The recent weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind, a lot of begging God to reveal to me His truth and further discernment and a whole lot of God revealing that truth to me.
This morning Kyle and I decided to take our family down to Church on the Hill on Capitol Hill in Seattle - the community there has been lifting us up in prayer for a couple years now as we've ventured into this idea of 'home church' and what it is God is having us do with that. As parts of our community have been called to attend elsewhere, I fight the battle to stay the course and continue to simply obey. I feel lonely, and considering the circumstances in our life, am feeling pained and without answers. God has shown me His faithfulness over and over and I grope to hold onto that day in and day out.
When we arrived at CHILL this morning, we were greeted with open arms and words of encouragement. Eyes looked on us as the pastor brought to their attention that we were in attendance with them - God spoke through him as he stood up in the midst of the Balagan Theater on Capitol Hill, and with his white t-shirt and jeans on, he opened his bible to the 24th chapter of Genesis and began reading. No power point, no childrens church, nothing that would impress anyone who didn't just want to be with Jesus... and it felt so good. It felt simple and beautiful.
When we were done reading through the entire 24th chapter of Genesis, we began to worship -- we sang the song 'Jesus Cast a Look on Me' and I had never heard it before: please listen to the snippet... I want to sit here and revel in its words.
After the sermon, we followed the pastor's son out the theater... up the stairs... out the front doors of the building... down the sidewalk of E. Pike St... and into the doors of the neighboring toy store. This is a weekly ritual for little Elijah as his parents teach him what it is to love those God's brought to you and begin preaching the Word wherever we are. Its not for us to know the time that God will reveal himself to these toy shop owners and workers - but they know that every Sunday at Noon, little Eli will come racing through the door eager to be a part of their day and excited to share with them the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
My prayer is that Kyle and I would continue to seek the simplicity of obedience just as Rebekah did when Abraham's servant came to take her home to Isaac. I want to say to people, 'I don't know why... God just said that we're supposed to and I know that he is fulfilling his original promise.'
I can empathize with you. When we started our home church almost three years ago, we had three families, totaling 20 of us. We grew to 6 families, totaling 44. We are back to 3 families with 16 (almost 17) now. It can be discouraging, but we still are seeing God's hand at work in our community of believers. We will keep you all in our prayers.
ReplyDeleteLife is hard and all we have is obedience to Him isn't it? I so struggle with this same thing...different topics maybe but same struggle to just obey and have faith in things not seen. Glad to see I'm not the only one just trying to obey when it gets hard.
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