You Can Have It All

You Can Have It All

Recently I wrote about Joel and I seeking roots during this season of our lives.  We have been living in this small city 20 years next month, so of course we have some roots here already just through experiencing 80 changes of seasons, the years of ministry, and of course the great people we have met and grown to care about.  And then there is the familiar.  There is something to be said for the familiar.

Roots are found in our families, in community, in our homes, careers/callings, in our houses of worship, those places where we feel accepted and embraced for who we are.  Even as we change. Especially as we change. There is something to be said for change, too.

Today it has re-surfaced...the seeking roots spiritually, in our faith journey.  It is another kind of season, where we find ourselves worshiping in two worlds....that of our foundational Lutheran denomination, and that "something more" which God has beckoned us into....leading us to a non-denominational church for such a time as this.

There is no doubt in our minds that God has called us into a place of the charismatic, the prophetic, and the supernatural healing.  Absolutely no doubt. Somewhere in this calling, this beckoning into more, is the place where God is leading us to put down roots.  We are not naive enough to believe we will find the perfect place to live or worship, but we know we will be led to the best for us according to God's plan.

I won't deny that there is a noticeable tension here, in this pause in our journey with God between the old and the new.  And I find I am saddened by those from our "old" world who choose to judge us by the path we have taken. On the other hand, over the past four years in our "new" world we have had to defend our mainstream denomination more times than I care to count.  We are still learning to define who we are now, so how can anyone else be allowed to define who we are or are not?  Only God.

Even with the struggle to re-define ourselves, we would never go back.  God shook our world to it's core four years ago with Joel's overnight healing and Holy Spirit shake-up, and there is no return to what was.  There is labor before birthing a baby and it feels like there is a labor we are experiencing now before birthing more of the new in our spiritual lives.  We are in this amazing, terrifying, exciting, and challenging process as we seek all God has for us.  We have told God He can have it all....every part of our world..as we ask for "more" at any cost.  We may be experiencing some of that "at any cost" tension now.  

Bonnie Gray said today in her blog post "There is a place for us:  Jesus Himself."  It is a comfort to be reminded of where our heart calls home.  In Heavenly places, this is where we have eternal roots.  It is not to stop us from seeking a place to plant our feet deep into the damp soil of the ground, a community, a church.  We are created for relationship to the land, with ourselves and people, and with our Papa God.  Above all we seek the latter.  At any cost.