I spent the weekend in Pitkin. Thought alot, read alot, prayed alot. Came home with lots of new thoughts, lots of new questions, and LOTS of redbug bites all over my body. Sadie and I went exploring like Dora, I made a tent out of a sheet, and in the process had to hug a tree. The tree apparently bit me. About 30 times.
Feeling a bit like I just found out the world is round instead of flat. Also feeling like everyone else around me still thinks it's flat. Some song I heard the other day said "when you find out the world is round, some things have to shift". That explains what's going on in me right now, I think. Things are shifting, my eyes and heart are seeing things that have been there all along and I never saw, or read, them the way I was supposed to.
Listened to some sermons of David Platt's on the way. One of his sermons really hit home. "Will we die in our religiosity, or die in our devotion". "Will we give our lives for the mission, or retreat from the mission". Chewing on this.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Coffee with Kim
Today I did something out of the box. Out of AMY's box. I actually called someone to go for coffee. I met Kim a few weeks ago when she came to Freshman night at the BCM to meet students. She and her husband are the new "presby" ministers down the street. I have met very few people in my life where I instantly feel like we're friends, even meant to know each other. I can count maybe three, Jessica Bufkin, Kaye Geiger, and John Schaffner. I knew instantly that Kim was to be my friend. Regardless, being the introverted hermit I am, I waited a week to call her. But today I was granted freedom from my motherly duties by my beautiful husband, so I called her up and strangely enough she was free as well (a new mom herself), so we spent two hours talking over coffee at one of the two coffee shops in Hammond.
A few of you (mostly the ones in the hotel room in Minneapolis a while back) will understand this next statement better than others,she gets me. She and her husband are freakishly alot like me and John. Their story is almost parallel to ours, only with a twist. They come from a Vineyard background (very, um, happy people:-). She grew up here, moved away for quite a few years, never thought she would come back to minister in the south, and now here they are. Feeling the same feelings of frustration, the same feeling that there is something more, and that we are here for a reason and we don't know WHAT!
She spoke words to me that I needed to here. She hasn't known me forever, has no fear of hurting my feelings or losing an old friend, and so she was honest. Plus, she is not "Baptist", she's very open with her feelings and thoughts, and let it be known. She talked to John about two minutes before she made the assessment that John had "checked out". And that's exactly what's been going on with us for a while. We both "checked out". She saw the strangehold of depression, fear, hurt, and lack of faith completely evident in our lives, and she called me on it. I needed someone to tell me that. I told her how time and again God had provided for us on the mission field with amazing things, how he had given me not just one, but TWO babies when the doctors said it wasn't possible, all the things the Lord had done for us. And she told me I was like the Isrealites, they saw the red sea parted, and they cloud by day and fire by night and then still turned away from the Lord. No faith. Where did this fear and lack of faith come from?
I have just been "coming around" from this whole "checking out" thing the last few weeks, and it's amazing that the things that were stirring in me over a year ago are still there. There is this ever present question "Don't we want something more?" I'm reading a book right now titled "Adventures in Missing the Point" I think that EXACTLY sums up what I see in churches and religiousity down here. We are missing the point completely. The point about everything, the point in Jesus dying for our sins, the point in the gospel, the point in church, the point in the great commission, the point in what we were "saved" from, I could go on and on.
Last week I was really praying about what I should be studying. I have had NO direction in that area for some time. I have skipped over the gospels numerous times in my life, just because I thought I knew it all. I felt clearly that God was leading me towards starting over. Reading it as if I had not read it before, as if I knew nothing. A few chapters in I read words I have read tons of times before "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near". For the first time I thought, "what?" What is the "kingdom of heaven"? I think I have read that my entire life to mean "repent, for you will die and go to hell". It has nagged on me ever since. What does it mean for the "kingdom of heaven" to be near? The entire book of Matthew is stories of what the "kingdom of heaven" is like, but if we don't know what they are talking about none of it makes sense. I asked John, and he went on and on for a minute or so, and then stopped and said "I don't know". Have I missed the point? Has anyone else out there ever thought this? Were you raised to think it was about hell? Am I just ignorant?
All that to say, if being a Christian isREALLY about the kingdom of heaven, and we are to seek first the kingdom of heaven, what does that mean? I told Kim this and she laughed and told me I have some doctrinal issues (told you she was blunt). She explained some things to me, but I am really praying for the Lord to open my eyes to "see it".
I feel there is something for me. I feel a stirring inside me that scares me, excites me, and frustrates me all at the same time. It also concerns me a little that the first people we have really clicked with down here are people WAY outside our "bubble", and we have been slapped on the wrist several times for trying to do things outside that "bubble".
Anyway, ramblings. Just wanted to get out my feelings I guess. What do you all think?
A few of you (mostly the ones in the hotel room in Minneapolis a while back) will understand this next statement better than others,she gets me. She and her husband are freakishly alot like me and John. Their story is almost parallel to ours, only with a twist. They come from a Vineyard background (very, um, happy people:-). She grew up here, moved away for quite a few years, never thought she would come back to minister in the south, and now here they are. Feeling the same feelings of frustration, the same feeling that there is something more, and that we are here for a reason and we don't know WHAT!
She spoke words to me that I needed to here. She hasn't known me forever, has no fear of hurting my feelings or losing an old friend, and so she was honest. Plus, she is not "Baptist", she's very open with her feelings and thoughts, and let it be known. She talked to John about two minutes before she made the assessment that John had "checked out". And that's exactly what's been going on with us for a while. We both "checked out". She saw the strangehold of depression, fear, hurt, and lack of faith completely evident in our lives, and she called me on it. I needed someone to tell me that. I told her how time and again God had provided for us on the mission field with amazing things, how he had given me not just one, but TWO babies when the doctors said it wasn't possible, all the things the Lord had done for us. And she told me I was like the Isrealites, they saw the red sea parted, and they cloud by day and fire by night and then still turned away from the Lord. No faith. Where did this fear and lack of faith come from?
I have just been "coming around" from this whole "checking out" thing the last few weeks, and it's amazing that the things that were stirring in me over a year ago are still there. There is this ever present question "Don't we want something more?" I'm reading a book right now titled "Adventures in Missing the Point" I think that EXACTLY sums up what I see in churches and religiousity down here. We are missing the point completely. The point about everything, the point in Jesus dying for our sins, the point in the gospel, the point in church, the point in the great commission, the point in what we were "saved" from, I could go on and on.
Last week I was really praying about what I should be studying. I have had NO direction in that area for some time. I have skipped over the gospels numerous times in my life, just because I thought I knew it all. I felt clearly that God was leading me towards starting over. Reading it as if I had not read it before, as if I knew nothing. A few chapters in I read words I have read tons of times before "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near". For the first time I thought, "what?" What is the "kingdom of heaven"? I think I have read that my entire life to mean "repent, for you will die and go to hell". It has nagged on me ever since. What does it mean for the "kingdom of heaven" to be near? The entire book of Matthew is stories of what the "kingdom of heaven" is like, but if we don't know what they are talking about none of it makes sense. I asked John, and he went on and on for a minute or so, and then stopped and said "I don't know". Have I missed the point? Has anyone else out there ever thought this? Were you raised to think it was about hell? Am I just ignorant?
All that to say, if being a Christian isREALLY about the kingdom of heaven, and we are to seek first the kingdom of heaven, what does that mean? I told Kim this and she laughed and told me I have some doctrinal issues (told you she was blunt). She explained some things to me, but I am really praying for the Lord to open my eyes to "see it".
I feel there is something for me. I feel a stirring inside me that scares me, excites me, and frustrates me all at the same time. It also concerns me a little that the first people we have really clicked with down here are people WAY outside our "bubble", and we have been slapped on the wrist several times for trying to do things outside that "bubble".
Anyway, ramblings. Just wanted to get out my feelings I guess. What do you all think?
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