Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. 1 John 4:7-12 (NLT)
Lately, I haven’t been writing on this blog as much. I am not really sure why that is but I think part of is it is that life has become so overwhelming. Not in a bad way. Overwhelmingly full with God directing all the goings on. There are so many moving parts, so much God is saying. I am trying to say focused on what he is doing and what he is telling me to do.....The journey is amazing and I’m loving it. But to try to put it into words sometimes overwhelms me.
As you know, I started the process to plant a church. And I am still working my day job. There are lots of terms for this: bivocation and covocation.. All of those mean different things but I like dual vocational because honestly, you are going head on in what feels like two different directions at once. Crazy also fits some days.
My day job has suddenly picked up. A LOT. And I have been working on the church plant. Then, there is life. Family which I adore. Wash to be done, bills to be paid, groceries to be purchased and the distinct call God has placed on all of our lives to reach out to people and love them where ever he directs that day. This is what I am learning is living a life called to serve Jesus. It’s not organized. It can seem very chaotic and honestly, some days it feels like a whirlwind where you are managing many completely different things as the same time.
Here’s the problem. I am a very task oriented person. While God has been teaching me to be more people oriented than task oriented over the years when I get busy, guess what I revert back to?
A week or so ago, I got really frustrated because something wasn’t working as efficiently as it should. I was talking to God about it and complaining and in general venting about the lack of communication and the problems it caused. In my venting, I usually get around to asking him about my part in this play. As I did, he asked me a question.
Were the lives of the people I used in the Bible efficient and well put together? Or were they messy? Are there any God stories that you know that involve people that run like a well-oiled machine? Including yours?
And there was my “ah ha” moment. God is a God of order. I know that. But he is also a God that loves people. More than anything. My tendency to want things to work well, flow smoothly and be communicated fully is fine. They are good traits to have but, never at the expense of people.
Above all else, we need to love each other. It is only in demonstrating that love are we are going to show Jesus’ love to a world that can’t see it (both in and out of the church by the way.)
I am still a messy work in progress and thank God, he is still using me. You see no matter how efficient I am, no matter how well I can make a project run (that’s my day job), compared to Jesus, I am still a mess. And his grace covers me. That knowledge should totally change the way I live my life and the focus of my days.