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Often on our journeys we find ourselves vacillating from trust and doubt, despair and hope, fear and empowerment... It is not an easy path to be and become who God wants you to be. From a once fertile landscape now seen as desert and the actual desert you truly enter into IS a future fertile ground!
Our
discipleship journeys can often seem to be meandering, teetering into
indecision and pointlessness. There is
NO pointlessness to whom has set us free and commissioned us. We ARE both children of God and truly over
time realized through heart knowledge alone—children of Grace. Children of Grace that know the root of that
Word has been planted deeply by Christ Jesus’ TRUE Gospel and born fruit past
Satan’s stumbling blocks.
We
are planted—this is through the Holy Spirit, in the heart before the head, with
LIVING Words. These Living Words have
preached and taught us to internally Grow to Go with the Gospel in a hostile
and graceless wilderness. The desert of the world where we are lost unto
ourselves and purpose/ response become an intellectual justification of works
righteousness. How can we justify our
fruits born; especially when we turn away from God and His Commandments?!
This
past week has been an amazing look into the near future; for I visited my next
leg of the journey to serve God’s people through ‘the church.’ I have never served a church of this
size. Frankly it is HUGE, planted over a
number of years by amazing, ambitious people of God on a mission to break the
Word into the desert. To break into the
hot, dry, parched sands of the desert, valley of the Sun to plant a great seed...
This great seed is Christ Jesus Gospel all inclusive, all encompassing and all
bearing forth great fruit—potential for the Kingdom of God.
The
Holy Spirit knows I’m a good listener for He always gives me clues with a sense
of humor mind you. My name in Greek
means Victory so where would be the next leg of my journey? To a church bearing
the same name~ Victory. Many people know
that perhaps one of my favorite books about Grace is Gustav Aulen’s “Christus
Victor.” It is a beautiful and amazing
book that speaks clearly to the heart what Christ Jesus did indeed DO for us
through the Cross and leave for us to DO internally first then outwardly as His
disciples.
The
Living Word of God is much like the landscape of Cactus sewn in and around this
“desert.” A sanctuary of water to be
tapped into when the heat is on and you are thirsting... An aspect of our human
nature in comparing the cactus to the church in the world today—Yes it is
encapsulated in one sense, yet on another it reaches beyond itself and feeds
and waters all that is around it. A
physical contradiction but NOT a Spiritual one at all!
Feeling
the mind spinning with potential can be overwhelming or a growing curb to as a
once famous discipleship book’s title says: “What you do best in the Body of
Christ?” A Mecca campus of many ministries, studies and opportunities is the
fruit born from allowing that initial seed to be planted in the very good soil of
vision. This is vision that is developed
first as heart knowledge—listening and transforming to God’s Word here first before
synthesizing it through the hands and feet of the Body!
Victory
has a second campus community just some ten miles or so south east. This campus is called Christ the Victor. Hard
to fathom an old 84 lumber site transformed through great vision into a 20 acre
facility for the Gospel to grow and go within all whom they serve. The third
day of my journey afforded me the opportunity to visit the two parishes that
would be offshoots from each other and eventually plant Victory. One of the two of these communities is not
faring too well these days. These
stories of conflict and misunderstandings are always sad to hear about but in
tying back to the Gospel today what does this say about the reality of the
seeds and the sowers?
Maintaining
that near razor sharp perspective on: “What you do best in the Body?;” is hard
work. It will include suffering, it will
include persecution albeit “modern” today, it will include owning up to WHO YOU
ARE. Are you living into not being of
the world or are you simply meandering in the desert piecing transactionally
together justification? A justification
built around the self in ministry is NOT ministry more than works righteousness
and empty “fast food grace.” This is a
grace, that much like Jesus Words, have become the thorns to realizing our full
potential.
Jesus
Words thunder and echo to us in the here and now: “9Let
anyone with ears listen! 18Hear then the parable of the sower. 19When
anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one
comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the
path. 20As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who
hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; 21yet such a
person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or
persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. 22As
for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the
cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields
nothing. 23But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one
who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in
one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”
Ministry yet alone the church is NOT
about the outer shell which eventually disappears... It is about everlasting Spiritual
fruitfulness spread as quickly as the sun shines over another horizon. The Son needs to spread first over the horizon
or hurdle of realizing who you are, whose you are, what does it all mean and
what CAN I DO truthfully to live into that calling, commissioning and PURPOSE
that Christ Jesus has given me to be and become for His sake and my neighbor?!
There will always be rocky roads,
thorns and seemingly barren moments in your life as you struggle and discern
your reality as a Child of God, Child of GRACE.
It is up to us to persevere with sometimes crazy tenacity to NOT ALLOW
the Evil One “victory” in thwarting us from our mission, goal. We can’t go there, though its easy to
do. We can all feel at one time or
another, no one outside of God and His Holy Spirit, affirms, secures and
assures us in what we do as a disciple within the Body...
This could become an element of
suffering or we can turn those tears to remind us of our Baptism. We need to daily Reflect (Lord, where do you
need me to grow?), Confess (Lord, I felt really weak, insecure with trusting
your plans...), Repent (Dear Jesus, I am sorry for all the times I harbor
anxiety and doubt may I truly strive to be and become who you need me to be!)
and RENEW (Dear Jesus, I am a New person through you, now may I continue to
live graciously into BEING MADE NEW.)
AMEN
Sunday July 13th,
2014; 5th Sunday After Pentecost; Year A; SOLA Lectionary Nicole Collins
Psalm 65:1-13; Isaiah 55:10-13;
Romans 8:12-17; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
http://youtu.be/pRYjnsd4V3Y
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