Dear Faith Family,
I want to share with you a note I shared with our Gospel Community earlier this week. As most of you know, I found myself unable to play my part in our Gathering on Sunday due to a rather abrupt and intense illness. Though I am extremely grateful for Deedra's nursing skills and Chaz joyously jumping in to ensure the Gathering was something worth being a part of, I did truly miss getting to serve you and worship with you!
In the twelve-plus years of vocational ministry prior to starting Christ City, I didn't even need a full hand to count the number of Sundays missed because of illness. Yet, it seems in these last eight-plus years since our faith family's inception that I've had to start using my toes to keep track! And I'm about to run out of digits!
While there are certainly multiple factors contributing to this trend, it has been my experience that when we are collectively onto something important for our lived faith, that the enemy and illness often make their presence more directly felt, at least in my life. And while I cannot say for certain what was ultimately behind my untimely absence, I do know that what we are onto in the stories Jesus tells is no small thing for us and our neighbors.
The parables are not merely children's stories told at night to help us sleep well or even make sure that we do the right things. The parables are Jesus' way of getting to our hearts so that our hearts might beat in rhythm with His. These stories with intent, get us in on life with God and God's life into us. As Stephanie read for us Sunday, "Whenever someone has a ready heart for [the mystery of Christ in us, the good news of the kingdom], the insights and understandings flow freely...That's why I [Jesus] tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight." (Matt. 13:12-13).
Jesus uses this indirect communication to get around our ignorance and arrogance regarding who God is, especially how he works in our lives and the world. The parables are told so that we might experience Kingdom Epiphanies. It is Spirit-filled meditation on Jesus' sideways stories that allow the apostle Paul to communicate what is at the heart of the parables so directly:
"Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them--living and breathing God!
Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed the invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him [who have 'ready hearts']--even though you still experience all the limitations of sin--you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breaths in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from the dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!" (Rom. 8:6, 9-11)
Just imagine what our daily living, our families, our neighborhoods, our city, and nation will look like when we are "alive as Christ"! May our hearts today, this week, this year be ready for "the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to His saints...this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." (Col. 1:26-27). To the fullness of our lives and the blessing of others.
Love you, faith family. God bless!