Last Sunday was a great discussion about John 6.  Thanks to Matt Deuel from Broken Voices (www.brokenvoices.org) for sharing his observations and faith in the sufficiency of Jesus.  I’m challenged this week to stop working for “food that perishes” and to allow the “bread of life” to satisfy my hungers.  This Sunday, we’ll be learning from Jesus’ response to an adulterous woman and the men who wanted to kill her.  We’d love to have you join us and encourage you to bring your any questions or insights you might have on John 8.

I immediately connected with that quote because I find that when I don’t have complete clarity on a direction or issue, I tend to retreat within myself and wait until I can get everything perfectly clear in my mind.  My desire for perfection paralizes me and keeps me from taking any steps forward.

This blog is a good example.  Its been a long time since I last posted.  I’ve had some ideas but not “perfect” ideas.  I’ve had thoughts that I’d like to share but not complete thoughts and so I choose not to share.  So the result is inactivity and nothing gets done.

There are also areas of my life that I have a guess what the next step is but am not sure what the next 5 are.  That keeps me from taking the next one.  So while I wait around to get things figured out, I can end up paralyzed.

At the root of all of this is my fear of failure and lack of trust in Jesus.  My lack of faith is not in what the results will be.  Its a lack of trust that the results do not define me.  My union with Jesus is the source of my life and my relationship with him is what makes me who I am.  Failing doesn’t make me a failure.  I am who I am because of Jesus has done.  Not because of what I have done or will do.

How about you?  Are you paralized by the need to be perfect or to have everything figured out?  Is fear robbing of you freedom?  Maybe today is the day to make the decision, take a step forward, and trust that you are one with the only perfect person in the universe.  He loves you perfectly and he does not fail.

Btw, I just read this blog and it really is perfect.

The idea is taken from chess.  The queen is the most powerful piece on the board but if you spend all of your time and energy protecting the queen, you may make your king vulnerable and lose the game.  There are alot of chess pieces each with their unique abilities.  By investing in protecting the queen, you may be neglecting the rest of your resources.

In church world, the queen is our weekly worship gathering.  We tend to spend all of our time and resources trying to make everything happen in that one hour. When we do that, we can forget about all of the other resources and time that could used better if they weren’t devoted to “protecting the queen.”

So at One Church this week we are not meeting on Sunday night for our regular worship gathering. Instead, we are meeting in homes in Woodstock, Roswell , and Atlanta in order to pray about and discuss ways that we can serve the communities that God has placed us in.

I’ve realized that for quite a while most of my time, thinking, emotions, and energy have been spent on making Sunday nights happen.  The measuring stick for how well One Church is doing became how many people came and how well I think I did in communicating the message.  As soon as Sunday night ended, I found myself immediately thinking about the next Sunday.

There’s nothing wrong with our working hard to make Sunday nights the best experience we can but not to the neglect of the talents and time of our complete community.  Of course, all of this is possible because God has gathered a great community of people at One Church who are following Jesus and really desire to do church differently so that we can do life differently.

We’ll gather again for worship on Easter evening and continue to ask the Holy Spirit to lead us to Jesus as we do.  I’m just excited that we’re starting to put ourselves in environments that allow us to live out our vision to “serve the world by leading people to freedom in Christ and freedom in life.”

I heard Rob Bell say that last week and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about how true that is.

As I think back over the times in my life when I was the most desperate for God to change my circumstances, He used those very circumstances to change me and to save me from the man that I had become. In fact, the most signficant things about me have been developed in the midst of “storms” that I begged God to rescue me from.

Even with that knowledge, I find most of my prayers lately are save-me-from-the-storm prayers. “If only you would change this circumstance…”  Maybe God is more concerned about me than he is the circumstance I find myself in.

Storms reveal what I’m placing my trust in and who I believe is really in control.  When things are easy, its easy for me to live under the illusion that I’m in control.  When a storm comes, it shatters that illusion and forces me to trust God who has been in control along.  That is so much easier to type than it is to live.

When I start to feel like I’ve lost control, I get anxious and scared.  I start to scramble and grasp onto anything to re-gain that feeling.  My prayers are less about trusting God than they are ways I try to manipulate him to do what I want.  My devotion and commitment become sacrifices that I show God to prove to him how much I deserve to be saved from the circumstance.

Maybe the reason God doesn’t always save me from the storm is because the storm is saving me.  Its saving me from being the kind of man that believes he’s always in control and deserves a God who does whatever I want.  Its making me into a man who believes that God is good, is in control, and can be trusted.