Disruptive moments can be powerful! You’ve had them. Those moments when you are driving and a song comes on that unexpectedly catches you off guard causing emotions to rise to the surface and your eyes begin to leak.  That moment when you read or hear something and it provokes a different way of thinking about your life, the world and what it means to be human. These disruptions can sometimes be welcomed, in the same way you would welcome a long time friend into your home, and other times these disruptions can be resisted, in the same way you stay socially distanced from someone who has been at a beach in Florida during a Pandemic.

The fact remains, whether welcomed or resisted, God is committed to you, and in using both positive and negative disruptions to change what you care about. And let’s be clear, we are not talking about changing your taste in coffee brand or soft serve ice cream. The change is one of the heart that shifts towards becoming more truly human, more truly like the perfect human- like Jesus.

And yes, it means caring more about others than yourself, more about who you are, rather than what you do or what you produce.  It means caring more about the many people just like you, who feel like they just don’t have a place at the family table of God. Yes, this means seeing everyone you meet as intrinsically loved by the Father and belonging to him whether they feel, think or know it.

To use the Bibles language is to say that we begin caring about the mission of Jesus to help others find their way back to the Father. It’s not our mission, it’s his. It’s not our agenda for the world – it’s his agenda. And so, when there are so many things, activities and people that want us to care about all sorts of things, we are invited to care for others in such a way that we hold our lives in service of those in our relational sphere, helping them to change, transform and become, while we discover the same thing taking place in us.

The Western Christian culture has often produced people who feel obligated and shamed into “doing things for God”.  This produces cold hearts that operate out of duty and a sense of “have too”.  This couldn’t be further from the good news that Jesus proclaimed through his life, death and resurrection.  The gospel is not about doing things for God, but about what God has already done in Jesus for us (that whole ‘it is finished’ bit is a big deal).  It’s about what we get to do and more importantly who we get to be in the world.  We get to remind folks all around us that the Father stands looking, waiting and longing for his children to come back home, not so they will experience shame or condemnation, but so that the Father can throw a feast, a celebration, a meal that reminds them – reminds all of us – who we are and whose we are.  Our hearts change as we find ourselves disrupted from old paradigms of thinking and living and embracing the truly unconditional love that God has for us and for the world that he is restoring.

So here are a few take-aways as we begin this journey together.

1. Look in the mirror. Look in the mirror and be courageous to really see what is reflected back. Don’t worry, in this story you are not the villan so you don’t have to nurse any feelings of not being enough, because there is a hero of this story and he is enough and is at work in you. Ask Jesus to show you those things that you are orienting your life around that although they are good, they may not be best for you or for the world that the Father loves.  Does your life of following the way of Jesus revolve around “going to church” (a phrase that does not even make sense – more on this in a latter post), or does it revolve around the beautiful, uncontrollable and transformative work that Jesus is doing all around you – right where you work, live and play.

2.  YOU are a player in the game.  Secondly, this is not about a chosen few key athletes playing on the field while everyone else watches the action.  In other words, it’s not about the priests, pastors or the religious elite. The Kingdom gospel that Jesus proclaimed and demonstrated was not meant to be a continuation of the covenantal system that God had established with Israel, nor Temple system 2.0. This was a new thing, a new idea, a new creation which meant a whole new way of being was being seen in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It was a way of being that no longer needed the elite professionals to administer all the goods and services of the Temple. In fact, the goods and services are no longer geographically bound or found in one tribal group – now it’s about the good that Jesus is doing in the world through his resurrection and how we serve others – all of us as a people who live a particular kind of way in the world.

Bottom line – you are not a spectator but an active participant in what God is doing. No you don’t need a theological degree or ordination certificate to participate. Your already part of it. And the invitation is wild, crazy and so good you don’t want to bow out. Time to jump in and see how far this rabbit hole actually goes my friend.

3. Trust.  Lastly I simply want to encourage you to trust. Yup, that’s right, trust. When disruption comes, especially the more negative kind of disruption, it may be that the Father is using that place of tension to get your attention.  Trust that those disruptive moments are necessary to move you more into alignment with your human and divine purpose, and that God is with you right there in the midst of it.  God hasn’t changed what he cares about – it’s still you, me, the world full of people, all sorts of people, and as our hearts change to care like his, we may be surprised to discover these disruptive moments are actually gifts of the Father to us and for us.

Biologically speaking our bodies are constantly changing and I suppose that if we are not changing than that means we are dead. Change my friend is not a bad thing, it is good. Hard yes, but nonetheless it is needed and necessary. If you are in a season of disruption or tension perhaps the Father is doing something new and beautiful in you, leading you to discover more of your potential and more of His power.

This is the life of learning to follow the way of Jesus.