Panning for gold in a jewelery store

On Sunday we had a guest speaker at church. I was powerbombed. It was frickn' awesome.

So many words of truth were spoken that I hesitate to focus on any one revelation. It was just so rich...and compelling. I know that not everyone received it in the same way I did, and that's cool, as we're all in different places on the journey, but I know there will be fruit from what was shared, even if it's not immediate.

That seems to be how God works a lot of the time: slow and steady. Not always, but that has been my overwhelming experience and what I've seen in most others too.

But if I HAD to single out one thing to share, right now, it would be about reality.

We are so immersed in our culture, in our conditioning, that we actually become convinced that the way of life presented to us in society is THE way of life. The unfortunate thing is that I think it applies to the world both outside and inside the church. The church, in general, is enmeshed in this culture so strongly that we begin to adopt its distorted views of life, which in turn distorts how we live.

We are not to divorce ourselves from our culture. That is not the call. The call is to follow Christ into the culture. The culture may be screwed up beyond belief and share very few values that line up with the values of Christ, but that doesn't mean we abandon the world. Change is possible.

We change things by being changed people.

We become changed people by allowing Christ to change us.

We allow Christ to change us by following him.

I think I'll just leave it there for now.

End on a hight note.