As much as I sometimes complain about my job, one of the perks (?) is that I get to take a few short road-trips every week or so. It definitely beats sitting in my office all day. 
Usually, I’m on the phone non-stop even while driving, and trying desperately to fight off the urge to read my BlackBerry between calls. But on the days that I’m lucky enough to not be on endless conference calls, I get to catch up on my favorite podcasts. Who would have guessed that the next phase of my “spiritual journey” would be on I-77 to Columbia, SC (of all places)?
Recently, I listened to a sermon by Skye Jethani. Twice in the same day actually. And I need to listen to it again. That’s how good it is. It’s Yoplait yogurt good. I mean, it’s so good I have to admit that I might have a spiritual-leader-man-crush on this guy. This man can even find meaningful quotes from Shall We Dance (yeah, the Jennifer Lopez and Richard Gere chick-flick). Now that’s good.
I’ll give you the link to the sermon at the end of this post, but since I know that most of you probably won’t have time to listen to it, I’ll try to hit some of the highlights.
… we serve and worship a God who from the beginning has sought to be with us. And yet even within the church… we so ignore that central calling. Instead of focusing on life with God, we exchange that word for some other preposition, some other posture before God that we think is more central to the Christian life.
So in our culture today there are some Christians who feel that their primary responsibility — their primary calling — is to fight the culture wars, in which they try to get more and more people in our country to live under God — under his authority, under his rules and regulations laws and commands. And we see the friction that causes all over the place.
And there are others … who see that out primary posture is really to live our life for God — to do things for Him, to advance his mission, to carry out His purposes in the world.
And in all of our talk of life under God, and life for God, and in some circles it’s life from God, and in some secular areas it’s life without God or over Him — in all of this we forget that the central calling in the Christian life from Genesis onward is to live life WITH God.
… the Christian life is not primarily about changing your circumstances so that you can better experience Christ… the Christian life is about changing how you see your circumstances, and come to recognize that Christ is right there with you… A lot of us think that in order for me to experience the fullness of the Christian life, I somehow have to change what’s going on around me.
… If I could just get into that right relationship… if I could just get married and have kids, that’s really the context in which the Christian life will come alive for me. Or in some cases, if I could just get out of this terrible relationship then I’ll be able to experience God more fully… or if I could just get out of my job or this dead end career… if I could go do something that really matters… if I could go overseas and do something (because you know for some reason God does stuff overseas and He’s bored with America.) So if I could just get over there then things would be better.
Don’t fall into the trap of believing that you will somehow experience the Christian life more fully by merely changing your circumstances.
Here’s the question… If nothing changed in your life, if nothing changed in your immediate circumstances — your marital status, your education level, your career, your job, your location, your church – if none of those things ever changed, do you believe that you could still experience all the fullness of God right where you are?
Do you believe that you could still know the height and depth, the length and breadth of the love of Christ if nothing around you changed?
That can sound harsh to some of you, become some of you are probably in prison cells of one form or another right now, places of suffering, of brokenness, of lostness. God can meet you in that, if you come to recognize that he is already WITH you.
To be h
onest, I don’t really think that I get this. I know I don’t live it. I spend so much of my energy trying to change my circumstances, hoping somehow that things will be better – that I will be happier when I “fix” this or that. This sermon hit hard. Can I really see and recognize Emmanuel – God with us – in the midst of a job that I hate, when facing increasing financial struggles, while dealing with everything in the house from the toilet to the lawn mower to the car falling apart daily? (My laptop even crashed while trying to write this blog post. I can’t win!)
It’s not easy, and I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve failed miserably at it.
But this message breathed new life into my thoughts and attitudes at a time when I really needed it. If you get a chance, it’s worth listening to. If you do, I’d love to hear your thoughts and know if any of you liked it even half as much as I did.
You can find this sermon at http://marshill.org/teaching/2010/06/20/tortured-by-books/ or http://www.skyejethani.com/audio-sermons/ (sermon entitled “With”).
