On the road again. That has been the theme of our weekly worship services. Sunday we met at Angelic Ministries on Central Ave. It was a wonderful time of worship and celebrating God's faithfulness. The worship team did a fantastic job ushering us into the presence of the Father. We had at least six first time guests and over thirty people were in attendance.
We believe God is finally bringing us to the place where we will worship, at least for a little while. Vine Middle School has opened up there auditorium to us and we are very grateful. We hope the paper work that needs to be completed by the Knox Co school board will be completed this week, and we will have good news in the next day or two. Vine Middle is in a great location on Martin Luther King and places us between two public housing projects, Walter P. Taylor and Austin Homes. It also keeps us around the Five Points Community where we feel led to minister.
Once we meet and work out the bugs in the auditorium, and get our routine down, we will announce our launch date. It will be the culmination of seven months of prayer, planning and much sacrifice. Our small, but growing congregation is very excited about the days ahead. We believe God is doing something extraordinary and bringing many pieces of a puzzle together. I believe, in the next couple of years, we are going to see a visitation by God on the inner city of Knoxville, that will be undeniably God.
In my sermon yesterday I talked about the few references in the Bible that called certain men "friends of God." It was said of Moses in Exodus 33:11. It was said of Abraham in James 2:23 and Isaiah 41:8. It was said by Jesus when he called his disciples friends in John 15:15. I believe it could also be said of the Apostle Paul who said he would much rather leave this earth so he could be with Jesus.
I believe being a friend of God is a deep level of spiritual intimacy with God. It goes beyond being a child of God or a servant of God. It seems to go to a deeper place of relationship than most believers want to go. How we get there goes beyond simply laying out formulaic principles that has the potential to kick us into some kind of performance trap. I looked at some characteristics that were common to each man to see if we can understand something of what it means to be a friend of God.
I know there are probably many similarities between these men who were called God's friends, but I want to focus on three and specifically one. First, they all had a passion and desire to know God. It is obvious we must be a God chaser if we are going to know God deeply and intimately. Second, they all had traumatic, dramatic experiences in their lives. Most of those experiences involved suffering and plenty of it.
The last similarity I noticed was each one experienced a change of location. Moses was born a Hebrew, lived in Pharoah's palace, killed an Egyptian, lived in the desert, then back to Egypt, but this time as a Hebrew. Abraham moved from Ur to Canaan. The disciples left everything they had to follow Jesus and Paul left the intellectual life of a Jewish Pharisee to minister to the Gentiles. I believe there is something significant about a change of location and a change of culture. Paul said, "I have become all things to all men so that I might wen some..."
Paul notes the primary responsibility for change lies in the one moving into the new culture. He did not try to change their culture, he changed so that he could gain credibility so they might listen to the message of Jesus Christ. He certainly did not engage or condone sinful or inappropriate behavior to be like them. But he did focus on adapting, or changing to the culture he was in at the time.
I believe it is something very God-like to leave your comfortable culture and go to a new culture, a new place. It expands our view and perspective of life. It widens our narrow scope of what we experience as our reality. And we begin to care and become friends with people who can give us a more complete picture and understanding of who God is. Something is missing when we hang out only in our Ur. Beth Moore says UR stands for Usual Routine. As a matter of fact leaving one culture for another is what God did when He left His divine culture to come slumming with the human culture. Perhaps that is why people are so touched and changed when they go on short term mission trips. The problem is we get back home and settle back into our UR, usual routine, and slowly drift away from something that is transforming.
I hope and pray that many Christians will begin to be challenged by getting outside their comfort zone and leaving their UR. It is difficult, challenging, filled with potential misunderstanding, painful, and sometimes lonely. That is what makes it so real and transforming. It provides us the greatest opportunity to truly and practically be like Jesus. Awesome!
I pray that God will continue to lead us into new places that will stretch us beyond our own personal comfort and will take us out of our UR.
God bless you. Todd
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