’t rush moments that are meant to linger, I imprint on my kids’ hearts, “Life is worth loving. Life is worth enjoying.”
One of my clearest memories of slowing down and listening to the Lord was when my son turned thirteen. He cried and said to us, “I don’t want to grow up. I don’t want life to change.” I immediately tried to think of something great to say to soothe his emotions. I wonder why we rush through tears. Grieving is one of the greatest gifts that the Father gives us to properly transition seasons of life. If we speed through these moments we miss the opportunity of a face-to-face encounter with the Comforter. He is the God of comfort, the God who meets us in the middle of our tears. Thankfully, I felt the still small voice and refrained from explaining away my son’s heartache. I heard the Lord say, “Let him grieve his childhood; he loved it so much he doesn’t want to leave this place of beauty.” I took a deep breath and wept with him; I didn’t want it to change either. I never thought I would love it so much.
Without the rhythms of slowing down and building strong foundations, I would have rushed through some of the greatest moments my life will ever know. I want to look back on my life and remember the beauty, the light, the sounds, the taste. I want to remember the tears and laughter. I want to remember the silence.
I challenge you to stop, take a deep breath and pray this: Holy Spirit, slow down the rhythm of the way I think and engage life. I invite you to make me aware of moments that I’d usually hurry through. Jesus, give me eyes to see what I before could not see. Make me aware when I am rushing, and teach me to practice the fruit of the Spirit that is self-control. Empower me with the courage to pause and make powerful choices for my life, believing wholeheartedly that you never grow weary of helping me. I declare that YOU ARE A GOOD FATHER. Help me live a full life with a keen understanding of your presence always. You are the Giver of all good things. I receive in this moment the pace of Heaven.
Help Grow the 18 Inch Journey Campus
As our community sets out to build a third cabin on our land, we’ve been reflecting on the impact that our current housing has had on the lives of our guests and students. In the fall of 2015, we built two beautiful cabins to make space for more students that were coming to our school. These cabins were a practical need that ended up serving a much greater purpose. Check out the story below to see how our staff and students have been impacted by the simple gift of more housing.
In November of 2015, I said goodbye to our Phase One 18 Inch Journey students with joy in my heart and tears streaming down my face. It had been another season of loving deeply, laying my life down for others alongside my friends, and I could feel the profound impact it had made on the students who had come so willing to be transformed. Before our closing staff meeting, I walked down to the newest cabins to make sure that they were clean and ready to be closed for the winter. As I pushed the door open, a small note left by the entry-way caught my eye. It read:
To the 18 Inch Journey Students of 2016,
Welcome home! You have made a brave decision. The 18 Inch Journey changed our lives and we know that it will change yours. We hope your time in this cabin brings you as much rest, friendship and hope as it brought us. We bless your Journey!
Love,
The Students of 2015
More tears. An eruption of laughter. “They got it!” I whispered, full of wonder and gratitude to the Father. The students not only understood the gift that living in community was to them, but they caught the vision for what it can do in the lives of other people. They learned to look beyond themselves, to engage gratitude and to bless those who would be coming along after them. This is why we believe in community living—it leaves us transformed.
The two cabins that were built in 2015 continue to be a gift to our community. Every year 18 Inch Journey students and retreat guests live in these cabins, letting their hearts be stretched by moving in with strangers who soon become life-long friends. They learn to see and prefer the people around them, to engage others when they don’t feel like it and to be intentional in friendship. For many of our younger students, this is where they learn practical life skills—like weekly rhythms of cleaning and how to care for a home—that will serve them as they transition into becoming spouses and having families of their own.
We have learned that community builds consistency—
consistency in seeing the people around you
and caring for what you’ve been given.
We are seeing first-hand how community living is changing lives and the 18 Inch Journey is only getting started. We are building a third cabin on our land this year to house more students and guests whose lives will be transformed by living and learning alongside others. If you’d like to partner with us to see this dream become a reality, click the link below.
Training My Eyes
Writing and Photography by Melissa Helser
This week in our Cultivate series, we want to share a piece from Volume IV : Creativity Unlocked written by Cageless Birds founder, Melissa Helser. Training My Eyes is a series of reflections and photography from the Swiss Alps. Here you'll find a collection of short prompts encouraging you to be still, feel yourself being surrounded and find that He has filled you with wonder again. We challenge you to take your time, give into the beauty and let it stretch you. God is ready to encounter your heart.
I have loved photography for over seventeen years. When I met Jonathan in 1998, I liked a lot of things but loved very few. I didn't really know how to love with my whole heart. I was eighteen and hadn't learned the art of loving something until it gave up its secrets. Jonathan taught me this. He has a father who adores photography and has told me countless stories of watching his dad pull over on the side of the road, jump out of the car and run to get a perfect shot of a lovely old farmhouse in Eastern North Carolina, a broken-down barn catching the afternoon light or maybe just a glorious sunset. His dad has tens of thousands of slides in storage documenting the beauty of their family’s life and his passions. Because Jonathan was taught to see, I have had the privilege of being taught to see.
We started taking pictures for fun. I spent so much time training my eyes and teaching them to see light, color, people. As I started seeing more clearly, I noticed a connection starting to form between my eyes and my heart.
I began asking myself questions:
What is important to me?
What is beautiful to me?
What do I love?
Letting the eyes and the heart become connected is what births a true artist, one who can cram heart into anything and inspire humanity to see differently. This doesn't happen overnight. It is a slow process of willingness to go the distance, and become a carrier of life. I fell in love with seeing a moment. I fell in love with capturing life for people and myself to look at over and over again and remember—remember the light, the laughter, the placement of things and people.
This love has served me well. I have pursued it, and it has revealed its secrets. I have had many seasons of photography, from enjoying the hobby as an amateur, to professionally shooting weddings with Jonathan for seven years, to taking pictures of friends and my children. I have had all the crazy cool gear. I have owned film and digital versions of Canon, Nikon, Fuji and Pentax and sold them, bought more and then reduced it all to my iPhone and the 18,000 pictures I have on it right now. All these years later, I realize that unless you can see, none of that matters. Unless you risk the one hundred average shots for the one extraordinary, you have learned nothing.
I take pictures every single day. I have trained my heart to stop constantly and see, really see. I don't shoot for a profession anymore, but I shoot for the love of it and for the documentation of my life, to look back and see the proof that I lived a full life.
This time a bit different than times before, maybe because
I am getting older or maybe because I am getting younger.
On a recent trip to Switzerland, I gave myself a goal: Take more pictures than you normally do. Push yourself again. Have your camera everywhere. Invite the Holy Spirit into your process of seeing. Let the beauty challenge you and stretch you. I let myself be overcome by the grandeur of the Alps. High up in the mountains and low in the valleys, I took it all in. This time a bit different than times before, maybe because I am getting older or maybe because I am getting younger. I chose to intentionally cultivate my love. At thirty-six it felt good to challenge myself again.
I chose to use a collection of these photos for this volume. You will see only a handful, but I took close to 1,000. It isn't that I chose “the best,” but I chose the ones I wanted you to see. I can still close my eyes and remember the feeling of seeing each shot, pulling out my camera and taking the picture. I recall the satisfaction of knowing that I captured the essence of Switzerland in the summer, alongside my children and husband. I invite you into the way I see as an artist. I invite you to look at the photographs, take a deep breath and be affected by something that has deeply affected me.
SURROUNDED
What does it mean to be surrounded? All sides are covered and clothed. You are not trapped or bound; you are free to absorb the reality of safety. You are the boat, and everywhere you look, you are cared for by the tallest peaks. To be surrounded—really surrounded—requires a deep trust. Ask the Holy Spirit where He is surrounding you like the mountains, or like the light with the coming dawn. Take a deep breath. Let the presence of the Almighty fill you completely.
PERSPECTIVE
To be high up looking down is to be free of reality’s perspective. Free me from the one way I see…lift my eyes up, up, up. What was burden becomes beauty. What was bigger than me disappears into the landscape. My vantage point does not change what exists, only the heart-posture of how I engage it. We must learn to stop and see differently. Mature beyond rigid sight and open up. He sees all in 360. From the deep to the shallow and everywhere in between. Give us fluid, free hearts to be rooted in truth and soar on the wind of His nature.
Ask the Lord for one place in your life you need His perspective. Imagine yourself being taken up to where He is. Look at it again and again, and ask the Father for compassion and grace. Ask Him to fill you with mercy. Ask Him to speak to you about it and journal His voice.
Never underestimate the simplicity of surrendering your perspective to Jesus.
BOUNDARY LINES
We took a gondola 7,000 feet up, got off and climbed even further. I was overcome with the reality that someone made a way for us to be this high. Someone had built a fence on the highest point of that mountain. When we climbed to the top, I grabbed the metal frame tight and took in the grandeur of the the entire countryside. There was a straight drop down the back side. I watched my little girl run around the top with no fear; instantly I was impacted by the presence of the boundary line. Healthy boundaries create permission to go to places we could never go. They release us to enjoy moments that would have otherwise been impossible.
"The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance. "
Psalm 16:6, NIV
Where is the Lord putting boundaries lines in your life? Where have you misinterpreted them as a fence to keep you from something, when the truth is they are releasing you into fullness? Ask the Holy Spirit to show you the power and gift of boundaries in your life.
THE CLIMB
One step, two steps…climb higher and higher. Sometimes it is easier to look down at your feet. Sometimes it is easier to focus on each individual step. You can’t see the top or where you're going. But you know you will get there eventually. Sometimes one foot in front of the other is all we need to get to the place we are heading.
I don't like to complicate the climb. I also don't like to diminish what it takes.
I believe courage is always growing in the belly of every human. We don't always listen to it; we often romanticize it.
Courage looks like one step, two steps…it looks like consistency and choice. It looks like breathing in and breathing out. And then it looks like the wind in your face and the vista in the reflection of your eyes. All of the sudden it feels like, I did it and I can do it again. You climb down and start over.
Sit down and recognize where you are in a "climb.” Breathe in the beauty of your courage. Let the delight of the Lord fill your lungs. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you strength and teach you how to breathe deeply and take simple steps.
GROWING OLDER
I walked up on him, my tall, sweet fourteen-year-old. He was taking it all in, and I was taking him in. How did he get so old? The thought rushed over me so quickly and made me sad just for a moment. We are always growing older, every season and every moment. I began to think about the fact that he has been with me for over fourteen years and the whole time he was growing older. When he was a baby, we would look to the next seasons of life with anticipation. When will he walk, talk, be old enough for a conversation? Now I walk up on him breathing in the Swiss Alps like an old, wise soul. When I first became a mother, the Holy Spirit spoke to me, “Savor every day, from the mundane to the mountain peaks.” This charge has led me so well; it has taught me the glory of living a simple, intentional life. Savoring has become my life message as a wife, mother, friend and leader.
Sometimes we want life to speed up, and then all of a sudden we want it to slow down. I wonder at what age it all changes and instead of looking forward, we start looking back. I wonder if it is possible to live a life so alive and full that regret never has permission to have an audience with us. I wonder if our lives could be so consumed with beauty and intentionality every day that we only looked back with joy and fondness at the memory of our lives.
Ask the Holy Spirit to begin to remove regret from your life. Ask Him to give you the grace and desire to live every day completely engaged, that you would love all the moments, great or small, and find fullness in this human experience.
Thank You! We completed the Art Barn!
We did it! With your help we raised all the funds needed to finish our stunning new building just in time for our 2017 school! This building has been one of the biggest gifts and upgrades our school has ever received, and we are astonished by how huge of a help it’s been to our students and staff.
This building has revolutionized our school. It has given us the space we need to facilitate our teaching sessions and worship nights. It’s taken the strain off the Farmhouse and made space for it to exclusively serve as our dining hall. It’s given us another meeting place for small groups and collectives, provided counseling rooms for one on ones, and perhaps the biggest area it’s served us is in giving our students the space they need to engage visual creativity in Art Class.
The Art Barn has become the hub of the land. It’s where we’ve gone to the depths of worship and come back up for air with swing dancing parties and movie nights. This space has marked our students’ lives as they’ve learned to pursue sustainability and build friendship with Jesus. When they think back to their 18 Inch Journey, they’ll remember the Art Barn and the endless ways they encountered the Father there. You have changed their stories by your generosity, and you continue to change ours. Thank you for partnering with us and sowing into the dream of the 18 Inch Journey!
As we close our discipleship season, we are looking ahead and are so excited about the ways the Art Barn will serve our staff in the creative season that’s coming. This building will give our creative teams space to meet and dream into the books, videos and creative projects we’re releasing. It will relieve our cramped studios and give our teams space to facilitate meetings. It will make way for our design, photography and videography teams to work simultaneously while staying inspired. Already, we can anticipate the gift that the Art Barn will be to our staff and we can’t wait to share the creative products and projects that overflow from it with you!
Join our campus campaign
We’ve got exciting news! We have officially launched our 18 Inch Journey Campus Campaign! As the 18 Inch Journey schools and retreats keep expanding, it is necessary that our campus grows alongside it. Our heart behind this campaign is to open up what we’re dreaming into and invite you to partner with us to see these dreams become a reality! Check out the video below to hear more from Jonathan and Melissa about this campaign.
For more information about our goals for the 18 Inch Journey Campus Campaign, check out our website at: 18inchjourney.com/campus-campaign
To donate toward our first goal visit generosity.com/
Subscribe to our Podcast!
Did you know that we’ve re-launched Jonathan and Melissa’s podcast? We are releasing new teachings bi-monthly on Thursdays throughout the year. Our hope is that these podcasts will inspire you, challenge you and encourage you in your walk with Jesus!
Today we’re releasing a fresh podcast called Staying Centered in Life and Ministry. For this episode, Jonathan & Melissa sat down to share from their heart about what they have learned on their journey staying centered in life, marriage and ministry.
You can find this episode and all of our previous podcasts for free on iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/jonathan-david-melissa-helser/id370241266?mt=2. You can also subscribe to stay up-to-date with our latest podcasts and to receive immediate downloads of new episodes as they release!
We love you all and hope that these podcasts refresh you and encourage you each month!
Creativity Unlocked Now Available for Pre-Order!
It’s the day we’ve been waiting for! Cultivate Volume IV: Creativity Unlocked is now available for pre-order! Creativity Unlocked is the latest volume in our Cultivate series. It features original artwork, captivating interviews, moving poetry and inspiring writings from the Cageless Birds community and several of our dear friends. The writings in this volume are meant to challenge your idea of what creativity is and unlock the truth that creativity is a mindset, not a skill-set.
To celebrate the release of Creativity Unlocked, we are offering a pre-order giveaway! Today through Sunday, pre-order Volume IV through our online store and automatically be entered to win one of these four framed and matted prints featured in Creativity Unlocked! The more copies you pre-order, the more chances you have to win! The pre-order closes Sunday at 9pm EST, and winners will be announced Monday, April 24th!
We want to encourage you to believe that if every child of God is made in His image, then creativity is not a talent for the select-few, it is a birthright. Our desire is that Cultivate Volume IV would empower you to take risks in expression and discover your creative ability. There are beautiful discoveries to be made when you dare to believe that He desires to speak through your creativity and meet you in the process. You are worth the risk!
Take a sneak peek at Cultivate Volume IV: Creativity Unlocked below and be sure to visit our online store to pre-order your copy!
Forty Thousand Raised, Countless Lives Changed
All the way across the globe, at Kuguyi Primary School in Kenya, thousands of children are smiling and celebrating an answered prayer. They finally have access to clean drinking water. On February 1st, Hydrating Humanity announced the successful completion of the first well dug at this school. The name of the well? Cageless Birds 1. Here’s the story:
Back in December, our whole community headed out to Awake Church in Winston Salem for a night of worship to benefit Hydrating Humanity: an amazing nonprofit dedicated to providing clean drinking water and hygiene education to all people. We set out with a goal to raise enough funds to drill 2 wells at 2 schools. This goal would mean clean drinking water for 2,000 children and their families! It was a big goal. Hydrating Humanity has had some amazing breakthrough in making well-digging possible in regions where clean water has been inaccessible, but digging wells is still very expensive. Each well costs $10,000 and we were confidently asking the Lord to come through and provide enough funds to dig 2 of them.
Going into this night of worship, we told the Lord that we wanted to partner with Him to see lives changed. On December 3rd, over 700 people came out to the sold out worship night. All ticket sales and donations went to support the dream of making clean water a reality in specific regions of Kenya. We set up our Cageless Birds merchandise table and donated all of the proceeds to the cause. By the end of the night, the Father had gone way above and beyond what we asked. Between the 700 people that came, we raised $40,000. That’s an average donation of $57 per person! We were blown away that the Father not only met our goal, but doubled it! In just a few hours, enough money was raised to dig 4 wells. Cageless Birds Well 2 is also now complete, providing clean water to the kids of Nyabokarange Primary and Secondary School and their families. Every day, children will be able to fill up buckets of water to take home, helping to eliminate waterborne diseases in these regions. In addition to clean drinking water, these children are also now able to receive proper hygiene education and to hear the Gospel of Jesus. They get to experience the reality of tasting and seeing that the Lord is good! Cageless Birds Well 3 is currently under construction and we can’t wait to celebrate its completion in the coming months!
We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who came out and helped us double this goal! So many of you bought tickets, came out to the event and celebrated alongside us that night. It was an honor to have you right there with us, working toward the same goal! For others that were unable to make it, the reality is that we could not have done it without you. Your consistent support makes it possible for us to donate our time, gifts and resources to others. We want you to know that you are making a difference. All the way around the world, children have ear-to-ear grins on their faces as they pump fresh water from a well called Cageless Birds: a well dedicated to Jesus, a well that testifies of His goodness and provision. You are changing lives. You are making a difference. This is your victory.
We want to encourage you that you have a global impact! This month, it looks like smiling children in Kenya. In the spring it looks like second year students returning to the land. In the autumn it looks like transformed young adults in the Farmhouse. From schools and retreats at A Place for the Heart to clean water in Kenya, you are changing the world. We consider it a privilege to run alongside you and are so grateful for your support! Our prayer is that you feel the Father’s smile and His gratitude surrounding you.
To learn more about Hydrating Humanity, visit their website at www.hydratinghumanity.org.
GPS Coordinates of Cageless Birds Wells 1 and 2: S01.22902 E034.53250 and S01.17340 E034.54191
Come Worship with Us!
We are excited to announce a special evening of worship and celebration in honor of our two newest albums: Overtaken by Molly Kate Skaggs and Beautiful Surrender by Jonathan and Melissa Helser.
This event will kick off with a set by Molly Kate Skaggs in honor of her debut album, Overtaken. Molly is a founding member of the Cageless Birds collective and has been giving her life to pursuing excellence in musicianship while maintaining a heart full of wonder. Growing up in a musical family with deep roots in folk and acoustic music, Molly enjoys exploring new instrumentation and combining it with the sound of her roots. For this portion of the evening, we invite the audience to sit back and receive the beauty and inspiration from the sound of Molly’s life.
Molly’s set will be followed with worship led by Jonathan and Melissa Helser and their team. This will be our first time returning to the Carolina Theatre since the release of Endless Ocean, Bottomless Sea in 2013! During this part of the evening, the audience is encouraged to join us in celebrating the release of the newly released album, Beautiful Surrender, by worshipping and pouring out our praise before the King. Tickets are available NOW at www.carolinatheatre.com
Cultivate Vol. III : Fly High. Build Home.
The Cageless Birds are excited to announce the release of our newest volume of Cultivate. Our community has been brimming over with joy and anticipation for months and we can’t believe it’s finally here!
Volume III: Fly High Build Home, is created with the vision of bringing clarity to what it means to live a whole life. Our vision for this issue is that it would help bring language to what it means to thrive—to soar and to land in His heart for you. You will find writings and prompts on topics such as trust, balance, process and empathy. Our dream is that these pages would inspire you to discover what wholeness looks like in your practical, everyday life.
This volume is the first original printing under the Cultivate title and is filled with beautiful photography and stunning paintings to support the themes communicated in this book. Fly High, Build Home is our thickest volume yet and is a collaborative project from the entire Cageless Birds community. It is our joy to share our community’s process, art and story with you!
Each volume of Cultivate is a stand-alone book, uniquely themed to meet you in your process and empower you to take ownership of His thoughts over your life. We invite you to explore these volumes that are designed to inspire your relationship with the Lord.
To learn more about Cultivate click here
To purchase a copy, visit our store shop.cagelessbirds.com.