Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and could not sleep. It was exactly 3:00 am (don’t ya love when that happens?). And here’s what was wrong. I was actually concerned that the simple things I had to say at the midweek service were going to turn folks away.
Let me explain.
It’s not that they did not need to be said (they surely did). It’s not that they weren’t crucial to a spiritual understanding that precedes any kind of real growth in Christ (they are). It’s just that, now watch this, IT WASN’T THAT EXCITING! I have to admit, my knowledge that we are getting to some things in the weeks ahead that are AWESOME makes it tempting to just ‘look ahead.’ After all, who likes the ‘2 a day’ practices as much as game time? But if you don’t go through weeks of 2 a days then come game time you will get your first taste of an absolutely miserable season…Your team will be trounced week in and week out.
The fact is, if we don’t lay the right foundation for the ‘spiritual disciplines’ series and if we don’t lay a right foundation for the ‘MMWY’ gatherings (that’s short for Mighty Men and Women and Youth incase you haven’t picked up on it from the last post)then come game time for Jesus, we will only be frustrated. Or worse, we will be spiritually trounced by the evil one.
Consider Jesus’ words from Luke 11:24-26
24When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, searching for rest. But when it finds none, it says, I will return to the person I came from. 25 So it returns and finds that its former home is all swept and in order. 26 Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before.
This is all about someone who had troubles in their life and made an honest effort to ‘clean up their act,’ maybe even implement some better habits in order to live a better life. However, they didn’t prepare to grow the way that Christ says we are to prepare, or worse, they tried to change without Christ at all — and the rest is history — a tragic ending where the individual is even worse off than before!
God wants this incredible season of renewal at SCC to be great. He wants it to be true and long lasting, so once again let me say it for the 7,000,000,000th time; let’s carefully build a strong foundation so that each of us will see change that lasts a lifetime. Stick with it and the house will be impenetrable to the evil one!