Party Like Cornelius

If you were expecting one of the greatest moments of your life to happen soon wouldn’t you want others to know about it? We send out announcements for High School or College graduations, we do the same for weddings and birth announcements, we share invitations for anniversaries and other special dates with people we care about. Why is it that we are more excited for graduation, weddings, children, and anniversaries than we are about sharing what Jesus has done in our lives?

Last week we looked at the story of Cornelius and his vision from God to send for Peter. While Peter was travelling from Joppa to Caesarea Cornelius sent invitations to all his friends and family to come and hear what Peter would share. Cornelius had the expectation of something wonderful happing and desire to share it with his friends and family. He knew there was a special thing coming and didn’t want anyone he cared about to miss out. Is that how we respond to what Jesus is doing in our lives? Are we a people who live in expectant joy for what God is going to do in our lives? Do our homes represent places where God’s work is expected and celebrated? We have received the greatest gift and news ever, God has forgiven us and wants to be in relationship with us. How are we not excited about this?! How come we don’t share this truth any time we get the chance? When something is special to us we’ll announce it and celebrate it. If it isn’t we’ll ignore it and move on.

My hope is that this month we can share what God has done, and is doing, in our lives with the same kind of joy and exuberance we would for any of the other special events we long to share with our friends and family. What would you want your family to know God has done or is doing in your life? Share that with them. Don’t wait. Let them know how much they mean to you by sharing the good news with them!

As many of you know I coach soccer for a local club. Another coach and I share our practices because we have teams with the same age range and it just seems to work better doing practices together even though we have separate teams on game days. We have done this for the last three seasons and it works pretty well, especially since when I started I didn’t know anything about coaching that I didn’t pick up from observation. I had been on teams with good coaches and not so good coaches growing up but this time I was the coach (or not so good coach.) I have learned a lot about this process and it is such an honor to be trusted by the families of these young men. We get to pray together and play together and work hard to improve our game as a team and some days that is frustrating and others I am amazed at how much they have grown. 

Being a pastor is a lot like being a coach. People come to you expecting some sort of expertise and ability that they can learn from. What is often not seen is how important it is to let the people you are coaching play. “Experience is the best teacher” it has been said and sometimes you just have to let people get out there and try something and fail a few times before they’ll learn how to do it. Trusting the players to learn from what they are experiencing is one of the harder things a coach has to do. Giving people space to learn and grow from their life is hard for those who want to help them succeed. We want to show them the “right” way and teach them what not to do from the start so they don’t have to experience failure. Sometimes though, failure is what they need to make the lesson stick. We are given the chance to see growth in the experiences of others, even (especially) their failures. Yes, heartbreak and pain often come through these things but trusting God with your life means trusting that the heartbreaking and painful things have a purpose.

Our heavenly Father is the greatest coach there is and it seems His favorite coaching method is experience. He calls us into many new, exciting, and scary experiences to give us the chance to grow our faith in Him; to learn something new about ourselves, to open the way for change in our lives, and to do what we were created to do, experience His love and joy at our existence as His beautiful children.  I hope that you take the chance to “practice” this week. Learning from God through your experiences and the opportunities He places before you. These are the things that God put before you to challenge and grow you into the person that He sees you being tomorrow. He knows your limits and abilities and anything that seems too big for you is never too big for Him. Get out there and play, make mistakes, learn, and grow!

May! May? May?! How is it already May? I feel like we skipped something. This year is going by too quickly. Soccer has been going for me again and it has been a ton of fun! The kids are learning well and playing better each game I think. One problem they have though is looking forward. They get the ball and they focus on it. They are dribbling around with the thing focused on it and not looking forward. Looking forward is not always as intuitive as we think it should be. The kids have their focus on what they want to have their focus on, the ball, and keep their eyes on it to the exclusion of the broader game. They have their piece and want to keep it for as long as possible.

This sense of control, focusing on their one piece and not thinking about the bigger game is not a very helpful thing though. We need them to have their piece but be aware of what is going on around them, too. During practice we are trying to help them learn that they can trust that the ball is going to be where they left it the last time they saw it, so they can look around every once in a while to see where they are going and what other people are up to on the field as well. Are we focusing on our piece to the point that we aren’t engaged with the bigger thing that is going around us?

            In the coming months we will be looking at the book of Acts in a sermon series called “Acting Out.” Our purpose is to learn from the early church about how they engaged with the cultures they lived in and how we can do the same. If you are interested in getting a head start on what we are going to be studying as a church read the book of Acts!

Many of us have had a chance to get a break this past month. Taking time to get away with friends or family at the start of a new season. You may have taken a trip or decided that staying home and resting was what was most needed for you and your family. I had a friend from college come and spend two weeks with me and we got the chance to explore a bit of the natural beauty of God’s creation by getting down to the Redwoods and checking out the Stout Grove! Seeing the amazing Redwood trees was a wonderful reminder for me of the power of strong connections. The roots of these great trees don’t go very deep but their strength comes not from driving deep into the earth and standing on their own, it comes from reaching out and building strong connections to those around them.

My hope is that you have had time this month to rest and reflect and reconnect. That God has been working in your life in this time of renewal. That Jesus’ resurrection means more for you than candy and family. The longing that you feel for connection is fulfilled in Jesus. This coming month I hope that we are able to reach out to Him and reconnect. To find our strength renewed and multiplied in His presence and love so that we can join what Jesus is doing to connect with the people around us. Each of us has an important part to play in this interconnected system of heart roots that Jesus is the center of!