It's time for a little bit of reflection over the last week...WOW. That kind of sums it up. Has it really only been a week? I mean, yes, it's been a while now that I've had a lot of these thoughts, but as far as putting them in motion goes, yeah that's only been a week. Last night we got to come together for some conversations, prayer, worship, and love. Sound like a church service to you? Well, if you call a bunch of passionate believers who sit around for four hours trying to figure out how we can build up and transform the body of Christ, then sure. But I've never really been to a service like that and something tells me you haven't either. Not to say that it's not out there though because one of the things I've also learned is that there are some radical people in this world living that gospel day in and day out. But why don't we all as "Christians" burn just as passionately? Why is it so hard for us to take the gospels seriously? I think Jesus has a great sense of humor, atleast towards me anyways, but I doubt he was joking about the "sell all your posessions and give to the poor" thing, or "take up your cross and follow me." I think that's a question we need to desperately answer. When I say Jesus has a sense of humor, it's because I think it's funny that I think about stuff during a week, and then I go to a service and it seems to miraculously be the topic. Ok, maybe that's not funny to you, but I think it is. I went to the Village for the first time on Saturday and their current series is begging that question (podcast it baby, it'll rock your socks off). But I don't know how to fully answer that either. I think it's a multitude of things, especially for people living in this country. We don't burn passionately for the Lord because we really don't HAVE to, we have the American Dream to keep us "happy" for life. And isn't it ironic that we've attached Christianity to that whole thing anyways? Like yes, Jesus wants us all to have the white picket fence and drive an SUV! Now don't get me wrong here either, I can't sit here and judge us for these things (I am sitting in my parent's upper-middle class house right now), but I can say that I think we're missing it. Have you ever noticed that the US is just about the only country where people don't send missionaries to? And as part of the US, we send our "body" to every corner of the globe, except for down the street. I really believe there is coming a day when this cute little sign we have sitting over us reading, "hey look, we've got it all together, and oh yeah, we love Jesus too!" gets a little dose of spiritual transparency, you know what I mean?
One of the beautiful things about when we come together is the power of prayer. It's not a go around the circle, say a prayer request and hope someone remembers it later this week thing. If we have something to pray about, we stop and we do it for as long as we feel like necessary. And man, is that some powerful stuff. I think we make it too easy to pray sometimes. We pray for the easy stuff in life, that would probably happen anyways, but we just have to "make sure God hears what WE want" so we throw it in there. What about the hard stuff? Do we pray for the things we have absolutely no idea how they could go? Do we pray for the things we're scared to get answered? Do we pray for the people that it's hardest for us to love? That's when we really start to see things transform. As the body of Christ, we are so much more than people you can shove into a building. We are his hands, his feet, his eyes, his ears, his mind, his heart. We are so much more than walls! Yet it's become mechanic for us to just go once a week, maybe even more, drop some money in the offering basket, maybe even go on one mission trip a year. But what are we doing with the time in between? Are we still connected to the body of Christ? Or do we press the pause button on Jesus because we just can't be those hands for him today...
One of the girls in our group last night made a great point that really echoes into the heart of the power we have to transform this world. Jesus left the whole "blueprint" if you will, of the church up to 12 disciples, only 12! So basically, 12 men got this thing going (with a little help from JC of course). So just what kind of power do we have as an even greater body of believers?
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