Believe? Or Know? Your Choice!

Matthew 9:12
When Jesus heard this, He said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick."

Matthew 8:3
Then Jesus put out His hand and touched him, saying,"I am willing....be cleansed." Immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

Been a good week.
God has been speaking through Scripture to me.
He even sent someone to me, and during a conversation they spoke something that confirmed what I was hearing or perceiving God to be doing.
I made the comment concerning our Vineyard Recovery meeting that I was not going to get in the way of what God was doing, that He had made it very clear to me that this was HIS meeting and I was to simply follow instructions. I have made every effort to operate from this place.

He made it clear that we were not going to be focusing on the Steps of Recovery as much as we were the One who makes it all possible. That being our Higher Power, Jesus. We know that the majority of people who come to Saturday night have a specific problem that they are struggling with....addiction. I told someone early on that we were a community of people with a sin/specific illness in need of healing. An illness that has eaten away any relationship with may have had with Jesus......A sin/addiction that has separated us from society so that, like the leper, we are need of being restored. 

To put it bluntly...we are a community of people in search of life. We have some knowledge about God, but little understanding of God. We bring this entire package of our experiences and knowledge of God and recovery with us in hopes of making some practical sense of it all.
So Saturday night, we gather to encounter......to experience.....to run into the real God. Not the God we have concocted in our own minds. Saturday  night is as much about unlearning as it is learning. It is about trading wrong ideas and thoughts about God for the truth of who He really is. 
More than that...Saturday night is about being touched and changed by God. It is about having an encounter with this God we claim to believe in. 

You can go your entire life believing that if you stick you finger over a  candle flame, you'll get burned. Or you can actually let the fire touch you and move you from believing to a place of knowing that if you put your finger in the flame you'll get burned. We want to be a people who move from believing to knowing. More than this, we want to be a people who leave the Saturday night meeting and go back out into our communities, our schools and marketplace and simply BE who God has called us to be. A people who love God and those around us. A people who believe in prayer and that we can interact with others who are hurting and see the Kingdom of God come forth in their lives. 

If you want to be free, then you've got to let this fire of God's presence come and burn you.
I chose the song "If You Want To Be Free" by the group WATERDEEP for reason. I love the honesty of the words. Don Chaffer paints a picture of the Kingdom that is rarely talked about. That God does in fact show up on gas station bathrooms. That the real Kingdom of God is not made up of pews and choirs and lecterns and carpet. Nothing wrong with those things, but that is not the tools or evidence of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God, coming to this earth, is played out in the broken hearts and lives of those who are hungry for Him. The Kingdom will of God is found in the cries of those who are on the verge of losing hope and life, with no where else to turn, turn their voice and heart to God.  

Saturday nights are messy sometimes. 
There are (and will be) times that we aren't real sure about what we're doing and how to do it, but are simply trying to follow God's directives.
But the one thing you can count on is that when we come together for Vineyard Recovery, we are trying to hear God. We are going to teach what is on His heart. We are going to worship with the songs that He wants to hear. And we are going to learn how to love each other in the way that God loves us. 

Don't forget that our next meeting will be May 25th /  7 p.m.
Look forward to seeing you!

God on you....
mb