Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Hebrews 10:23-25
After a year in church planting, I think everyone is tired. It's been a long year of exciting newness and changes, new relationships with others and seeing God's promises fulfilled. We're like the Israelites after escaping Egypt, and seeing God lead us as a pillar of fire from place to place. But we're hot and tired and sick of manna. We're tired of being poor and we're restless for our home, a place to settle down and just sit with our Father.
But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. Phil. 3:20
Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling. 2 Cor. 5:2
For Moriah, everything is new. All day every day is stimulating newness. At the end of every day, she's had it! She's fussy, tired and nothing will calm her stressed out little body...Except one thing: Mommy. I have found her place of peace and rest in my arms and I hold her tight until she's calm and finally goes to sleep.
I've been restless too, even fussy. I don't like being a stranger in a new land. Sometimes I feel like an alien on another planet. (I Peter 2:11) I'm longing for familiarity, for the security that comes in sitting still, being held and resting peacefully.
You are familiar with all my ways. You hem me in—behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me. Ps.139:3 & 5
Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. Ps. 46:10
It's hard for me to think that our church might not ever have a building to settle down in, and for the ones who began in Halstead, I know it's hard to move into another town they're unfamiliar with. I can relate. But this church is a group of people like the ones in the first churches. They are people who love Jesus and love each other deeply. (oh man, are they the huggers!) They are willing to do whatever it takes to spread that love to those who are so empty, so unaware of the home that they are searching for, so sadly dying inside without the hope that there is more and He is waiting. So I'm encouraged by these words today because we ARE the building. We're all aliens, but we're aliens that are all in this together, building up His kingdom until the day He comes to take us all home....together.
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
Ephesians 2:19-22
