Hello new church family! My wife Ellie and I are excited to be with you here at Living Word! This is a huge step of independence and change for us as we moved here from our hometown of Hutchinson, MN. This will be the first new place that either of us have lived, excluding our college years. With big changes, it feels like trusting the Lord to provide for and sustain us becomes much more of a necessity than a goal. As humans, we love to be in control. We want to know exactly what will happen, so we curate our environments to keep the challenges to a minimum, and we embrace and rely on the comforts that we have. I am very guilty of this. I surround myself with people that I know will uplift and encourage me, while neglecting those that need to experience the love of Christ. I stick to my own schedule that makes sure my cup is full instead of being someone who is interruptible and quick to look for ways to serve those around me. This is our natural tendency. Why run right into challenges and hardship, when we can just walk around it?
As we are in the midst of the NFL playoffs, this reminds me of something that my wife asked me recently while we watched a football game. She said, “Why does the running back always run right into the big group of people instead of around it?” I personally remember asking this question plenty of times as a kid. I explained to her that the fastest way from one point to another is a straight line, so sometimes the best option is to go right through the mess.
Isn’t this so true when it comes to the life of a Christian? We see this willingness to enter into the mess so clearly in Jesus and his mission, yet we so often do anything that we can to avoid the mess in our own lives or in the lives of those around us. We curate our social media so that everything that we see is just reaffirming what we already think, and we quickly cut people that we deem as “toxic” out of our lives so that we can avoid pain. Yet, I am sure we can all think of times in our lives where we have looked back on a season of discomfort and have seen the fruit that has come from it.
Knowing this, Ellie and I are doing our best to put our full trust in the Lord in this season of changes. I pray that the Lord would give each of us the strength to surrender both our worries and our comforts to Him. We worship a God who calls us to take up our cross and follow him, but this same God also tells us, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28-29.
Welcome to Marshall and to our church. We are looking forward to getting to know you. God is with us!