WARNING: This message is written for those who love to study and be amazed by the things of God. It’s for the person who likes to be challenged to think it deeper ways…who wants better answers. If you’re satisfied with a Christianity that doesn’t challenge you to go deeper in your faith, you really won’t like this post.
With everything going on in life…
The good…the bad…the ugly…
The stuff you always knew would happen…
How are you starting your family…
Finding the one…raising children. Shaping your career…charting your course.
And the stuff you never imagined would happen…
Re-engaging the fights of 50 years ago…watching the erosion of Society. The wars and rumors of wars. The lies. The crises. The social climate…
Resurgence of racist vitriol. Guns gone wild. Explosion of sexual assault cases.
We must still ask what Beenie Man ask us so long ago… #HasTheWorldGoneMad
In both of these cases, we want things to make sense…
We want to make sense of things.
Or maybe…we know things make sense, already. We know that all things work together for good…for those who love the Lord.
So, we really want to wrestle with those things that don’t look good in our lives…
Those things that don’t look good in the world around us…
We want to wrestle with those things so that we can find the good and praiseworthy sense.
We want to interpret these times that we’re in and interpret our life in these times…
But when we look for answers that make sense, conform to the Gospel and proclaim the Glory of God, we don’t find anything that really feeds us in a way that compels us to want more.
I think of Rachel, who grew up in the church and is raising a young family with her husband.
They are a beautiful couple who is committed to living well…faithfully. To raising their children in faithful ways to be faithful people.
Coming to that realization is phenomenal. And it only happens when you are honest.
When you can be honest that God has been there in your life…guiding you to where you are, right now in this moment.
You see how God has been there. How you missed His presence at the time, but that when you look back over the years, you can see His presence in those moments.
And you know you want to get better at seeing Him…hearing Him…and responding to Him with thanksgiving, in those moments and not just in retrospect.
You wanna go deeper because you realize that if you could just get better at recognizing and responding to God in “the present moment,” you would have so much more peace…so much more joy…
The moments of peace and joy would be more pervasive…better established.
And so you want a deeper understanding…
I remember visiting a local church a few times…
After a couple visits, my wife hit it off with another sister. They went to exchange numbers and the other sister pulls out a pad…
Yes…we’re on the cusp of generations. One foot in that era of people who just pull out cell phones; the other foot in that generation that writes down phone numbers…
Anyway…
She pulls out a pad. It’s an empty notebook. Not one page in it had any writing at all…
She said: “I keep this notebook with me in case I hear something in a sermon that I need to write down…I’ve had it for a while, and this is the first time I’m using it!”
#Tragedy
You want to be convicted…to be challenged…to be stretched.
But you go to church Sunday after Sunday, and encounter nothing that compels you to take note. Nothing is said that you have to remember so you can search into deeper…later…
Why is that?!
