The other night, we had a campfire. We watched the flames dance, listened to the wood crack and pop. We watched the wind blow the smoke around. We sat mostly in silence. Nothing needed to be said. In those moments, I experienced a greater sense of peace and contentment than I had in a long while. I just breathed the fresh air. I merely sat there enjoying the moment. My soul drank in the stillness.
In these times of uncertainty and being bombarded from every direction with constantly changing information, it can be easy to get sucked in to the drama and justify being glued to news channels as “staying in the loop.” We experience a deep need to know everything we can to be prepared for this new future.
It is only in our sufferings that we know that God is producing and bringing out the finest qualities from within us. These characteristics are things like our ability to withstand pressure, to endure in spite of being pressed down, it is the ability to have strong integrity of character no matter what.
It was a clear night. I could see the stars. They were magnificent to look at. They were bright even as they shined through the big tree in my backyard. It struck me just how beautiful they were and how long it had been since I had looked up at them. That’s when God said to me, “I just want you to look up my child.”
We have taken our relationships to a much more social-media-infused format and we have traded real-face-to-face relationships that require focus and authenticity for fake-relationships that are based on pretense and social media.
Without the power and leading the Holy Spirit the Gospel is just a bunch of words. It takes the conviction and the invitation from God’s Spirit to lead someone to Christ (whether a first-time believer or a long-time disciple). We rely on God for the ministry of Church.
We talk a lot about grace. We insist on how we need to give each other more grace. We even insist on how people ought to give us more grace. We might even tell ourselves that we ought to give ourselves more grace. But is it possible we missed the point of grace? Maybe we got grace wrong.
You know how when you have company coming over to stay you suddenly look around your house and see how dirty and cluttered it is? What might not bother you or your family during the normal routine is suddenly not acceptable when you’re about to have friends or family staying with you. You suddenly go into a furry to clean the house and remove the clutter. Sometimes you look around and you realize you have way more clutter and junk then you need. You realize it’s time to clean house and make more permanent room in your life.
We often have preconceived notions about the what, the why and how of God’s calling. It receives no small attention from Pastors, authors of theology, bloggers, and the Jesus following Church member. I think that’s because it’s almost in no way theoretical and is extremely personal. Within God’s calling we find our guidance, our direction, our source of adventure, assurance and peace.
We seem to be caught in a vortex of articles on the internet suggesting what the church needs to do differently or better, to remain relevant. They often sound vague and like there’s someone, somewhere else that needs to do something differently about the problem. But when we talk about the church, we’re not talking about a building or somebody else we’re talking about ourselves.