I apologize for my lack of posts/comments the past week and a half. It's been absolutely insane around here. I'll have a new Scripture Memorization up next Sunday. We were out of town this past weekend, then Monday night we had stuff going on, and last night I was out bowling. I'm really glad for tonight being an easy night!

My husband and I have been attending our church for about a year now, and we really like it. We were fully ready a year ago to become members. Our church has membership orientations about 3 times a year. Last fall, two of the three Sundays that classes were on, we would be out of town for the wedding and honeymoon. Then this past spring, I don't remember exactly what for, but we would be out of town for both sets of classes. So finally, last night, I got a call from the membership coordinator at church and we got signed up for this fall's classes. I'm so VERY excited about this! I haven't had a real church home in years, and something about Mount C. just feels so right. I can't thank Pastor Pari enough for recommending it to us. A few weeks ago, Pastor Dave had a very impassioned sermon about how our church has been slacking off and becoming lukewarm recently, and how that needs to change. That right there was my conviction that this is where we belong. I've known for a while, that God is calling me to something bigger, but I haven't been sure what. I've known that He's not calling me to bring in new believers. I've never been good at witnessing to non-believers, and I just knew that wasn't what He was working on for me.

A few months ago, especially when I found Revelife, God made it clear to me what He wants me to do. I am to work with the church, with existing believers, especially with lukewarm believers, to bring them back into the passionate, fiery love for Christ that we all experience at the beginning of our walk with Him. To encourage those who are struggling in their faith. To be compassionate and show concern for those who are having doubts. To bring up those who are lukewarm. At this point, I'm still not sure exactly how he's planning this for me, but it's slowly becoming clear to me, and now that I'm taking this first step into being involved with the church, it's building up in my life.

I'm seeing this in my everyday life already. Two of my very good friends are life-long Lutherans, and yet, it's painfully clear that they aren't well-educated on the Lutheran faith. The one friend readily admits this, and seems interested when I'm in "teaching mode". The other, we are going by steps. I'm seeing with her what I see with many denominational Christians. So many of them aren't really taught the faith, outside of "Jesus loves you and you're going to Heaven", and then worldly influences start to creep in. My friend makes references to past lives and karma. I kindly remind her that Christians don't believe in past lives and karma. I think she's starting to see how the world has snuck into her beliefs. I *hope* she sees it.

I know that I am FAR from perfect, but I think that God sees my failings as such an example to those He's calling me to minister to. I think when Christians realize they aren't perfect and can't be perfect, that they find themselves losing hope, and finding it harder and harder to keep up the walk with Christ that they are called to.

This got a lot longer than I intended it to, but I was kind of letting the Spirit lead me on this post. I hope you've made it this far. :) If I don't see you before then, I'll be back on Sunday with a new memorization post. :)

Deuteronomy 6:5 (NIV) - Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Today at church, we had a guest preacher, and his sermon was entitled "The Most Important Thing". It was about Deuteronomy 6 and focused on verse 5, shown above. Moses knew that his time was coming to an end, and the Israelites were about to cross over into the Promised Land. He was repeating the Ten Commandments to them, making sure that they understood them before he was gone. In Deut. 6, he summed up the entirety of their faith in this one sentence: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Pretty simple. I really liked how this tied in with my post last Sunday about how easily John 3:16,17 sums up the Christian faith. I see it this way: John 3:16,17 tells us the "what" of what we believe, and Deut. 6:5 tells us the how.

Today's sermon confirmed to me that God is telling me to go back to basics with my faith. For the past year or so, I've dug and dug and dug, trying to figure out every single little "important" detail about the Christian faith, and even more specific, the Lutheran faith, and even MORE specific, the ELCA Lutheran beliefs (oh, what a downward spiral!) When we started going to this Lutheran church, I was so persistent to ensure that their beliefs were parallel with my own, that I found myself spending more time researching things like infant baptism and the Real Presence, that I forgot to just spend time with the Lord. I forgot to ask Him to show me the way, to show me which of the "technicalities" He thinks are important, to show me what He wants me to do for Him. I spent less time in prayer and more time digging, looking, searching for answers that I now realize I won't know the definitive answer to until I meet Jesus face to face at the end of my life.

God wants something different from me. The little things are important, but He's telling me that they're not near as important as I am making them. God is reminding me of The Most Important Thing: That I need to love Him with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my strength. He'll handle the rest.