Dear Friends,
Gosh, it’s gorgeous outside! Hope you’ve gotten to enjoy it. As I was walking up the hill from lunch I saw a young woman sitting on the side of the wall drawing. She was looking at butterflies playing in the flowers. How beautiful is that!? Sometimes we just have to sit and watch the butterflies. I hope your day was filled with a special moment like this.
Tonight at Soul Feast we will be joined by Broadway UMC’s praise and worship team. They have a really hip, acoustical sound. They are awesome, and I know you will enjoy them. So meet at 6:30pm in room 340, DUC. The message tonight centers on the last part of our mission statement: Taking the Love of Jesus Beyond Our Own Four Walls. I believe the heart of Christ longs for those who most need His love, and He wants us, needs us, to share that love. Come find out how you are an important part of this mission.
Since it’s fall break, we will not meet this Thursday.
Now for Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus:
As I have spent time with the Lord in my quiet times, I have begun to get a sense of God’s presence in a way that has been inaccessible before. Or rather, spending time with Jesus, just for Jesus’s sake, not to study up on my next message or lesson, or because I am desperate, has opened in me an awareness of who He is in my life, rather than constantly dwelling on who I need Him to be. One of my favorite passages of scripture comes from Ephesians, where Paul explains that the power of God that raised Christ from the dead is at work in us and through us (1:17-22). But what caught my eye this morning was the following:
I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, . . . Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:16, 20-21
The thing that fell all over me with a freshness that really opened my eyes was this sense of God’s power strengthening us in our inner person. That God cares so deeply for us and answers the questions we live by giving us strength, and possibility. I love that I haven’t even begun to imagine what God can or even desires to accomplish in my life and the lives of those around me. I love that God is ready at any moment to lift the veil of unknowing and reveal that thing that we cannot even dream about, because our minds cannot conceive of that kind of wonderful.
I guess what I have been suffering from was a sense that my God was too small. Gosh! (favorite word of the day, in honor of Napoleon Dynamite) who is this God who can part the Red sea!? Who is this God who can bring manna from heaven!? Who is this God who can defeat the entire nation of the Midianites with an army of 300!? Who is this God who can provide great favor to Nehemiah in a foreign king’s court so that he not only returns to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls, but the king sends the supplies to do it!? Who is this God who continues to speak life into our lives, with the power of the resurrected Christ!?
The real question I have to ask myself is, “who have I given Him a chance to be?” It’s so easy to look at the storm and never see the Man walking on water, much less walk on water myself.
So, I invite you to accept this challenge with me: Give God a chance to surprise you, to speak into your life and your circumstances with the power to raise the dead, with the power to “accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.” To Him be glory!
Blessings,
Sami
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