#Rethink - September 2020
#Rethink - August 2020
Hi September! This month we are pondering our broken world, exploring the story of a Jewish girl who met Jesus, and questioning Christian community.
What if it's a good thing that our world is falling apart?
2020 is going to be infamous. People are going to use it in sentences like, "My week started great, but then it went all 2020 on me." The world appears to be falling apart on multiple levels. But I'm starting to think that might be a good thing.
I feel like 2020 is exposing humanity's need of the gospel like never before. It's literally laying out the corruption of people as we see division, violence, power grabbing, etc. We see the corruption of nature through disease and natural disasters. The world is broken! People are not strong enough to fix it on their own. We need supernatural help. We need a Savior.
What if God is using brokenness to strip naked the deepest need of our hearts?
Could the helplessness we all feel be a catalyst for people to reach out to Him?
Maybe this is a tender wake-up call rather than wrathful punishment?
We cannot fix the broken world by ourselves, but Jesus can heal our hearts.
"And that is what God was doing... He was foreshadowing. He was laying traps, leaving clues, clues I could have seen had I been perceptive enough.” Lauren F. Winner, Girl Meets God
Growing up with a nominally Jewish father and a once-Baptist mother, Lauren dove into the Jewish faith whole heartedly. She even chose to convert to Orthodox Judaism as a young adult -- happily accepting the lifestyle and limitations. Lauren was a devoted religious Jew. That is until she had a dream where Jesus rescued her from a kidnapping. How amazing is that?!
Originally published in 2002, this older memoir is everything I love. It is the story of someone finding Jesus when they weren't even really looking, or rather the story of Jesus finding them. Girl Meets God resonated with some of my own religious experiences. It made me stop to process, and it shook some of those Christianese boxes that I dislike so much.
"...to equip the saints for the work of ministry,
for building up the body of Christ" Ephesians 4:12.
Do we really need Christian community? And if so, what does that look like?
If I had answered that question in the beginning of the pandemic quarantine my response would have looked different than today. Honestly, I actually enjoyed the break from corporate church. And I was initially reluctant to reengage.
For my family the corporate organization of church had turned into an overwhelming flurry of involvement. We were busy serving, participating, and attending. There was men's ministry, college ministry, Jr. High ministry, serving in the nursery, morning service, evening Bible class, children's ministry, and Monday night worship dance for my daughter. Oh, and small group. Look at that list! No wonder I was exhausted.
Then it all just stopped. Everything stopped. My life became still. We had evenings home almost every night. We made puzzles, explored nature preserves and state parks, read books, and puttered in the yard. There were parts of the Great Pause that I really enjoyed and I wrote about them in previous newsletters.
The break from church was good for the first few months, but then I found myself becoming increasingly cynical. I noticed a hardness creeping into my soul that I didn't really like. I said that I wasn't going to church because we were being careful, but in reality I was being rebellious. Continued isolated wasn't healthy for me.
During my first week back at church I cried through the worship service. It felt right to praise God with other believers. I needed to be there. Churches will never be perfect because people are broken. And American churches definitely have their own set of flaws that need fixing. But we were created to be surrounded by other believers in the same way that fish were created to be in the water. On our own we dry up; we start to believe crazy things; we get prideful and self-centered.
We need a place to know and be known. And the Body of Jesus Christ is where God designed those needs to be fulfilled.
Thanks for taking a moment to #Rethink some of our religious traditions and beliefs. I know that it can be scary to deconstruct and reconstruct our faith, but finding the Real Jesus is absolutely worth it. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions, or comments.
If you know someone who would love to #rethink, please share!
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