I stood in the tiny chapel sanctuary and looked around me, a bit baffled. This group of ragtag people althogether in one room of worship, seemed so oddly put together. I felt out of place and right at home at the same time. I watched people’s faces as they worship and hugged and talked and prayed. It was so odd and yet made so much sense at the same time. It was familiar.
It felt like I had stepped into a different version of my same church home…and I suppose that is exactly what had happened.
The culture, the demographic, the style of service, the location were all so different than our middle-school-turned-sanctuary, and yet it was all so similar.
A collection of misfits worshipping together.
The fragile new-in-the-faith along with the aged in Jesus.
Traditional worshippers mixed with those who never thought church would be a place they fit.
Diversity in ages and cultures and languages acting as though they were all the closest of family.
All with that same hint of desperate need for Jesus and for each other.
All with a love and familiarity overflowing and baffling.
And I look around our little church some Sundays to see so many faces I feircly love, and yet if I step back just half an inch from my own inside perspective it looks so strange, just like the scene inside that little chapel seemed to me that Sunday morning.
Why these people? Why was this love so easy and yet so painful at the same moment? How these bonds so strong? When did this love so loyal form? Who could ever script this combination of lives lived together and call it beautiful?
Jesus.
He builds His church through a million impossible combinations and binds us together through the bond of love. It’s His gift to His church if we allow Him to work it in us.
Church planting is misfits and mismatches and odd combinations that work because of Jesus’ love in us and through us.
Church planting is a family knit together out of the choice to love who God has given with the power God has enabled.
Church planting is bonds of love that are beyond our own ability to create if we will allow God to create them.
Church planting is living and seeing the ugly and the pain and the hurt in people, then pressing into Jesus because there is nowhere else to turn and in turn watching Him knit you back to Himself and also to each other.
Church is watching God build His church and bond it together with a love that is surprising and cannot be explained any other way than through Him.
Church planting is a surprise of joy and love and family.
And don’t forget that for every joy of love and bond of family, there will be equal or greater pain and hurt and sorrow, but it will be worth it. It will be worth it in the moments you get to raise your eyes and see your family, all broken and mismatched and messy, worshiping together and loving each other in a way that can only be explained by pointing to Jesus.
Church planting is watching God build His church and bond it together with a love that is surprising and cannot be explained any other way than through Him.
I stood in the tiny chapel sanctuary and looked around me, a bit baffled. This group of ragtag people althogether in one room of worship, seemed so oddly put together. I felt out of place and right at home at the same time. I watched people’s faces as they worship and hugged and talked and prayed. It was so odd and yet made so much sense at the same time. It was familiar.
It felt like I had stepped into a different version of my same church home…and I suppose that is exactly what had happened.
The culture, the demographic, the style of service, the location were all so different than our middle-school-turned-sanctuary, and yet it was all so similar.
A collection of misfits worshipping together.
The fragile new-in-the-faith along with the aged in Jesus.
Traditional worshippers mixed with those who never thought church would be a place they fit.
Diversity in ages and cultures and languages acting as though they were all the closest of family.
All with that same hint of desperate need for Jesus and for each other.
All with a love and familiarity overflowing and baffling.
And I look around our little church some Sundays to see so many faces I feircly love, and yet if I step back just half an inch from my own inside perspective it looks so strange, just like the scene inside that little chapel seemed to me that Sunday morning.
Why these people? Why was this love so easy and yet so painful at the same moment? How these bonds so strong? When did this love so loyal form? Who could ever script this combination of lives lived together and call it beautiful?
Jesus.
He builds His church through a million impossible combinations and binds us together through the bond of love. It’s His gift to His church if we allow Him to work it in us.
Church planting is misfits and mismatches and odd combinations that work because of Jesus’ love in us and through us.
Church planting is a family knit together out of the choice to love who God has given with the power God has enabled.
Church planting is bonds of love that are beyond our own ability to create if we will allow God to create them.
Church planting is living and seeing the ugly and the pain and the hurt in people, then pressing into Jesus because there is nowhere else to turn and in turn watching Him knit you back to Himself and also to each other.
Church is watching God build His church and bond it together with a love that is surprising and cannot be explained any other way than through Him.
Church planting is a surprise of joy and love and family.
And don’t forget that for every joy of love and bond of family, there will be equal or greater pain and hurt and sorrow, but it will be worth it. It will be worth it in the moments you get to raise your eyes and see your family, all broken and mismatched and messy, worshiping together and loving each other in a way that can only be explained by pointing to Jesus.
Church planting is watching God build His church and bond it together with a love that is surprising and cannot be explained any other way than through Him.
My Spanish is limited and her English was restricted to “hello”, but as I watched, I could tell she was half-playfully arguing with “A”, the staff member who was trying to get her started on a little bit of Saturday math homework. As she settled her nine year old self onto the concrete with a page of long addition and subtraction, I offered to help. A quickly agreed to let me help her. As I started to sit down the little girl protested in Spanish, and I could make out enough of A’s words to understand that she was essentially explaining, “Math is the same in Spanish and English.”
So with a little bit of translation assistance from A (who speaks three languages), I helped her through the page of complicated-for-a-second-grader addition and subtraction.
Math is the same in any language… …but I was still surprised by by how much harder it is to communicate simple, universal concepts when you only know numbers in the other’s language.
Math is the same in any language….and so is homework and trying to get kids to do every problem on the page and convincing them put their notebooks away properly when they’re finished.
….
It reminded me of the time, a year ago in this same orphanage, when I sat with three other American women in a little circle of Mexican women for a little mid-week bible study. We took turns sharing through a translator what a typical day looked like in our very different lives.
Mexico and America So many differences Cultures and languages Opportunities and skin color …and yet we all found that in the end our lives weren’t that much different at all.
We all took care of our homes. We all cooked meals for our families. We all got out of bed when we needed to and most of us went to bed late. We all did chores and laundry. We all struggled to find time for ourselves. And most of us looked a little bit self-conscious to be sharing, wondering what the others would think. ….
And as I discovered that math is the same in any language, I was reminded that so much of humanity is the same no matter where you live.
The joys and struggles and heartaches and monotonies of the day-to-day don’t disappear in different cultures. They may take on different shapes and forms or be expressed differently in accordance with the culture you’re in, but they are still there.
Somehow the concrete reminder of this fact gave me a greater love for the whole of humanity.
And the words of that well known verse come to mind… “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
“For God so loved the world…”
And I’m thankful for the little glimpse of a different corner of the world. Thankful for the reminder that we’re all created in the image of God. Thankful for the reminder that the beauty of our uniqueness will never be so distinct that it will remove our ability to identify with each other. Thankful for the reminder that God so loves me and you and the people I’ve come to love in a rural town in Mexico and the people I’ve never met halfway around the globe.
I met someone a while ago who I instantly disliked. I felt this bitter pain of loathing come over me nearly as soon as I started talking to her. And I thought I could shake it. But even an ounce of hatred and bitterness will begin to destroy. So I finally, painfully, dug deep.
And it wasn’t her. I had known deep down that it wasn’t her all along, but it’s easier to believe that it is the other person. It’s harder to look at yourself and see your own filth.
The loathing and the dislike were stemming from my own flaws. I didn’t dislike her…I disliked me. Because when I talked to her I saw mirrored back at me several of my own struggle areas.
…my tendency to talk too much when I’m nervous. …how I so easily come across as a ‘know-it-all’. …my tendency to turn a discussion into a debate. …the habit of pushing into a conversation and needing to be heard.
These things are so painfully hard for me to admit about myself. They stem from pride and selfishness and the desire to lead in areas God has not called me to lead. They stem from fear and insecurity, because when I’m insecure I talk and talk and talk. And talking and talking usually isn’t the best way to show love. And talking and talking usually doesn’t stem from humility. And talking and talking usually is self-centered, not self-less.
And when I took the time to dig deep inside myself, I realized that my dislike had nothing to do with her “flaws”. Had they been any other issues that I saw in her, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But her flaws are my flaws, and seeing my flaws in someone else reveals them in me all the more.
So I prayed for forgiveness and help and love and felt all sorts of tender and wounded and little bit discouraged in all the areas I need to grow in.
And I opened God’s Word this week, in the cold morning, to the book of 1st Peter. I started into chapter five, where the apostle Peter is exhorting elders and humbly reminding them that, as an elder himself, he is qualified to give them this challenge and exhortation.
“So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed…” 1 Peter 5:1
And God whispered to me right there in that verse. He reminded me how Peter had a big mouth and talked when he was nervous and talked too much and often said the wrong thing and tried to be a know-it-all and struggled with pride. Then God pointed me to the Peter writing these verses.
That same Peter who had so many issues, God also used as the leader of the early church and as the first apostle to preach to the Gentiles and as a writer of part of the New Testament and as a humble elder and pastor to the church in Jerusalem.
Then God whispered to me, “If I can do that with Peter, can’t I do that with you?”
And the tenderness and the woundedness and the discouragement flooded away in the awe of God’s power. That He could take me, with all of my flaws, and change me to be like Him and use me for His glory is astounding.
In that simple moment of reminder, my posture changed from humbled brokenness to humbled worship.
Let Him show you your struggles and then let Him show you how big He is. Let Him whisper to you, “If I can do that with Peter, I can do that with you.”
Because He is bigger than my sin, and I can guarantee He is bigger than yours too.
I had to admit to myself one morning that the emotional side of relationship is sometimes hard for me. I’ve known it for years. It’s shown up in so many ways. But I still like to think that I can be emotionally “in tune”.
I saw it when I started dating my now husband. I’ve seen it in the tender and vulnerable moments of my marriage. I see it in friendships and relationships everyday. …I’m afraid of being open emotionally.
Because when you open yourself up to someone emotionally, they can hurt you in the most painful of ways. But to truly love and care for someone, you must open your heart.
I must open my heart to my husband if I ever expect him to win it. I must open my heart to God if I ever expect Him to fill it. I must open my heart to the lost if I ever expect to seek them. I must open my heart to my friends if I ever expect deep community with them.
And my husband regularly reminds me, “Remember Love: thick skin and tender heart.”
In ministry and in life, I so quickly tend towards thin skin and a hard heart. And if I head into all my earthly relationships that way, what makes me think it will be any different when I approach God?
I’ve struggled so much feeling distant from God. But as I’ve explored my heart on deeper levels, I’ve realized that it’s not Him…it’s me.
I’m afraid of being hurt. I’m afraid of God sending a trial my way. I’m afraid of allowing my heart to be tender toward others and so my habit of hard-heartedness has affected my walk with God.
“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” 1 John 4:20
And sometimes it’s been as simple as that. My relationship with God has been held back by my refusal to love my brothers.
I don’t want to have a habit of hard-heartedness anymore. And I know the One who can make hard hearts soft.
So I’m praying for a habit soft heartedness…toward God and others. Because whatever my reasons and fears keeping me from living with a sheltered heart, I have a God who is greater. He is worth the risk, and although others might let me down and hurt my heart, He never will.
He will hold my heart. He will heal my heart. He will soften my heart.
