Still the Most Powerful Certainty

I'm sitting on my front porch this morning. It's a large expansive porch attached to my wife's house. This particular porch is the reason I chose to live in the Old West End. I often tease Crystal that we bought the porch and the rest of the house came with it.

The porch faces a great neighborhood filled with real interesting people. Just four doors down a fellow minister and good friend Steve North and his wife Jan have a house. These are just a few reasons why this is a great spot for me to reflect, think, plan and blog. In just a few minutes the morning bells from Glenwood Lutheran will start playing old hymns ... calling neighbors to gather as it has done for years in this part of the city.

Even though I'm fully dressed for church this morning, which for my family is New Life Church of God in Christ on Oakwood where Bishop E.T. Cook is the Pastor [I think I've got the lingo down], there's a part of me that would just as soon stay home.

I know I'll not meet God in church this morning much more than I've already met Him on this very porch already today .. so to go to church to receive something isn't very motivational.

So - why go?

My wife Crystal has this great teaching - one I've used more than once - on the difference between journey and migration. The basic premise of her presentation is that a journey with God, while good, is about what He's doing in you. A migration on the other hand is what He's doing through you, because of you and yes ... in spite of you.

If you've hung around me for more than a minute you'll hear me say; 'The Church is The Most Powerful Certainty on This Planet'! The church, just to make sure we're talking about the same thing, is not the place I'm going to this morning - or the place you're going to. The Church, the one God has established through Jesus Christ, is people.

God's people are the most powerful certainty on this planet. YOU are the most powerful certainty on this planet. That's migration.

So - I'm off to New Life in a moment. Off I go, not with obligation. Not with compulsion. Not with a set of expectations or rules.

I go for reasons I don't expect. I go because the mysteries of following God make me curious. I go, hopefully for the same reason you go - I'm on a migration. I believe down to my socks that what God is doing in me will impact the world around me, so if I remain on this porch and enjoy the bountiful pleasure of His provision ... I've kept it to myself. I've become the sum of me, when I could become the exponential of Him.

Gotta go.

Dan
A Runner