Our family circa 1997 in Kowloon City, Hong Kong – our neighborhood for eleven years.
Twenty years ago my wife, Susan, our four-year-old son, our one-year-old son, and I were preparing to head to Hong Kong with Mennonite Mission Netork for our first four-year term. We were just finishing up at Evergreen Mennonite Church in Bellevue, WA, a church we had helped start five years earlier, where I was the “founding pastor”.
Things Are Not Always As They Appear
By this time my emotional life had been in recovery for just over six years and we were ready to go. That wasn’t the case in 1985 when I was experiencing full-on panic attacks. As clearly as if it were yesterday I still remember my first attack. I woke from a deep sleep with tingling in my right arm. No big deal, I’d probably fallen asleep on it and pinched a nerve. But soon the right side of my face started tingling, then my whole right side! “What’s going on?” came my panicked response.
Hoping to alleviate my anxiety, I got up and stumbled to the couch. Nothing on TV, I’ll just read a bit. Picking up “The Door” (formerly “The Wittenburg Door”, a satirical Christian magazine) I opened it and began reading the first article I turned to… “The Lighter Side of Being Paralyzed for Life”! I kid you not, that was the title of the article!
I won’t go into all the details of my next few years of spontaneous panic attacks; suffice it to say that I had just about every test possible and the doctors consistently came back with the reply, “There’s nothing wrong with you.” Of course, from my perspective, they’d either missed something major or I was going crazy.
The view from our flat in Hualien, Taiwan.
By 1988 I was doing pretty well and my wife and I headed off to Taiwan for a two year voluntary ministry stint. For awhile all was well. Then, like a dark shadow oozing across my soul, the panic returned. At one point I was convinced I was going crazy and began fearing what I might do. Suicide crossed my mind several times but, fortunately, I was too afraid of dying to make any real plans.
Returning to the US in 1990, Susan and I attended our mission agency’s re-entry retreat. I shared my story with a good friend there who prayed for me. Miraculously I have not had a full on panic attack since that day! Disappointingly, at least at the time, I continued to suffer from “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” (GAD). Why in the world would God choose to only partially heal me? What’s up with that? I began getting help from a psychiatrist and from medication. Life began to return to “normal”.
And here’s where I return to our adventure to Hong Kong. Our mission agency was well aware of my past; I had been quite open with them about it all. But I was also cautioned several times, “Don’t talk about your anxiety disorder in Hong Kong.” You see, at the time the general public in Hong Kong had attitudes about mental illness similar to Americans’ in the sixties. You don’t talk about these things. Not only are they private, they’re scary and no good leader should be struggling with them. Obviously (and thankfully) our mission agency knew better and sent us to Hong Kong.
Choosing Life
Dutifully I complied with the request not to share about these struggles. I didn’t share my past crises and I didn’t share my current affliction with GAD. But it wasn’t long before I began to talk with Chinese friends who were suffering in silence. They themselves or a family member were wrestling with mental illness and feeling abandoned and alone in their suffering. How could I, in good conscience, not share my own journey?
Slowly I began to open up, first with one or two, then in a sermon in front of the whole congregation. After that sermon, several people came up to me to share their own stories. It was liberating – both for them and for me!
What does all of this have to do with “Learning from the Life of Jesus”? It’s a long story, one I won’t tell in detail here, but I had grown from insecurity to over-confidence in my early-to-late twenties. Being a good Christian, I had outlined several possible career moves – all great things I planned to do for God. The problem was that God has asked none of it from me.
Jesus taught another way. He called his disciples out of their chosen career paths and into the unknown. Can you even imagine what it must have been like for Peter and Andrew, immediately leaving their nets to follow Jesus? How about for James and John who not only left their nets, but also their father, to follow Jesus? We want to be in control. But Jesus bids us, “Come and follow”.
While in Taiwan, in the midst of my deep struggles, I’d had a very clear call to leave behind my past and follow Jesus into a new kind of ministry. I knew when we returned to the US I was to enter seminary to be “equipped”, but for what I had no idea. “Trust” was the word that returned over and over. Looking back it seems ridiculous that God, in the midst of my struggles with panic and anxiety, would push me on to a new path. And yet as I read the Gospels I see that over and over again this is how he moves people away from that which cripples them into a life of healing and fullness.
I don’t believe for a moment that God afflicted me with panic disorder. That is not the kind of God I know. But I do believe I now understand why I was only partially healed. Perhaps like Paul’s “thorn in the flesh”, God allowed brokenness to remain, a brokenness that reminds me that I am not self-sufficient. Just like the rest of the world, I need God, I need daily bread. I am not learning from the life of Jesus when I think I’ve got it all figured out.
Love The Lord Your God With All Your Heart And With All Your Soul And With All Your Strength And With All Your Mind…
All my past scheming for God, my “can-do” attitude, and my natural problem-solving abilities had become obstacles in the pathway down which Jesus was beckoning me. Slowly I began to see that loving God with my “whole heart, soul, strength, and mind” could only happen if I quit tripping over my own feet and began reconciling to the person I was… am.
Thirty years have passed since that first panic attack. Although I’ve tried (under doctor’s supervision) to go off medication for the general anxiety, I’ve discovered I still need it. Similarly I believe I still need my affliction to remain engaged with God’s leading, a constant reminder that I’m not in control. I’ve reconciled to this fact. I’ve reconciled to my own brokenness in this area. And I’ve discovered that this weakness truly is a strength in the creative hands of my Creator.
…And Love Your Neighbor As Yourself
What I’ve also learned over the years is that by reconciling with and embracing my whole being, I can both love God more deeply and enter more fully into the suffering and brokenness of others. It seems obvious now, but at the time I really had no idea that by denying my own struggles, my own brokenness, I was actually limiting my ability to love others. In fact, I would go even further to say that my denial became a stumbling block to others precisely because I perpetuated the myth that leaders are not broken (although I’m confident that many around me knew I really was).
Often it’s easy to focus our attention on the fractures around us. Diving in, we get caught up in our neighborhoods, our church activities, and missional mindedness. As important as these things are, what if they become a distraction from facing the fractures within? Or worse, what if those internal fissures end up becoming sink holes that trap the very ones we’re trying to connect with?
Jesus has some pretty harsh words for those who put “stumbling blocks” in the way of others (Mt. 18:6-7). As I listen to the life of Jesus, to the people he loved, to the grace he gave, to the hypocrisy he called out among the religious elite, I have to wonder how often these “stumbling blocks” appear because we are not reconciled to our own broken places and end up harming ourselves and our neighbors.
As I’ve explored this area of reconciliation in my own life, one thing has become quite clear: the efforts I put into bringing reconciliation to the world around me are profoundly influenced by the level of self-reflection and reconciliation to the person I am. Jesus gives me permission to love myself as I am. Sure, there are parts he wants to change, to heal, but the only way to follow Jesus is to begin right where I am.
Learning from the life of Jesus is a life-long process. We see this in the lives of the disciples as they began that journey and walked with Jesus in those early years. And we see their flaws and brokenness as they grapple with Jesus’ death, resurrection, and what it means for them, and the world, after he ascends into the clouds. Perhaps this is what I appreciate most about the story of God in the New Testament: our personal growth and our ability to lead and influence others is only limited by our brokenness to the extent that we refuse to embrace a love that has overcome all things.
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More Posts by Andy
“Consequently, he is able to save those who approach God through him at all times, since he is always alive to intercede on their behalf.”
— Hebrews 7:25 (USC)
“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, He got up, went out, and made His way to a deserted place. And He was praying there.”
— Mark 1:35 (HCSB)
Communing with God is about communing with ourselves in a way that no other thing intrudes upon the space we’ve made for Him in our consciousness. In a concept, God’s Presence, real, wrought through experience, yet untenable to explanation.
In the above verses, bringing them alongside one another, we find that listening to Jesus coalesces with Jesus’ listening to the Father as He speaks in a way that we’re gifted Jesus’ intercession in a real and momentary way.
We get up very early, ourselves, find ourselves that dark and deserted place alone, and we get so quiet that we can listen. And in that act of stripping away every distraction, we’re gifted the acuity of listening in a way as to hear His Spirit speak, cogently and clearly.
And as His Spirit speaks to us in that quietness of our solitude, we are grounded in the significance of something small yet unique, and blessing superintends our state. His Presence is felt, and again we’re encouraged to keep stepping through this tumultuous life with the countenance of joy through the bravery of faith.
His Presence gifts us a grace with which we cannot explain, and every time that hits our consciousness we experience the miracle that is His grace. Thankfulness mounts up on the wings of gratitude, and, being full of the Holy Spirit, fruit is shed forth in our lives.
As we join Jesus in that most private of solitudes, we see and feel His intercession for us, bequeathed eternally, and we find that getting alone with the Lord is its own reward.
Listening to Jesus as He listens to the Father teaches us something we were meant to know from the beginning: we’re intended to get and remain connected to God. Once we experience it truly we never settle for life without such a gift as spiritual intimacy with the Father, through the Holy Spirit, because of Jesus.
As we listen to Jesus, knowing Jesus is listening to the Father, we experience His saving us, which is the gift of His grace; to experience in extant terms what we know to be eternally true.
This year’s Celtic Prayer Retreat is over, but there are many lingering thoughts and reflections from our time together. Last week Christine posted the morning liturgy from Saturday, and I posted posted my first meditation from the retreat, “Identifying Your Great Cloud of Witnesses”. This compilation from our Sunday morning reflections were crafted to help us explore our personal “great cloud of witnesses”, those in our lives who have touched and helped shape who we are today.
If you’re on Facebook you might also like to check out our photos from the Celtic Prayer Retreat. Here are links to Christine’s and Andy’s photos.
Board members and retreat participants gather around Christine to bless her new journey.
One of the highlights of the retreat for me was the ceremony our new MSA board created to honor and bless Christine for her leadership over the years. As the incoming Director, I was honored to share my deep appreciation for all that Christine has brought to our organization and, through her leadership, to many around the world.
Christine’s leadership has cultivated in MSA, and in our individual lives, what we like to refer to as “The MSA Process”. From our staff meetings to how our workshops are designed and facilitated, we begin by listening to what God is already doing in each of our lives. This is not necessarily an efficient process, but one that allows the living water of Christ to penetrate deep into our souls. As we hear what God is already doing in our personal lives, we begin to discover connecting threads that inspire, encourage, and link our lives together.
We also discover that what God is up to on a personal level often connects to what God is up to in our work together through MSA and Godspace. This process helps us not only to look back and find connections, but also to look forward to see more clearly how God is leading us into the future. It’s not surprising with all the gardening and reflection that Christine does that this would be a very organic process.
Christine’s leadership in this way is decidedly not top-down but one of listening, mutuality, and gentle guidance. Her influence in my life has been profound, and I am deeply grateful to have been able to work so closely with her these past several years. Which leads me into the next section of the retreat, where the board blessed and installed me as the new Director of MSA // Godspace.
What an honor to follow in the footsteps of Christine and Tom in giving leadership and direction to this community. I was tempted to use the word “organization” there, and technically it is, but much more than that, MSA // Godspace is a community, with a small inner core we call staff and volunteers, but a much broader community of folks, like you, who desire to create fuller, more sustainable, prayerful, imaginative, and connected lives. MSA // Godspace is you, it’s us, together with Christ walking into a future of promise and hope.
Gathering around Andy to bless him as the new Director of MSA//Godspace
As the board, my coworkers, and those at the retreat gathered around me to pray, I couldn’t help but think back on the theme for our retreat, “Celebrating the Goodness of God with All the Saints”. Right there, in that moment, I was experiencing just that. There are saints in my life, past and present, who have shaped me. And at that moment I was surrounded not only by them, but also by others, each shaped and molded by their own cloud of witnesses and now, all of them together, surrounding me to bless me into my new role at MSA. Humbling, yes! A bit daunting, absolutely! But I realize that it’s not really about me but truly about us, together.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that we don’t refer to our blog simply as the Godspace blog anymore. Over the years, through Christine’s organic leadership style, we’ve seen how God has tended and cultivated the Godspace garden. What was originally Christine’s personal blog, connected to her book by the same name, has expanded and become a community garden. This transformation has been gradual. It’s been beautiful to watch as new writers have joined the blog and begun to blossom and flower, adding splashes of color and different fragrances along the way. With your help, I hope to continue this rich heritage of community building and partnership, both on the blog and in all that we do through MSA.
Please continue to pray:
- for our board of directors as they help us walk through this important leadership change and help discern our way forward.
- for Christine as she lets go of administrative tasks and fashions a new perspective as Godspace contributor and writer.
- for our team as we also navigate these changes.
- for me as I step into this new role as Director, that I may both build on the past while engaging the future in ways that help us to flourish in an ever-changing world.
Together creating pathways of Shalom,
Andy Wade
Director
Mustard Seed Associates // Godspace
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by In response to Andy Wade’s Sunday morning reflection at our Celtic retreat I have been rereading and pondering the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:1-12 this week. The passage begins with a phrase I had never noticed before When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain…
I too climbed a mountain during the retreat, at least that was how it felt as I walked the new experiential prayer trail which wended its way up and down the mountainside of our property. Then Saturday morning, in a short beautiful ceremony of affirmation and appreciation I climbed down from the mountain of MSA leadership and handed it over to Andrew Wade.
Mountain tops are important in our journey with God. We talk about mountain top experiences when we have an especially exciting time of personal revelation, and in the Bible they are places of revelation too.
My ponderings this week, not surprisingly, focused on leadership styles which can also resemble mountain climbing.
Being blessed and prayed for at the Celtic retreat
Moses and the Wrong Way to Lead.
Moses climbed a mountain to receive the ten commandments. He climbed alone. The people stayed behind. Moses disappeared into a cloud that hid God’s presence and separated God’s glory from the rest of the Israelites. He received the laws alone, written on a tablet of stone – rules and regulations that unfortunately the Israelites had never seen modelled and I suspect really did not understand. I wonder if Moses understood them either.
Moses made so many leadership mistakes, a little like the zealous but somewhat naive church leader who heads off to a conference, meets God face to face, gets a fresh revelation and enthusiastically returns to implement new rules, regulations and ministries. Then he or she gets frustrated because the followers will not follow.
Mistake #1 – Moses left his followers behind when he went to meet God face to face. No wonder Moses was soon in retreat, now behind a veil of hurt, and bewilderment. God’s glorious revelation had become even more obscure.
Mistake #2 – Moses presented his message in a way that must have been incomprehensible to the Israelites. Written commandments for a group of illiterate slaves used to oral communication and stories. What was he thinking? Seems to me there was a little cultural insensitivity there and I don’t think it came from God. He was educated in Pharoah’s household. He could read and write. His followers could not. It must have just accentuated the differences.
Mistake #3 Moses got angry because his left alone followers had made their own path right back into the Egyptian culture. And I can’t help but wonder if that golden calf was something from Moses’ past too.
No wonder they all, Moses included, needed forty years in the desert. It was really there and not from those stone tablets that they learned generosity, compassion and caring. It was there that they learned to trust God in an intimate, personal way no other people had ever known.
What is your response?
When have you messed up as a leader because of your ignorance of the culture and traditions of your followers? Where has your education and upbringing gotten in the way of your success?
Andy ready for afternoon session at Celtic retreat.
Jesus Gets It Right.
Jesus’ mountain climb was very different.
Right principle #1 He didn’t disappear alone into a cloud. He invited his disciples and the crowds that followed craving something new out of life to come too. He sat down in their midst and began to teach. He wanted them to understand with their hearts not just their heads.
Right principle #2 Jesus taught what was written not on a stone tablet but on his heart and in his life. Yearn for justice, work for peace, show compassion. These principles were woven into the very fabric of his being. His followers had seen him live them out. They were what made them crave something new with so passionately they left livelihoods and job security to follow him.
Right principle #3 Jesus carried on a conversation that both instructed and inspired. I can imagine that beatitude gathering was a very lively event that imprinted Jesus words on the hearts and lives of his followers – a new and living covenant that turned the world upside down in a way that the laws Moses brought down from his mountain never could.. Oral traditions are passed on by story telling, questioning and discussion and I am sure Jesus wove all of these into his sermon. Why is this teaching different from our traditional teachers? How do we live it out?
What Is Your Response?
All of us are both leaders and followers. In what ways have we modelled Jesus in our leadership styles and practices?
What Happens When we Come Down from the Mountain?
As he talked about my leadership, Andy Wade affirmed the discernment process I incorporated into Mustard Seed Associates, a process of listening to the whole team that has become a foundational process for MSA. It is an organic and at times messy process that sometimes derails us from the rules and regulations of professional education and training to embrace new concepts God is leading us into.
I wonder if Jesus sharing the beatitudes was something like that. Everyone sharing how they felt and then together shaping something new that became not just the bedrock for this band of disciples but for the whole Christian movement.
I know this is all speculation, but I love to imagine the possibility, and the organic way in which the church has grown over the centuries, I think gives some credence to it.
What Is Your Response?
As I sit at the bottom of my leadership mountain the question that revolves in my mind is: How have I climbed God’s mountain and conducted myself when I reached the top? Have I been like Moses or Jesus?
This is a question I hope you will ponder with me today. How do we climb our faith mountains, as community, together with Jesus and others who crave the same life transforming knowledge we do? or do we climb as Moses did – as a solitary leader venturing alone into a cloud that hides God from our followers? Do we sit down on our mountains to teach those that follow or do we hide the glory God has revealed with a veil because we think it is too intense for others to appreciate?
Christ and love – they go hand in hand for me. I have spent a lot of time thinking about it this week and contemplating how that love is expressed in my life. These three prayers have come out of that reflection.
by When people tell us to listen to someone, they usually mean to pay attention to their words, but quite often the largest lessons from a life well-lived are discovered by hearing and seeing the things that person puts into practice.
And I ask myself, for those of us determined to follow Jesus, what is the one thing we need to learn? And all the “right” answers strike me straight away: prayer; ministry; knowing scripture; loving everyone. But waiting in the quiet, one more answer comes, and clangs a deep, loud bell in my depths. Waiting.
Waiting can be a sacred act. And Jesus’ earthly life was full of waiting. The Son of God, used to having an entire universe to dance in, must grow from a seed and wait nine months in a tiny space to be born. He then waits to speak, to walk, to grow up. As a toddler he waits in a place far away from home, for it to be safe for him and his parents to return. He waits years until he is old enough to be allowed to talk to the men at the Temple. And even then he gets roundly told off. “Where else would I be?” he basically exclaims (my paraphrase of Luke 2:49).
Thirty whole years before his ministry can truly begin, and even then his patience is mesmerising, “Dear woman, that’s not our problem,” Jesus replied. “My time has not yet come.” (John 2:4 NLT) And perhaps at this point even his wonderfully patient mother was tired of waiting for things to kick off, pushing him forward to do his stuff. Sometimes he got frustrated himself. He cursed the fig tree for having seasons, because where he came from, the fruit was ever at hand. He grew impatient with the self-righteous Pharisees, who could not see what was right under their stuck up noses. He even (and who can blame him) once got a bit tetchy with his dear but dim disciples (as I’m sure he must do with us all now and again) used as he was to being obeyed by angels, “You unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” (Matthew 17:17 NIV). I’m not sure that we can even begin to comprehend how agonisingly small and tiresomely long being human must have felt.
And we hear ourselves and our fellow Christians complain because our ministry has been delayed, or because we have not found out what it is yet, and we are desperate to know how we are going to help save the world, before we have even discovered that we are not of it, let alone that someone else got there before us. We want healing now, and not to wait twelve years (the woman who touched Jesus’ cloak), or thirty-eight years (the disabled man at Bethesda). We want to know now, Lord, and see now, and understand now, not ten years of devoted prayer later. We want answers and to be ready now. And yet, we are not ready. We are needful of decades of prayer. It mightn’t be our season yet. There may be roads we need to walk down first, and they may be hard roads.
And when we are ready, we may need to teach ungrateful dusty herberts for three long years, get called a heretic repeatedly, upset the religious establishment to such a degree that they want to stone us, get thrown out of every place we are asked to speak, leave riots starting in our wake, and become persona non grata everywhere but in the homes of the poor and in dens of vice, and on the beleaguered boats of fishermen.
And then would we be ready to be betrayed, abandoned, questioned, tried falsely, betrayed again by our own people shouting for Barabbas? Ready to have the powers that be wash their hands of us, be mocked, spat on, flogged, sentenced to death, and made to carry our own cross up a long and winding via dolorosa, until finally we are gruesomely, tortuously killed for doing nothing but speaking the truths of God? And Jesus waited thirty-three years for this agony. Are we ready to wait? Can we be patient through the trials? I have had to ask myself some hard questions about this lately as my health has worsened and my circumstances become tougher than I thought they could get.
And I have realised that it is not primarily the suffering that we are waiting for, nor even the ending of it, though of course there are also many good gifts and healings in this life. No, what Jesus was waiting for, and what we wait for, is what comes next. We are all waiting for heaven, for homecoming, for love. This is where we are all headed, if we want it, and what we endure in this waiting room is the suffering of not being in heaven, of being strangers in a strange land, of everything but the merest glimpses of love.
And the way we survive and overcome, as Jesus did, is by the knowing that everything breakable here can have love poured through the cracks. That all brokenness can begin heaven’s work, that all earthly tears begin the flow of heavenly rivers, one drop at a time. And so we learn to wait, like winter waits for the spring, seeds wait to grow, and like dams wait to burst, and we learn from listening to the master, “who is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9 NIV).
“Celebrating the Goodness of God with All the Saints” was the theme for our 25th Annual Celtic Prayer Retreat this past weekend. We spent quite a lot of time thinking about the great cloud of witnesses which surrounds us, not just those who have gone before but also those who walk with us today: friends, pastors, authors, activists, and the like. These people have shaped our lives and nurtured us through both crises and celebrations.
Our closing worship on Sunday morning was focused again on this great cloud of witnesses, but with a twist. We began by looking at the Apostle Paul’s second letter to Timothy:
I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. 2 Timothy 1:3-7 (NRSV)
For our first time of reflection we looked at how Paul acknowledges his faithful ancestors and then challenges Timothy to connect with his own, saying “The faith of your grandmother and mother now lives in you”. We then asked the question, “Who can you name in the circle of witnesses in your life?” taking time for each of us to quietly name and thank God for each one’s foundation of faith and ongoing witness in our lives.
With this foundation we then jumped back to Jesus’ words in the Beatitudes:
One day as he saw the crowds gathering, Jesus went up on the mountainside and sat down. His disciples gathered around him, and he began to teach them.
“God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth.
God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God.
God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God.
God blesses those who are persecuted for doing right, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
“God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts of evil things against you because you are my followers. Be happy about it! Be very glad! For a great reward awaits you in heaven. And remember, the ancient prophets were persecuted in the same way. Matthew 5:1-12 (NLT)
For this time of reflection I challenged us to go back through the Beatitudes, one by one, with those in our personal “cloud of witnesses” in mind, specifically asking “Who has been an example for me in each of these beatitudes?” We then thanked God for their faithful example, and asked God how we might be an example to others in this area.
This turned out to be a much more profound exercise than I had anticipated. For some of the Beatitudes there was a quick and obvious person or persons who came to mind. For other Beatitudes it was more of a struggle. Why is that? I wondered. How have the cloud of witnesses in my life shaped who I am and the Beatitudes I live into more fully… or ignore?
Our final reflection combined the two passages, asking:
- What would it look like in my life to “fan into flame” or “rekindle the gift of God” in the areas specifically mentioned by Jesus in the Beatitudes?
- What are 2-3 action steps I can begin this week to move closer to Jesus’ call in the Beatitudes and the entire Sermon on the Mount?
- How might this enhance my ability to more fully love God and Neighbor?
- Paul mentions to Timothy that “God doesn’t give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” How do my practices today shape my life so that I can be among that cloud of witnesses for those who come after me?
I had never thought of approaching these two passages quite like this before but as I prepared the Sunday worship service God prompted me to take another look, from the side, and see just how influential our cloud of witnesses truly is… and our place in that story for others.
What are your thoughts?
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