February 1, 2010
Marked By God's Love
I have just returned from a Larger Church Pastors/ New Church Development Coaches Gathering in St. Petersburg, Florida. The weather was amazing and our time together very informative. I continue to believe that evangelism must be connected to disciple making or it will simply remain the ministry of the church that we feel we must do but don't want to do. One of the things we talked about in St. Pete is the importance of knowing our stories. How many of us can talk about God's transforming and redemptive mission found in scripture? And how many of us can talk about our own stories of transformation? What I'm wondering is this: do we have the practices available in our churches to aid people in the claiming and reclaiming of these stories?
Do we have the practices of prayer, scripture reading, community that hold us accountable to the new life we have in Christ, and mentoring? One of the best ways to grow in the faith is to not only learn from another person, but to experience from that person how he or she treats others who are like him/her and not like him/ her. The point of these practices is to take us more deeply into the love of God, so that we can trust God when there is turmoil inside us and around us. Often, when there is turmoil, we try to make it on our own. But if we live more and more out of God's great love of us, then we are more and more the people God created us to be. And it is here that we begin to share with others the story that has set us free and saved us.
The church has to both nurture the faith of growing Christians and send us out to serve others. It is in this sending that the Kingdom of God is advanced through our words and acts of kindness. When I encounter my Kingdom purpose, I have a tendency to want to mark that experience with something concrete. For example, when my oldest daughter and I took a hike along a beautiful mountain creek a couple years ago, we shared our love of each other, God, and how God has wired us to share and live our lives with others. It was a powerful time for me to know the deep meaning of God's love in the love that my daughter and I share. All along this creek, she was collecting little grey stones from the creek. She collected so many that our pockets were overflowing with these creek stones. When I returned home, I placed all these stones in a glass vase to remind me that I am marked by God's love and that God's love can be trusted.
Not long ago, I visited a church in Pittsburgh that is raising up disciples of Jesus Christ that have a deep passion for serving people in their community. One night we went to a local tattoo parlor, where they have Bible studies in the basement, and I was so touched by the story of the owner of the parlor that I did something I never thought I'd do! I got a tattoo! It's very small, and it's on my forearm, but I just had to mark a moment in time in which I experienced the love of God changing the lives of people. I marked that time with a small tattoo of a cross, so that I would remember God's great love of me and trust it in the midst of life's beautiful and difficult moments.
But then I started thinking... We are already marked as God's beloved. We are marked with the waters of baptism. We are marked for a purpose: to experience and share the love of God in ways that bring healing to all of creation.
