advance

“Go in the strength you have…am I not sending you?” -Judges 6:12,14

Over the last few weeks, we have witnessed the ministry of Awaken advance in ways we had only dreamed of a few months ago when we arrived here. Last Tuesday evening, 10 of us (not including little Amelia Shuping, who is only 6-weeks old) gathered in our living room for our first official Life-Community Gathering. And yesterday (Sunday) our Core-Community began with 8 people meeting together for a time of connecting our hearts and dreaming about the possibilities ahead. It’s truly been an amazing and humbling experience for us personally to witness how God works once we choose to advance with Him.

Do you encounter moments in your life where you’re not sure whether to move or to stay? To advance or to retreat? To go or to wait? Moments where you feel stuck, unsure which way to go? Although Scripture is clear that there must be consistent moments built into our lives where we still ourselves before God in order to connect our hearts with Him, Scripture is also clear that we are called by God to advance, to move forward, to “go in the strength you have” in order to seize divine moments, opportunities and experiences that daily await each of us.

Recently, God has been leading me back to stories in the Bible of people who He simply called to advance, to move, to go based on what they already knew. Stories where God’s will wasn’t always perfectly clear about the situation, but where their hearts were pursuing His. Stories where the only thing they knew they couldn’t do was stay, because staying meant getting stuck, and in some extreme cases, death. Stories like Jonathan and his armor-bearer (1 Samuel 14), Gideon and the 300 men (Judges 6-7), and the perils of King David voiced in the Psalms.

What I’m learning in these stories and through our ministry is that once we choose to move with God, we discover confirmation in the midst of movement. We are constantly being called forward to seize our divine moments and experience the exhilaration of a life of fearing God and nothing else. Failing to advance is to miss life and to find ourselves stuck, perhaps waiting for the very thing God is inviting us into.

Is there some divine opportunity that God is calling you forward to experience? Will you advance or will you stay, or even possibly retreat? Will you simply see your divine moments today or will you seize them? Maybe the thing that God is simply calling you to do today is to move.

Advance today in the strength of the Lord and discover confirmation for your journey in the midst of your movement.

new

If you’re like a lot of other people, the beginning of the year signifies NEW things and NEW opportunities in life; perhaps a new routine, new goals, or simply a chance for a fresh start. Regardless of whether or not you chose a Resolution for 2007, the New Year gives us hope for better things to come.

The word “new” is actually very symbolic and meaningful in Scripture. It’s a word connected to God’s creational activity throughout the Bible. In the beginning, God created everything new. It was perfect, flawless, glorious…and it included humans. But something happened, and it continues to happen today. Sin corrupted not only humankind, but all creation as well. As a result, we are a broken, imperfect people living in a fractured, fallen world. So what was once ‘new,’ became scarred, flawed and filthy.

But here’s another great meaning behind the word “new” that we find in Scripture. In Revelation 21:5, Jesus (the One sitting on the throne) says, “Look, I am making all things new!” The amazing work of God in our lives is found in the hope that He has a plan for restoring what was once lost. Jesus comes to take what was once new and to “renew” it back to its original intent.

So may you be encouraged in the knowledge of the hope that God IS restoring the flaws, the brokenness and the imperfections in your life, and that the process will graciously continue in 2007.