This Sunday – May 6

This Sunday – May 6

The soul being so precious, and salvation being so glorious, it is the highest point of prudence to make preparations for another world. Thomas Watson, 1666

I was tired and more than empty from the busy demands of life and ministry when I discovered in a bookstore this volume written by a seventeenth-century English Puritan.

Perhaps it was the different language, but I was instantly both pierced and freed by a moment of clarity.

My life is incredibly valuable. God made it that way. What God has done through Jesus Christ to restore life is amazing. The only sensible thing is to devote my life to things that will last forever in the life that God gives us.

A transcendent sense of eternity . . . immediately renewing. Immediately focusing me on what matters most.

But why is that sense of meaning so elusive? So easily lost?

This Sunday at the Gathering Church I continue a study of 1 John, a letter that teaches how to know and experience life with God now and forever. 1 John 2:12-27 gives a great picture of what that life is like, but it also clearly identifies what makes God seem unreal to us.

Bottom line: to truly know and experience God means always swimming upstream. Currents in this world will take us away from God.

For instance, the current of achievement produces anything but serenity and trust in God’s presence and purpose.

What other currents, do you think, may be taking people away from God?