Questions of Life

Over the next several weeks I am going to be asking you all several questions. How you answer these questions six months from now will be more important than you initial answers as you read them.

I won’t keep you guessing. The reason your answer six months from now will be more important than the answer you give today is that, if the answer remains unchanged for six months, it will show that we are headed nowhere. We may talk a great deal about the who, what, when, and where of ministry, but the only thing that matters is if we actually engage in the ministries we have planned.

Here is your first question: Think back on your entire experience at this church and name a time when you felt the most engaged, alive, and motivated. That may be hard for some of your. You may have to search far back in your personal history to find the answer.

I have a good guess as to your answer. I have this guess based on my experiences in asking this question before. In other settings, I can tell you this, most people felt more engaged when they were younger and had kids in the youth group. This is true for most of us. We were in the youth group or our kids were, and that led to us being involved as well.

There are two questions that must come after this first question. They relate to it very closely. First, are you sure that your spiritual activity at the time was directly related to any spiritual depth you may have experienced? What is the difference between spiritual depth and spiritual busyness? Can we recognize that difference in our own being.

Secondly, what happened that you stopped this spiritual activity if it was so grand? You don’t have to stop working with the youth group just because your kids are grown and away from home. If your activity in the church was such a tremendous source of joy and personal satisfaction with the church, I think God may be telling you to rethink you decision to take yourself out of the game.

As long as we continue to make use of the breath God breathed into us and the first human beings he created, I believe he expects us to use that breath to breathe life into the people around us. We do not retire from the kingdom of god. God calls us to be forever ready to “give an answer to the faith that lies within us.” How will you live for Jesus Christ today?

Pastor Craig