In my last blog post I mentioned being at my old Corps (Church) for the funeral of an amazingly faithful lady.
I felt a kind of electrically charged surge of desire to write again this morning. I don't usually write blog posts close together, but it feels like I have to this morning.
This is for someone out there today!
Definitely.
So in for a penny, in for a pound!
I mentioned feeling an old familiarity when being at my old Corps and went onto say it gave me a warmth that was comfortable and it had a pull about it.
Pulling me back to the old life.
The familiarity and comfort of the old.
It's kind of, well, a bit like religion really.
You know the bad side of religion.
The side of religion When it becomes about staying positively fixed on the old instead of allowing Jesus to lead us into new ground.
And I realise that one of the spin offs of that kind of rigid expression of Christianity is familiarity.
A familiarity that is pretty much desirable.
So much so you could fall in love with it.
It is a fact that it draws you, it pulls you, it calls you backwards.
It has its dark attractions too because it lures you.
As much as I loved being home God has called me to follow him to the wherever, the whosoever and to the uttermost parts of the Earth if it comes to it.
As I returned from Liverpool to Durham after the funeral, I felt like there was an elastic band around the car, pulling me back. I felt unsettled in my Spirit as I advanced further and further away from the comfortable place.
The next morning I went to work.
Terry was waiting for me.
Terry is an alcoholic, and is in constant trouble with the police. It is unbelievable the scrapes he gets himself into. He has been living that kind of life pretty much for his entire existence. He was slightly drunk at 10.30 am. He wanted to tell me that he was going to court next week for crashing a car that he had borrowed, he was drunk and driving without a licence. Just another scrape on another day. This time he may go back to prison for the umpteenth time. He talked about how he is desperate to change. How he wants to know God but can't talk to him. He can't talk to him because he sees himself as completely unworthy. I listened for about an hour then talked to him about the unconditional love of God. I could see the pain etched onto his face. A struggle I can't possibly truly understand. I prayed with him and will try and go to court with him next week.
It wasn't a comfortable place.
But situations like that are the dark places in people's lives that God is imploring the church to head for.
A friend of mine asked me the other day, "Where are the Salvation Army heading?"
It's a big question. One that the whole church can ask itself.
A question we can all concoct an answer to.
The fact is wherever we are heading, we need to be heading away from old familiarity and head towards God.
Because Jesus Is in the dark places, geographically spiritually, emotionally, and physically.
He's already there.
We definitely need to walk away from the warm and sexy comfortablity of safe old religion and strongly reject its magnetic pull.
There are too many Terry's in this world to just stay at home under the duvet with old familiarity.
So if you are sick of old familiarity, rise up. Get out of there, now. Resist its strong pull.
If you are longing for the safety of safe religion? The Spirit of God says run away from it.
If you truly want to see the love of God at work, miraculously saving and transforming? Then join Jesus in the dark places of people's lives.
Go now!
I pray that we would be strengthened to run towards God and run away from the bad side of religion.
