Vertical

I am in the process of reading a book for fun. The odd thing of this is that I am doing this while reading around 8-10 other books for my classes. But as I am reading this I was struck with the idea that I am not seeking God like I need to be. I am not so excited to get to church to meet God and see what he has for me. Some of this comes back to knowing that I will not always be in the adult service because I have the chance to be with my wife and the kids upstairs. But when I do get a chance and know that I will be in the adult service I do get excited. I am so ready to experience what God has for me.

I look at the other adults as they come into the church and I wonder are they excited to be here? Are they ready to experience God today? The thing that hurts is that some of the people I see walk into church look hurt and tired. Looking as though they have had a rough week and need some healing from God. That is still vertical. Whether we are coming to church looking for God to meet us because we are so excited or we are looking to meet with God because we are so tired and weary and just need to be loved on, we are there for God.

I pray that we have God meet us in a fresh and new way. The author shares at the end of one of the chapters, "What they (the people in our church or outside of it) need is to be set free from themselves with finality and to be lost in the awesome wonder of the manifest presence of God."

What would happen if we prayed for this in our churches? We have a prayer time on Wednesday's at our church and what if more people came for this prayer time? What if this prayer time turned our community into a place of revival and would not let our church leave. We have been looking at moving to a new location but maybe it is not time to leave because the community would not miss us yet? Could you imagine a church that had such an impact on its community that they begged the church not to move but rather plant another church in that town.

"My heart is that your palms would get sweaty and your heart would beat faster because you knew God was waiting to meet with you and those you love most in all the world." -Vertical Church