I've been away on a break. Spending time on the beach is a life-giving experience for me. When I'm there, I can feel my soul healing and connecting with our Creator. It's also where my mind gets creative. I think bigger thoughts, and my imagination goes places it's not been before.
Coming off my break, the temptation is to go back to what I have always known and park all my creative ideas. When I do that, many of the ideas get lost and become a thought I once had, not an opportunity.
This time, though, the continued revelation of creativity has given me more to ponder. So, here goes, and let's see if you can follow my thoughts:
My relationship with God is my relationship with God. It was never designed to be lived through a pastor, a prophet, or an apostle. However, it was designed to be lived out with those people. My model of church, has been the one that has been handed down for generations. We go to church to hear a pastor speak a lesson from the bible. We sing a few songs, and we spend time with some pretty cool and unique people at the end. At the end of the day, most people have little input into this model, and they're there to receive. It's a model, but it's not the only one.
What would it look like to invite all the people to offer what they could see a community looking like? What would it look like for each person to have a voice and allow it to creatively shape the community that gathers? What would it look like if each of those people had their own relationship with God, one in which they could hear and see God?
Would church leaders get cautious about something like this, or would they welcome it?
Caution is often the model when fear underpins the leader. Freedom becomes the model when love is the foundation. Having been a very fearful person and leader, I get the difference. Fear caused me to control people rather than love them, and I didn't even realize I was doing it. Back then, love was the goal, but I didn't know where the goalposts were.
Now, it's a little bit different and a whole lot better. Love will trust before it judges, and Jesus was the perfect example of this. The expression of this can be seen in his relationship with Judas, his betrayer. He still loved him, even though he knew what was coming.
To me, Judas is the expression of a person who was invited to lead, but never understood what it was to love himself or others well. I wonder if he always looked to someone else to fix or rescue him. Was his betrayal more based on what he feared than who he loved? Remember, fear is always temporary, but it has a very loud voice. And where there is fear, creativity dries up. He couldn't see who Jesus was or what His love could do for him.
Jesus inspired creativity in all of those who followed him. He told them of the "greater things" they would all see. The Apostle Paul would write that God could do "more than we could imagine." These are two expressions of their lives and how they engaged with God. Jesus would only do what he saw the Father doing. That alone speaks to me of the God we can see and hear.
So, if you don't think you can see or hear God... maybe the model needs to change. Maybe there is more to God than you imagine, and whatever "greater things" mean to you is about to get bigger. Allow yourself to imagine again. Get creative, and allow those thoughts to not be forgotten or left in the past. It's time for you to be heard.
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