Haven Like Heaven

2008-12-04

I am sitting on the threshold of another milestone in my life. Finishing church planting training. I have been wondering what church really is. (Can you believe I am asking this question?) Surely over the past several months, maybe even years, I have at times dreamed of leaving the church and never sitting in another pew ever again. Perhaps it is not for me... maybe there is another alternative out there to church. Maybe I could just accept the fact that I was fighting God, and my animosity was directed at him.

If you can believe it, I was tired of it all. I felt like I just could not do ministry. I have been training for so many years to get to this point, and so close to the end I began to wonder if it was worth it at all. Whenever I would go to church and sit in the pews, it is as if I am sitting in an ocean of cliché. I felt like I had all the answers down pat, and there was no adventure left, no love story left... I was drained, going through the motions one minute, planning of leaving ministry/church/faith all together the next minute, feeling empty the next, and being angry the next, waiting for an opportunity to explode.

But I didn’t have the answers down pat. If I did, I would not be wrestling with these issues. Systematic theology was my network of thinking, apologetics was my sword... somehow this had to change. The Fight had to end. The Fight against God, the fight against people, the pent up anger at everything...

But there must be more to God than pat answers. There must be more than the simple framework we always keep looking through. I am looking for a fresh new way of living, where I let God work through me, where I rest in him as I continue throughout my day.

This is necessary, I believe, if I plan to be a worker for the cause of Jesus Christ. Stop the fight... Experience God, know him, expect to learn new things from the Bible, expect for God to be at work. He does what he wants; you can’t fight him. So we have to want what he wants and then our outlook will change.