Finding the Kingdom During Covid 19

Finding the Kingdom During Covid 19

by | May 8, 2020 | Hope for a Church Planter, Truth About Life, Truth about Worship

March 2020

I sat with a towel twisting my wet hair up on our bed, back in our master, while our worship pastor, our children’s director and my husband sat no more than 10 yards away and I listened to their honest, pure, worship. Tears began to fill behind my eyes and threatened to stream down my face. The words that rang throughout my house were, “You are making all things new…” And yet, as I sat in bed with a fever and a desperation to heal quicker, I knew and loved that my church was still being a church.

In the Confusion

This time with the craziness of Covid-19 has been a whirlwind or as some have referred to as being like the movie, Groundhog’s Day… over and over. Social media has gone RIDICULOUS with people now having free time to spout off their thoughts and ideas about the situation (I’ve seen an immense amount of good come out of our situations) but this morning… I could just be… and listen… and softly sing to my King while no one watched. Honestly, I could barely get the words out. Here’s the conclusion I’ve come to amidst all of this chaos and disorder:

  • I’ve found peace where once my heart was jumbled and stressed.
  • I’ve been able to breathe, really breathe in, and experience pure joy with my kids daily.
  • I’ve been able to dig into Scripture and geek out to the possibilities I find there.
  • I’ve been able to worship with no one watching.
  • I’ve been able to spend time reaching out to my church family more regularly to ask for or pray for them.
  • I’ve watched my kids settle in and just be… without the crazy amount of time constraints they used to have.
  • I’ve been able to see all of my church family’s faces via Zoom and laugh with them.
  • I’ve watched our church family come together in a tighter knit community to support and love on each other even virtually.

Chaos and the Church

It’s not the same… we can’t meet together collectively. It’s not normal… we aren’t allowed to worship together in the same room anymore. It’s not even similar… we are spending church virtually instead of spending next to flesh and blood. But here’s the thing… we are meeting separately… but we are together in spirit.

We’ve got to let go our our stubbornness… our resentment for how things were handled… our need to want things our way… and move into a time of healing, rest, and thankfulness that we live in a time and age where we can still meet- even if virtually.

I think back to one of the first Sunday’s after Jesus’ death. We find the disciples and Jesus’s followers spread out all over the city of Jerusalem… hiding. Some followers had even left the city and were headed home to Emmaus. But when Jesus finally appears to them in Luke 24, they think he’s a ghost. They can’t even believe he’s back!

The Kingdom they thought was coming… didn’t.

The life they thought Jesus had alluded to- was completely upside down.

I mean- the guy they’d been following around had been preaching of a new Kingdom… and then, whelp, he was killed. And now, they were huddled in a house, just waiting for something and thinking that there was no way this Kingdom was going to happen anymore.

“Then he said to them, “Don’t you remember the words that I spoke to you when I was still with you? I told you that everything written about me would be fulfilled, including all the prophecies from the law of Moses through the Psalms and the writings of the prophets—that they would all find their fulfillment.”  He supernaturally unlocked their understanding to receive the revelation of the Scriptures,  then said to them, “Everything that has happened fulfills what was prophesied of me. Christ, the Messiah, was destined to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.  Now you must go into all the nations and preach repentance and forgiveness of sins so that they will turn to me. Start right here in Jerusalem.  For you are my witnesses and have seen for yourselves all that has transpired. And I will send the fulfillment of the Father’s promise to you. So stay here in the city until the mighty power of heaven falls upon you and wraps around you.”

Here’s what’s crazy about us humans: we think we’re soooo smart. The disciples thought it was all over when their Savior was killed (and who’s to say we wouldn’t have thought the same?) They thought the Kingdom that Jesus preached, would never rise up. And yet, it did.

The Kingdom is happening around us. I’m seeing it in the faces of people who are selflessly dropping off food on our porch so that my husband doesn’t have to scramble to make dinner for all of us after taking care of us all day. I hear it in the voices worshipping from my living room. I receive it from the texts and social media messages that encourage and build me up with promises of prayer and healing. I read about it through the words of my King in scripture. I feel the Kingdom when I pray while weeping when no one is watching. It is all around us. God is with us.. even when we feel like church isn’t normal. The Kingdom is here… do you feel it?

Hard Pressed

by | Jan 20, 2015 | Hope for a Church Planter, Truth about Church Planting

We’d been hit. I watched as the color drained from my husband’s face (and for him with his ruddy complexion… this was definitely worth noticing.)

Nothing could have prepared us for the bomb that dropped on us that day. (Okay, not a literal bomb… it was completely figurative… but it might have well as been a real bomb.) We literally could not speak after our visitors left our home. Our boys continued to play for a few minutes and we discussed what was for dinner.

I was not hungry.

My wonderful husband, who holds me up, comforts me in my pain, and puts up with my hormonal blunders jumped up and threw a pizza in the oven to reheat it.

The Bomb

We had seen the signs of the bomb… but we had ignored it.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Bombs (like what I’m talking of) come with red flags and warnings written on them. But we choose to trust (and I mean- really…. who can trust a bomb that’s ready to explode???  Evidently, we thought we could.)

My thought that ran over and over in my mind was this… “Why do I want to love others?” Oh yeah. Because Jesus told me too.

I had listened to my husband, just that same morning, preach on Jesus and his last (new) command to his disciples before his death.

“Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples- when they see the love you have for each other.” (John 13:34-35)

And yet at that moment, I was not wanting to love these people who had just hurt us.  I wanted to scream.  Throw things at the wall.  Grab a shovel, dig a hole, jump in and fall asleep forever in it.  “I am not cut out for this,” was the thought that was running and screaming through my mind.

He Was Waiting

I sat and processed… through the ritual of eating the reheated pizza at dinner, where my boys gabbered like nothing was different.  I processed as I picked up my Macbook and began to type out my emotions, mostly my anger and hurt.  I ran the situation over and over in my head.  And then…

I stopped.  I felt God waiting for me.  Waiting for me to turn to him with all of it.  Waiting for me to run to Him and ask Him questions that included, “Why this?  Why now?  Why?????”  In that moment, I became like a child again.  I gave it all.

He told me that He had allowed us to endure this pain, because something BETTER was coming.  This pain was a good thing.  We were being pruned.  And it hurt terribly.  I hated watching my husband stomach so much pain and hurt.  I wanted to take it all from him.  But knowing that God was in control of the church plant, comforted me.

He Was Betrayed

In that same week, in my BSF class, we discussed the relationship between Jesus and Judas Iscariot.  Judas followed Jesus and pledged himself to Him.  But when Jesus didn’t establish the Kingdom that Judas wanted, he sold Jesus out.  Literally.  Through this time of hurt, I gained some comfort by this.  Jesus was betrayed by one of his “best friends.”  And Judas wasn’t the only one who betrayed Jesus.  Peter did.  THREE TIMES.  Not to mention that all of his disciples, his trusted and loved 12, deserted him when it mattered the most.  John was the only one who stood with Jesus’ mother Mary at the crucifixion.  One.  Out of 12.  And when Jesus returned, alive…. he found them cowering in a locked room.

Jesus knows how we feel when we are betrayed by those we love.  He experienced it more so… since he paid for Judas’ betrayal with his life.

Being sold out by one’s friend to the point of death.  Ouch.  When I look at it that way, our situation doesn’t look as dire.  We are hurt.  But not killed.  It reminds me of the verse in 2 Corinthians 4:7-9,

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned;struck down, but not destroyed.”

Healing

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I still hurt.  The wound is still healing.  I don’t know if it will ever go back to normal for us with those that have hurt us so.  But I do know this.  God has it.  All of it.

2 Corinthians goes on to say later in chapter 4, verses 16-18,

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Looking back now, I realize that we were at a place in our plant, where we needed that bomb to go off.  We needed to be pruned in order to grow.  And we did.