Living It!!

Yesterday began 40 Days of prayer for what God is going to do at Summit Community Church and it started with an opportunity for us to prove what we are going to be about.  It has been my dream to do life and church with a group of people that truly do have a heart for PEOPLE.  Not because of what they look like or if they have the same beliefs, but just because they see them as a creation in the image of God.  As we kicked off our prayer, we prayed that God will help us maintain our vision of reaching every man, woman and child with the life transforming reality of Jesus and we got a chance to go after that vision.  One of the guys in our community has a friend that lost his apartment due to a fire that woke him up.  In the midst of this happening he lost everything!  I can’t even imagine what this must feel like!!  As Pete, from our community, heard what was happening, he sent out a prayer request to all of us.  It was only a matter of time before people were offering clothes, food and money!  All to a guy they haven’t met!  This is awesome, actually this is called living the way scripture calls us to.  I have to say I am so humbled to have the chance to do life with Summit.  They are an amazing group of people.  Our prayer now turns to the man that was served, that he will see how Jesus can transform lives!!

Conditionally Unconditional

This morning I was going through my regular routine of waking up to a cup or two of coffee and looking at scripture a thought really began to brew in me.  As I kept pushing it away I picked up The Tangible Kingdom by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, which did not help my thinking or should I say make it easier.  Over the past ten years I have been in large churches and seen God do amazing things, but the more I think about the context I was in the less glamorized I am by it.  The reality is that for years I have preached and pushed people to love unconditionally, but the more I look back I realized I have always put conditions on people all around me.  The more we look at the life of Jesus and what he did in his day to day activities very little of it had to do with coming to a big show!  Now, I know I am not saying anything new right now, but what would it look like if the church actually begin to live out what it preaches on a weekly basis, would America still be in a spiritual spiral?  Would people still mock Christianity?  Think about it? What would change in your life?

This morning I have been haunted by the idea that the church God is leading me to plant has to figure this out, we can’t be just another show where we are wrapped up into who is reading our blogs, how many locations we can have one day, but that it is our goal to have authentic community that demonstrates the life and beliefs of Jesus!  That we really love people for who they are and who God created them to be.  We don’t expect people to look like us, live like us and think like us before breaking the doors of our community, instead we just love them.  Everyone agrees in principle, but do they or myself in our action???  God’s design is that “we” go out to all of the world, not just hand out invitations to a production, but we get our hands dirty and love people for who they are! Much easier said than done.