There Must Be More

A great conversation yesterday awakened a long-simmering longing for a Christ-following lifestyle that goes beyond Sunday mornings. And in the midst of it, realizing how easy it is to get sucked into living from Sunday to Sunday—everything that matters happens there and then, and then everything in between is to be endured until Sunday rolls around once more.

Somehow, I don’t think this is what Jesus had in mind in building His Church—that how I live “out there” Monday through Saturday is somehow inferior to or less sacred than how I live on Sundays. What kind of “light” is that?

Of course, Sunday and all of its goodness does matter. It means refueling and refreshing and repentance and encouragement and hope. It just doesn’t end there. And that’s an against-the-current swim that is easy to quit on because the cultural-traditional pull is so strong. But it’s one that must be pursued nevertheless, day by day, little by little, until the fullness of being fully alive in Christ begins to come out your pores wherever you go, whatever you’re doing, with whomever you encounter. Naturally, yet somehow supernaturally...

“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him…”—Romans 12:1, Message

Boxing Christianity into an all-out Sunday package is not unlike reading the passages about Jesus’ birth only in December. His birth, His life, His victory are so much bigger than one season. Consider:

“For unto you is born this day…” (Luke 2:11, ESV)

Unto you.

A reminder that, like living from Sunday to Sunday, the Jesus you know, love, and follow is much more than a season, more than a warm, feel-good, traditional story, more than a moment in history that is nodded at and then closed until it’s nodded at again next December.

Instead, it’s an astounding invitation to you to love Christmas, to love Sundays, but to not camp out there and to instead launch out all over again every Monday morning to seek to live life to the fullest, in the unique way that he has made you.

To receive the Good News, to Believe it, to serve others, to give yourself away with all of Heaven’s Love that is within you.

It is never too late, or only for the young and strong. It is always on time and for every generation who hungers and thirsts. For every Christmas story that invites you to more than a Christmas story, and for those who have that mysterious, never-ending, deep-seated longing this Sunday within that says “there must be more than this,” ancient words from Martin Luther cheer us on:

“What more do you need if indeed you know Christ, if you walk by faith in God, and by Love to your neighbor, doing to him as Christ has done to you? This is, indeed, the whole Scripture in its briefest form: That no more words or books are necessary, but only life and action.”

In His Grip

"Oh no, You never let go, through the calm and through the storm..." - Matt Redman

Maybe the most wonderfully amazing thing about walking out life with the King of the universe is knowing that there is no place we can go during the course of our day where God isn't already.

God's presence with all who believe is everywhere and anywhere and simultaneously with people we don't even know both near and far 24/7...because that's what He promised through King David in Psalm 139, and to those past and present He has empowered to carry Good News in word and deed. Often, like Jacob, we don't realize all of that until after a crisis, mood, or tough day passes, but even that doesn't disqualify us from the most wonderfully amazing thing. It's a promise welded in eternity. We can delete the phrase "fear of abandonment." 

Sometimes, being in God's presence is a quiet sense of wonder, like gazing at creation and realizing you don't have to talk yourself out of the possibility that all of this maybe just exploded onto the scene one day eons ago and just so happened to sort itself out in unspeakably beautiful colors, landscapes, and innumerable unique flying, crawling, swimming creatures.

Being in God's presence can also look like the jaw-dropping miracle of a new son or daughter born into a family, and it can also look like the mysterious but unmistakable "something" awareness of God being more real to us than usual when a roomful of sons and daughters born into a Kingdom unite in song or praise...

....or even united awe-struck silence. 

God's presence can be a lot of things that are difficult to package in one tidy box, but mostly, it is the most wonderfully amazing sense (often unexplainable) of a promise fulfilled unlike any other:

"I will never leave you or forsake you." 

And not only that, a wonderfully amazing sense—even in the midst of storms —of assurance, protection, of friendship supreme, strength for the journey, a peace that passes every bit of understanding, of anticipation of hearing something life-changing for ourselves or someone on our path, of miraculous interventions and supernatural fuel to bring the Kingdom to others...of fullness of joy.

And it all may be very quiet and holy at times, or very loud and holy, or somewhere in between.

God's "You never let go" presence is the glue that holds us together: of both feeling and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that you and the God who made and delights in you are always and forever connected...the way He planned it all along—hands-on, gripped-with Love, lifted up out of the pits of life and encouraged always and forever by His incomparable mighty strength...perhaps sometimes feeling distant, but never, ever further than His breath.

Words can fall short when trying to wrap your brain around something like describing God's most wonderfully amazing presence, but because the promise is for a lifetime, these come pretty close:

"It is you, not I, who have been carried from before you were born.

Indeed, when you were still in the womb, I was taking care of you.

And when you are old, I will still be there, carrying you.

When your limbs grow tired, your eyes are weak,

And your hair a silvery gray, I will carry you as I always have.

I will carry you and save you."

(Isaiah 46:3-4, Voice)

[Updated from a previous blog]

Breakthrough

“Let us hold firmly without wavering to the hope that we have confessed, because we can trust God to do what he promised—the One who promised is faithful.”—Hebrews 10:23, Expanded Bible

It had been awhile, but the conversation picked up where it had left off back then, without skipping a beat. Divine connections in life can be like that. Little need for small talk to break the ice. Unopened menus. Hungry, but that can wait. Faith is hungrier. “What’s been happening?” is more than a throw-away line, it’s a lure that can’t wait to see what the catch of the day will be. And on this day, as it often is, the topic is “breakthrough.” It’s a catch-of-the-day just about everyone who journeys on this Walk longs for, both personally and on a much larger scale. Believing God to break through the expected, the impossible, the complacency, the struggle, the addiction, the routine of doing the religious Sunday morning thing, the ever-hanging cloud of darkness over people and life situations and entire communities and regions.

Really big stuff.

But as this conversation unfolds, a sudden realization that “breakthrough” in God’s eyes isn’t always the humongous expectation that’s in our own…

One tells of a small group of prayer warriors of every age and walk of life who gather faithfully to pray for “breakthrough” in all of its manifestations. There is no sudden surge of church attendance. No Great Awakening of thousands in their community. (Yet.) But there is life-changing breakthrough nonetheless as persistent prayers for one, then another, then a widow in need, then a husband and wife, then a mother and son, yield supernatural, miraculous results. Faith is stirred all around, including in the one telling the story.

The other tells of praying fervently for years for breakthrough among the nation’s young people, and suddenly finding his life journey taking him to a community teeming with college students. Thousands of them. The perfect setting for breakthrough hugeness. And there have been some. But none as huge as one out of thousands who, through thick and thin in his young life, swam against the current of culture and popular opinion because he just had to know—He had to know God in more than just a story in the Bible way. So he swam for four years, freshman to senior, strengthened with each push forward, until he headed out into the world for the next chapter in his life, fully alive and thriving on the firmest Foundation of them all. And faith is stirred all around, especially in the one telling the story...

In the economy of God’s kingdom, it would seem that the biggest breakthrough of them all is not an explosive “wow!” but when one person or a group of likeminded friends purpose to stay faithful and steadfast even when evidence seems small, or to keep swimming against the flow of complacency toward something Greater when it would be easier to quit and just go with the flow of life.

Because when faithfulness and steadfastness happens in just one or two or a few, the fruit of a life well-lived will inevitably result in breakthroughs for those we meet and pray for that are more “wow!” and huge and explosive than any of us could imagine.

“Give us, O Lord, a steadfast heart, which no unworthy affection may drag downwards; give us an unconquered heart, which no tribulation can wear out; give us an upright heart, which no unworthy purpose may tempt aside. Bestow upon us also, O Lord our God, understanding to know you, diligence to seek you, wisdom to find you, and a faithfulness that may finally embrace you; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”—Thomas Aquinas