I Went to Church Today

I'm married to a pastor and I've attended church regularly for many years,  but sadly, I have to confess that I've been missing it lately.  By missing I mean not being there - all good reasons mind you, in fact, mostly ministry reasons! But none-the-less, I've not been to the worship service for a few weeks.  Well, today I made it... and do you know what I discovered?  I've missed it...and this time I mean the kind of "miss" that happens when you realize you've been a little homesick and didn't even know it? I've seen many friends that attend church with me over the past few weeks. I've visited with them and even had lunch with a few, but I haven't worshiped with them...which is the whole point of coming together for church.  As I participated in the worship time today, there arose in me a deep conviction about the value of going to church, which in turn cause me to wonder why it is sometimes not at the top of our priority list. 

It seems that going to church is becoming more counter-cultural.  There are many reasons and frankly, I have felt and understand some of them.  Often we’re just too busy outside of church to add one more thing to our plate.  I remember the summer we decided to enroll our kids in a summer swim team.  As we arrive at our first all-day swim meet, I was shocked to find half our church members there, spread out under the easy-up, ice chests stocked, grills going.  They were well prepared for the next eight hours of hanging out.  A crazy time commitment! And all for that moment to watch their ten-year-old do the butterfly in 1.3 minutes.  I remember looking at my husband and saying, "Well I think I now know why church attendance is a little low over the summer."  And frankly, who can blame people?  Attending a sporting event allows us to experience being part of something exciting, something bigger than us, while remaining a spectator.  Church doesn't work that way...  

 ...Sometimes we become disenchanted with church-life and the broken, messy lives that come with it (assuming we aren't one of them, of course - haha!), and rather than hopping into the game, we high-tail it outta there to find something a little less painful or disappointing.  someplace that allows us to wave the banner safely from the spectators bench.  Sadly, and all to often, leadership takes the heat as this happens.  The truth is, all the leaders really want is for the member's of their church body to "live at peace with each other so far as it depends on them" (Rom 12:18)...And when that feels like its too much, to "consider it pure joy as we encounter various trials", knowing that through them God does his redeeming, maturing work in us.

Occasionally we just get so busy serving in the church we forget to show up with our heart and worship.  We become little "Martha's".  We are busy, busy, busy!  And like Martha, we can become a little frustrated with those who don't seem to be working with us.  We forget that all Christ really wants is for us to come, sit at his feet and be present with Him for a moment.  Strength and grace for the work is found at his feet and dispensed as we pause.

There is another fad that seems to be a reaction to the previous three experiences.  Regularly worshiping with the body of Christ may seem too inconvenient, to difficult, to needy, and it is all to easy to pick and choose how we do it.  So we take Jesus,  the tidy one, that is already off the cross, bathed clean of his crucified mess, and sitting neatly by the Father's side in Heaven.  We set aside his call love and live together within a Holy body that sometimes calls us to suffer.  We seek to be spiritual while remaining unattached to the larger community of Christians and don't go to church at all.  

Do I need to attend church to have a relationship with God? Well...technically maybe one could say, No.  But I think it would be weird if my kids only wanted to hang out with their dad and pay no attention to their siblings.  Does going to church take a portion of our time?  Yep, but don’t we freely give a portion of our time to anything we find valuable?  Do we need to be convinced to spend time with our spouse?  Or persuaded to show up to our kid’s ball game?  Nobody was twisting my arm to buy a movie ticket the other night and spend two hours watching it.  I don’t hesitate to show up to a party and I always expect to wait in the Dr.’s office.  So what’s the big deal about Sunday morning?   

Do people offend us on occasion at church? Yep!  That’s part of the deal… And sometimes we offend them. The apostle Paul wrote to the churches about this, encouraging their “one-another-ness” and I suppose He did that because they (like us) needed the reminder. 

So today I made it to church. Here's what else I discovered! As we sang I realized that when we gather together to say, “Jesus is Lord”, we actually remember He is.  

"He is good, …When there's nothing good in me
He is love, ….On display for all to see
He is light,…When the darkness closes in
He is hope, …in spite of all my sin

He is peace, …When my fear is crippling
He is true,…Even in my wandering
He is joy, …and the reason that I sing
He is life,… in Him death (even soul wearied blithe) has lost its sting" (by Hillsong)

We go to church to remember …

…and we go to church to help others remember…That's what the ISraelites did as they returned to their mountain of Worship as God's people.

...what is truer, and more real than any ballgame, swim-meet, movie, or church duty; and what is bigger than any offence we could hold toward someone else, is that God is God and we are His.  And together we can draw near to the great priest that resides over the house of God. When we do we just may find our stubborn resistance giving way to free surrender.  Joy just might be restored and life just might be renewed!

 So… “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.  Oh! May we consider how we can spur one another on toward love and

good deeds,  not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” – Hebrews 10:24-25

I'm so glad I went to church today!

A Kingdom of the Heart -

"Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be added as well." - Matt 6:33

“Who knows the power of one life given over completely to the purposes of God….Yours may be that life.”

Oswald Chambers penned these words in His classic devotional, My Utmost for His Highest.  It has echoed in the mansions of my heart since the day I read them.

Richard Foster, in Streams of Living Water says holiness is "The ability to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done…the divinely transformed heart, by its very nature, will produce right action …Holiness is world-affirming.  The holy life is found smack in the middle of everyday-life.  We discover it by being freely and joyfully in the world without ever being of the world." 

 What happens to our lives when we get caught up in the action of God?

Over the past few years I've gone to a specific market to shop for groceries.  It's found smack in the middle of a very impoverished, "everyday-life" neighborhood.  I didn't decide to shop there out of charity (I wish I could say I did); I decided to out of need.  I had become quite hardened around the social and economic needs of our community and, along with that, I found myself smitten with the finer things which made me more and more discontent.  So I went there for God to do a work in me. 

While submerging myself in poverty seemed like a good practice a the time, second thoughts came quickly (Don't they always when change is on the horizon?) stepping up to the market, I was smothered by it's impoverished realities - the smell, the crowd, the strung-out person high on who knows what.  I was bothered that waiting in line took so long because a woman was paying via government aid-food stamps. One time while I shopped, a man, likely with a form of paranoid schizophrenia, followed me unexpectedly.  He was worried he might come down with the flu so he talked incessantly about it for 4 rows!  

I was feeling invaded from every angle. "Don’t these people understand that I have things to do? - Important things! I don't belong here”, my smallish heart bemoaned.  Assuming whatever encapsulated itself in the world of Michelle was somehow more valuable than what was held in theirs.  Yep…wish I could say I was more holy than that, but I wasn’t.  Pitiful really, I had no idea the offensive smell was partly due to the stench of my own arrogance and self-obsession.  The fact is, I did belong there.  THERE it’s where God was working on me.

One day, as I made my way along the broken sidewalk to the store entrance, I was again taking in this mixed up marketplace when God nudged me, "Michelle you are no different.  You too are impoverished. These people are beautiful.  They are lovely. And yes, they are broken.  The system in motion has all but destroyed them, and the system of self-made, personal-kingdom building that has been set in motion inside you is going to destroy you unless you do something about it."   It was the kind of remark a passionate, loving father would give to his beloved child.  I knew this was an invitation to encounter His love in a new way.

While I crossed the tracks from one side of town to the next, I wondered how Jesus felt when He crossed the tracks from Heaven to earth to inaugurate His Kingdom,... and I was finding him afresh on the other side of town, where His kingdom was establishing itself in me.   I didn't realize it at first, but these everyday-life encounters were incarnational, Jesus-in-the-flesh moments, and God was using them to change me.   

The paranoid man?  He's there almost every time, and how lonely it must be for him. I am lonely too when fear takes over.  I grapple for answers row-by-row just like him, only it’s from the silent space of a soft warm bed.  I wonder, where does this man sleep?  Who takes care of him when the sun goes down?  The woman with food stamps?  Well, they are many and while I may have food in my pantry, I am a beggar at the feet of Jesus all the same and only the aid of His grace will nourish me.

I still shop at that market.  I still hate the smell and sometimes the wait at the register bugs me too, but I more readily see Jesus' face in others and God fills me with deeper compassion because I not only see Jesus, I see myself - needy and holy.  We are indeed “glorious ruins”, every one of us.  And Jesus mingles with us in the mire, making us pure.   No matter our story, we each hold a sacred space meant only for the light of Christ.  What will it take to ignite it?  For me it takes bumping up against my own impoverished self and letting God into the mess.  Somewhere in the visit God ignites His love-light and it has no other choice but to shine.  

I suppose as the church, or as Dallas Willard has called them, “Societies of Jesus”, becomes more present to a needy world, we will have better societies altogether - communities that are ignited and lit up with His love. 

I thought when I began this practice I would have to let go of beautiful things, but they were merely fanciful distractions that wooed me away from God’s heart.  Real beauty showed up behind the grime and I learned that His good and beautiful kingdom-system brings good and beautiful life when God’s love is encountered and lived out through His children.

It’s lived out in everyday spaces.  Who knows the power of one life given over to God?  What happens to our lives when we get caught up in the action of God?  ….Well, I am now asking myself, "What would a daughter of the Good-king God do - right here in the middle of everyday life." 

Sometimes that means helping a weary mom to the car with her groceries.  Sometimes it means smiling when two sets of eyes meet at the cash register. Sometimes it means stopping my cart long enough to talk to the paranoid man and bless him with God's good will.  Sometimes it means bigger things that require significant risk and sacrifice!

Why would any of us do such things?  Because it's what a son or daughter of the King would do.   It shimmers with God's love and becomes contagious. 

…It is “His Kingdom come, His will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven” – Matthew 6:10