So, I'm getting my hats back on, and am thankful thankful that we'll have friends living next door this week while Matt is gone and while no one else is living on campus yet. I'm ready to have our staff and students back on campus...August 12!
This morning as we celebrated Nora and tried to actually PAUSE together before the busy new year begins tomorrow (and Dad is gone all week), we decided to home church, and the girls immediately asked if we could livestream Pastor Jerome from Seeds of Greatness Bible Church. Matt will actually be seeing him tomorrow at board meetings, but it was fun to see him today, too! (Lily was obviously really excited to actually know a pastor on the tv :)
I am so thankful the girls did ask about live-streaming his message, because it was GOOD. He spoke on Biblical holiness, on practically what it is and isn't, and it was good, meaty truth. A few thoughts he shared have been resonating in my life quite a bit lately:
1) "We need to be studying the Word so much that it messes our minds up." I've been working with Lily and Sofie this year on learning how to read and study the Bible independently of a devotional, even independently of me, and I know sometimes they (and others) think I talk too much about what the Word says, about studying the Word, and about being in the Word.
But the reality is that our minds and hearts and lives on their own have nothing good, no wisdom, no truth of their own. The World, it has no real truth or wisdom or satisfaction to offer. But His Word...that's what messes up our minds from their natural ways, that's what messes up our perspective from the world. It WILL mess their minds up, and that's exactly what I pray for, daily.
2) "A spirit of complaining and criticism will quickly STOP the movement of God in our lives." Oh man. How often do I want God to be moving at Emmaus, moving in my marriage, moving in my family, moving in work and ministry, moving in my relationships, and I yet I am spending half my mind-and-heart time grumbling like the Israelites, whom God brought to a stand-still over and over again!? The Bible makes it clear that there is simply no room for complaining or criticism (both temptations for me!) in the life of an abandoned Christ-follower...how many times could God have MOVED if I had been ready and waiting and trusting instead of irritated and entitled?
3) "The church is allowing the world to rock it to sleep." THAT'S IT, isn't it, exactly. Where do we need to allow the King to wake us up from the ways of the world, the wisdom of the world, the celebrated by the world? To renew our first love? To rekindle HIS truth, HIS love, His spotless bride?
4) "It's not important how we feel about what God says. It's important how we believe what God says." As the girls and I have been reading through James, there have been several verses that have caught them off. "Really?" Lily has asked. "That's not what I thought!" and it's opened doors to us learning how to take our conflicting feelings, our thoughts, our experiences, and lay them DOWN in faith that what GOD SAYS is TRUE. When it doesn't seem like it to us, we ARE WRONG. We chose to believe that God of the Universe is Right. Is True. Is Just. Is Love. Is Good. Is on the throne. Because HE IS. And I'm not. I love how God used Jerome to reiterate this often-hard truth to the girls...to me.
I know July 29th isn't the calendar new year, but it is for the Ayars. Here we go!
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