I Corinthians 13:13
And so faith, hope and love abide]
Faith - conviction and belief respecting man's relation to God and divine things.
Hope - joyful and confident expectation or eternal salvation.
Love - true affection for God and man, growing out of God's love for and in us
These thre, but the greatest of these is love.
My goodness how we do love to talk about the love of God.
We bandy that phrase about like it was religious currency.
We measure our churches and ourselves by this term, laying hold of it in spite that our definition of what love really is might not be close to what God has declared it to be.
In fact, for me personally, I find that the more I try to love....
the more I realize that I'm kind of in the dark about what love is and how I am called to demonstrate it here in this world. I think maybe I saw some truth concerning it last Saturday night.
Truth about God....
Truth about myself....
And truth about who we are as a community of followers of Jesus.
At our last VRC meeting, we probably had as many "first-timers" as we have ever had. They didn't know what to expect. They later told me that they weren't real sure they wanted to even be there, but it was an opportunity to get away from the daily grind. They ran into something they had not anticipated on finding. The love of God and those who follow Him.
It wasn't that the core leadership had a meeting before hand and made plans to "love them" into the Kingdom. It just kind of happened. This love we have been shown by God, is the fuel that drives the Saturday Night meeting. You see, to me, everything about the meeting is a demonstration of God's love to us, humanity. At least I think this is the way it should operate. From the table that is spread with coffee and the fixin's, to the cookies and free stuff that we give away. If you want to boil it down to the simplest statements. What took place Saturday night was God loving through us to reach others.
Our worship on Saturday night is a bit different from what you hear at other places. When I say different, I don't mean better........I just mean different. Debbie Handy and I are the worship leaders, but we draw on the other members of the team to come up with what songs we feel like are to be sung on Saturday night. I have a tendency to lean toward what I refer to as "Road house" worship. Blues riffs and chords....even some take-back songs that everyone is familiar with. Debbie is the rocket that takes the worship into the next level where we come into God's presence. Saturday night everything seemed to connect, as you could hear the group that had gathered singing above the instruments sound. Latching on to such phrases as "Now I'm Free!" the sound was more than singing. It was a declaration of truth in the lives of those who knew this Jesus.
While the teaching of God's word is always important, what's more important to me is what does God want to say about it. I have found over the years that people very seldom remember sermons or lectures or teachings. But within the context of the entire message, there is opportunity for a verse or a thought to strike a heart and make a lasting impression. That is what I want to happen. That something that is shared hits home and penetrates the darkness to bring hope, light and love to someone that might not know Jesus.
We make no pretense about our call on Saturday nights.
We are an entry point into Christ.
We are the pre-church church, so to speak.
We are a place where someone who doesn't understand church can come and be introduced to Jesus.
In the whole Kingdom of God view, we are just one more flavor that appeals to some folks.
So we celebrate our place that God has given to us.
We want to love and be loved by our heavenly Father, and we want to give away everything that He gives to us. I want to leave this old world with a zero balance in my spiritual bank account. To love as God loves. To live as God directs me to. And to embrace this call to those in the darkness of addiction, to direct them to the source of life......real life.
We haven't lost that "loving feeling"......we have found it in Jesus.
Thanks for letting me share.
God on you..
mb
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