About a year ago we began the process of joining a brand new church. It has been incredibly exciting to witness the unfolding of this church and the mission we all feel called to carry out, but it has also been a bittersweet transition. James and I truly felt that we belonged to a family at our previous church (and still consider them family), which is often what happens when you are part of a group of people for so long and share so many facets of your life. Yet, after 10 years, God had begun to plant some seeds of restlessness within us, and we knew that there was something else He had for us to do. We have no doubt at this point that this new thing, our new church home, is where God has called us to be and where He desires to both use and bless us. We have consistently been pushed outside of our comfort zone, which is something both of our faith journeys were in need of - a nudge out of complacency. And we have also consistently been challenged about our relationship with the Lord: is He TRULY the Lord of our lives and if so, how do we respond to Him? How does He affect our lives? I, along with so many Christians I know, struggle with completely surrendering every area of my life and therefore experiencing the deepest possible relationship with God. I allow so many distractions to take precedence. Currently as a church we are beginning together the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan, and the last couple of weeks have been challenged by our pastor to really consider this love that God has for us: this extravagant, completely out-of-the-ordinary, crazy love and how we respond to it. What I am discovering is startling and difficult to confess, but I feel compelled to do so: I don't know if I have ever REALLY, TRULY experienced the love of God. Shocked yet? I KNOW, intellectually, (and have for as much of my life as I can remember) that God loves me. I BELIEVE His Word and the promises it holds on this count. I have NO DOUBT that He is in my heart and yearns to lavish His love upon me. Yet I think I have constructed walls around my heart that have not allowed me to really EXPERIENCE this love and therefore live it out in the world around me. Walls of obligation, rules, theology, religion, materialism, pride, selfishness, comfort, and comparison. The question comes now, with this realization, what are the steps I take to break down those walls, to truly be flooded with God's love, and to finally live out a life that responds to it with complete gratitude and authenticity?
Does this make ANY sense?
A glimpse of this love I am continually trying to grasp came in the form of a story told in church a couple of weeks back about Dick and Rick Hoyt. This INCREDIBLE father and son have a relationship that is a shining example of the Heavenly Father we have who loves us and will stop at nothing to share our lives, carry us in our weakness, and fulfill our needs. You can read about them in detail here , and you can watch a powerfully moving video about this father's love for his son below. My desperate prayer is that somehow I "may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge". (Eph. 3:18-19a)
