Monday's Mini Message 4-6-09

Reconciliation means to make peace where there wasn’t peace before. God wants to put everything back together, and that includes us. God wants to balance all of us. That means everything. Holistically: your heart; your will, your mind; your intellect; your emotions your past; your wounds; your failures; your worries; your anxieties. The things that keep us wake at night. Our addictions. Our Compulsions. It’s the struggles we have and we seem to never get rid of. When the bible speaks of salvation it is speaking of something that is holistic. Every last part of us back together. The same thing that can happen across the universe through Christ’s death has been extended to you and me. In every aspect of my being I should have total peace in.
We are going INWARD because we value wholeness. We want to be the people that are whole healthy people, who have stared our junk in the face, and our wounds, and all the painful stuff from the past, and are making peace with who God is, and who we are.
When we go in the INWARD direction we find out that our identity is marred and flawed. And we are trying to be someone else. Coming to peace with who you are and who God made you to be is coming to terms with who you are, and being ok with that. It is when we start asking fewer questions like; “Why am I not like so-and-so, and why do I not look like that? We spend our lives wishing we were someone else and we feel uncomfortable in our skin. To be whole is to go in the INWARD direction more and more and learning more about you. I’m ME and I am tired of being someone else. This is who God made me, and I am going to learn to be ok with that. And then celebrate that, not because I am so great, but because God is. The INWARD direction is getting more and more OK with who we are. Now once we can do that, we will see so much more and get so much more done!
We are committed to going INWARD. We are dealing with, and digging up the painful stuff that has been covered up. We are defining what is means to allow salvation to be holistic. And what it means to let God’s light to shine into every last area of our lives. We want to be the people that sees the junk, and the trash, and lets it out.
Jesus doesn’t just want to give us a ticket to heaven. No, He wants to heal and mend and put you back in balance with how life is supposed to be, here, now, today. Because you can be a “Christian” and be “saved”, and sing all the right songs, and actually be miserable. So you can be a super Christian and haven’t even begun to experience salvation. As we move INWARD we will see peace where there was not peace before. This is the life of one that follows Christ.
When we choose not to move INWARD and into this peace that is being offered, it is destructive. When we use what others have done to us as an excuse to not receive reconciliation we are destroying ourselves. Because we are driven by things that we are unaware of. There is a mystery behind the mystery, and we will continue to struggle, and wrestle and live fragmented lives until identify them and come to peace with them.
We believe that God wants to redeem every part of us, and that Jesus’ message of salvation is holistic in nature. We believe that all of life is spiritual life and that all of our fears, failures, and broken hearts can be restored and made whole. We value the INWARD journey because we want to be fully integrated people: mind, body, soul, emotions, and experiences all offered together to God.

CHURCH