This morning we studied the passage in 1 Kings about Elijah. I’ve heard it a thousand times, but this morning, Sean Azzaro, my senior pastor, said something that was a totally new take on an old story. He talked about how before the big show down on Mt Carmel, God had sent 3 years of famine on the land due to King Ahab’s refusal to see God for who He is. Three years of famine. I live in South Texas and so know a little something about famine. But three years? Wow. How brown and ugly must everything have been? How hot and exasperated must they have all been?
So Elijah goes to the King and says that if he will agree to this “God Throwdown” of sorts, he would send rain. Ahab responds with an unusual response that perhaps gives us insight to the depth of his hopelessness. This chief worshiper of Baal agrees to Elijah’s challenge. What caused this monumental change of heart?
Sean said that sometimes, God has to let people get really thirsty.
How thirsty am I? How desperate am I to see an end to my own spiritual drought? Is my own dryness perhaps a product of not realizing the depth of my thirst? Complacency sets in, and you eventually just come to terms with dryness… it’s no longer unusual, so you settle in, assuming it will always be that way.
But it doesn’t have to be. Life can be vibrant and real and alive, faith can be explosive and radical and consuming. But I have to thirst.
Lord, I’m thirsty. Make it unsatiable
Filed under: my faith journey | Tags: christianity, church life, faith, spiritual growth
I’ve been really wanting a place to write lately, so I have created a blog. I’ve had other blogs that have come and gone, so part of me asks, what is going to make this one different? I’m not sure, honestly. I just know that I am at a different place now with a bunch in my head that begs to be downloaded, so hopefully it will sustain itself.
I have come to a place lately of “holy discontent”. Bill Hybels wrote a book by the same name and it always sounded cool, but i never really got it. For the last week or so, I get it. And to be honest, there are parts of it that are cool, but parts that appear to be the very antithesis of cool. There are parts that are agonizing and brutal and heart wrenching because… well because you are discontent. Something is not as it should be. And in this case, something I am passionate about is not right.
So what is my holy discontent? Well, I hope to unpack it more fully in future posts, but for today, my “holy discontent” is “playing church”. By that I mean that I am frustrated with just going through the motions and allowing church to become a place where Christians are safe from the world. Church should also be a place where lost people are welcomed, loved, encouraged and accepted, even before they experience life change.
But I don’t want to focus on that today. I have vowed to never be a person who criticized the church unfairly or harshly. Today, I am wrestling with the truth that the church isn’t all it could be because I am not what I should be. As a youth pastor, it’s easier to minster to the saved kids. They “get-it” and use the f-bomb less frequently. Lost kids are messy and unsafe and they questions and they have hurts.
I must become one who won’t settle for easy and simple and will make a point of seeking out the messy. How can I expect the church to do it if i won’t?
I must become loving, compassionate, surrendered, encouraging, focused, and obsessed with my mission.
I must decrease so that He can increase.
I must become a passionate follower of Christ, even when it isn’t easy or popular or when it takes me to messy, scary places. I must lay aside comfort for the sake of Christ.
This is all new in my head, so it may not make sense, but as I have thought about my holy discontent, I have been forced to realize that it may not be the church it all.
My holy discontent may just very well be the complacency I have found in me.
Church Can Still Be Cool 