Children's & Student Ministries will be hosting Christmas Eve services at 12pm, 2pm, 4pm and 6pm in the Event Center. These services will be family friendly and families are encouraged to come and celebrate together.
This Thursday November 17th, will be our second "Big Group" gathering from 7-830
Join students who have found The Landing to be a safe place where you can find hope, help and healing.
There is a frog in my backyard and he’s VERY loud. My wife noticed it first. One night as we were both falling asleep she said, “That frog has to be huge, for all that sound he’s making!” That first night, I figured it would be a one-time disturbance. I was wrong.
To be honest, I haven’t had much experience with frogs, nor given them much thought. I have never had an opinion about them for better or for worse. You could say I have always been pretty ambivalent when it comes to frogs. Not that I have anything against them, but I never really cared. But this particular frog is different; I can’t stop thinking about him.
Mainly, because he won’t let me. You see, it’s at that beautiful moment when the busyness of my day collides with the comfort of my pillow, that this frog likes to make sure that I know he is there. He sounds off every night, trumpeting out his throaty “ribbits” to remind me, it seems, that the two of us are on different schedules. When I want to sleep, he wants to sing, and his timing is uncanny. To put it simply, what started as a mild annoyance has grown into a deep hatred. This frog, has become the bane of my existent, my nemesis.
Last night, my irritation reached an all-time high. I HAD to find the frog and put an end to the sleepless nights once and for all. I began to formulate a plan. I thought about getting dressed, grabbing my jacket from the closet and a flashlight from the garage. I asked myself, “Are you ready to end this?” “Yes.”
“Do you want your life to be different, to be better? Yes.”
“Are you ready for things to be back to normal? Yes! From the very core of who I am, yes!”
Then I rolled over and went to sleep.
I woke up tired this morning and as I was drinking my coffee I couldn’t help but think about that frog and how, strangely enough, he reminds me of God. Well not really God, he’s not my nemesis. I was thinking more of my relationship with God. Too often, I respond to God the way I responded to the frog - with laziness and ambivalence. I hear God; I know he is there. He keeps interrupting me. He intrigues me until I want to look for him, to find him, to find rest. But my desire is rarely desperate and action rarely follows.
I believe Jesus when he said, “If you look for me you will find me. If you knock I will answer.”
How do we actively look for God? How do we move from desiring God to seeking him? Where has God been interrupting you?
Are you listening?
PRODIGAL: prod-i-gal 1. recklessly extravagant 2. having spent everything
"Jesus is showing us [in the the story of the two sons] the God of Great Expenditure, who is nothing if not prodigal toward us, his children. God's reckless grace is our greatest hope, a life-changing experience," (Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God).
God is a prodigal God. He is a God that loves His Creation with "reckless grace," with spendthrift love. He has spent everything to be in a love relationship with us. And we are simply asked to come join the party, to love Him in response to Him first loving us.
If we knew that and lived that, our lives would constantly exhibit the freedom and abandon that I believe Adam and Eve lived with during their time in Eden before the Fall. What I'm talking about is a perfect relationship with God, a relationship unscathed by sin, the relationship that humanity was designed to experience when we were first created in the image of God - with none of the constant brokenness that reminds us that this life is messed up compared to what it once was.
If we are to worship this prodigal God, we have to first understand that "He first loved us" (1 John 4:19) and, because of that, we can love Him in return. Worshiping God is a response to what He has already done, what He is doing at the present moment, and what He will continue to do tomorrow, next week, next year, next decade, and on for an eternity. The Bible takes on a whole new meaning when we realize that it is the story of God working in the midst of humanity, showing us how God interacts with humanity and how humanity is to interact with Him.
If we recognize that, our lives can take on a totally different dimeanor, one where our choices and our lifestyles and our work habits and our arts and our sports and our churches and our Sunday servies are a reflection of God Himself, not merely a production created by human hands.
"So we are Christ's ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us," (2 Cor. 5:20, NLT) - as if to say, God wants us to show the world was He looks like and acts like.
Everything that God is about is meant to bring us into relationship with Him. A.W. Tozer puts it this way:
"The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of thier hearts," (The Pursuit of God).
I would hope that, when Sunday comes, we "may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of our hearts." More than that, I hope that we experience that no matter the day, no matter the time or the place.
God is accessible here and now, a truth made possible by the fact that Jesus took our brokenness with Him to the cross and absolved us of our sinfullness. As Charles Wesley says in his hymn "Arise My Soul Arise:"
"Arise, my soul, arise; shake off thy guilty fears;
The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears:
Before the throne my surety stands,
Before the throne my surety stands,
My name is written on His hands.He ever lives above, for me to intercede;
His all redeeming love, His precious blood, to plead:
His blood atoned for all our race,
His blood atoned for all our race,
And sprinkles now the throne of grace.Five bleeding wounds He bears; received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers; they strongly plead for me:
“Forgive him, O forgive,” they cry,
“Forgive him, O forgive,” they cry,
“Nor let that ransomed sinner die!”The Father hears Him pray, His dear anointed One;
He cannot turn away, the presence of His Son;
His Spirit answers to the blood,
His Spirit answers to the blood,
And tells me I am born of God.My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear;
He owns me for His child; I can no longer fear:
With confidence I now draw nigh,
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And “Father, Abba, Father,” cry.
We can worship Him in this moment, because He is a prodigal God. It's not about our brokenness anymore. It's about His faithfullness and love for us and His grace towards us. That is a reckless God who is worth giving ourselves to today and for eternity.
