Its a brief recount of a moment of honesty from one of his leaders.  When asked to pray she confessed that she couldn’t and hasn’t been able to for some time.  Wow!  What an amazing thing to hear from one of your leaders.  A commenter referenced Mother Teresa and the struggles she had with her faith most of her life.  Time magazine takes a look at what they call her ‘crisis of faith’.  They quote from her own letters, letters where she confesses the silence that she experienced and even the questioning in her own mind and heart that God is even there.

What a great combination of stories that bring to mind what a lifetime of faith can look like.  Not many years of uninterupted spiritual bliss or confidence in the unseen.  Seasons of doubt and silence that must inevitably accompany the human condition as we seek a Holy God.

UPDATE: OK, I found them and now everything is right in my world again…

So, I offered to set her up and get her computer all cleaned up. So while my computer was being rid of the all the factory installed ‘bloat-ware’ I was doing an even more needed clean up on her computer. Her computer had been infected with everything from Trojan horses to worms and the result was an unending stream of pop up adds and fake system warnings and the occasional pornographic image. She has been putting up with it for so long she has forgotten what it is like to have a computer that is free of those problems. So I was going through the computer, helping her back up the stuff she needed; I began to take the software axe to the roots and I realized that in a way, this is what my job is!

No, not helping people sort out their computers. My job is helping people sort out their lives <whoah! that sounds too big>. For a while at Impact I have been plugging away doing my job and being the church administrator. As we grow and we really start to show the need for more than one shepherd I find that God is continually pushing and stretching me into that role. I find that as every day and week passes I find myself more and more in unfamiliar territory. And not that I have all the solutions or am the person that is going to clean up someone’s life, we all know that act is reserved for the work of the Holy Spirit. But I am the person that should be able to point people to their solution and to stand beside them as they sort through the piles of garbage that keep popping up – the whole while continuing to gently push them toward the goal that they want for themselves and that God wants for them. I can think of two situations at Impact Church that are examples of someone needing to be gently pushed through the garbage in their lives to find themselves on the other side, free and breathing easier.  I feel that God has appointed me to walk through that garbage with them.

So, I won’t pretend to have this idea completely figured out. Neither will I defend the analogy all that much because I am rushing to get the idea down so it sticks…for me. I spent a good amount of my day today surrounded by computers. Mostly to minister to this girl and her family in a practical way. While I jumped back and forth between computers I could hear God telling me loudly that this is what ministry is…today.

So this whole discussion was started today after church when a friend told me a story about his trip to Las Vegas for work. He met up with a client of his company who he has had lots of talks with. This client is in a terminally ill marriage and has been separated from his wife for over a year. He lives a pretty crazy life and usually takes advantage of his time in Vegas to indulge in ALL of its many activities. He had a chance to spend some time with his client and talk to him about his woes. He talked to him about his marriage and his exploits when he is away from home. My friend told me that later he felt like he had missed an opportunity to say something or to share something with him about being a Christian or believing in God. As I sat with him and thought about that comment I thought about how many other Christian friends I have heard over the years talk about opportunities and windows to bring up their faith. I thought to myself, when did we join a multi-level marketing business?

The problem with that question is not that what we want to share is bad or that it is completely unexpected. The problem is that when we focus on that question we are turning every person we meet into a commodity. That was never Jesus’ intention. When Jesus was asked what is the most important commandment, His answer was simple: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul. The second is to love your neighbor as you love yourself [period]. There is no amendment to that command that says ‘…so you can find an opportunity to sell them what you believe.’ Jesus said that all men will know that we are his disciples by our love for one another. Does this mean that by loving one another and our neighbors in radical ways, without agenda, will demonstrate who we are and what we believe to the world around us? You bet!

So, when my friend told me that he felt like he had missed an opportunity to share his faith and that he had been feeling bad about it all weekend I reminded him that the only opportunity that we should be looking for, and feel bad that we missed is the opportunity to love.

If we stop looking for the opportunity to share our faith and interject our great arguing points for the faith; and we just look for opportunities to love people we will then start to look and act like disciples of our Teacher…

Then I looked at the girl who was waiting expectantly beside me. It wasn’t the girl who I was supposed to pick up. It took me a moment to realize what was happening, but when I did, I was kind of at a loss for words.

Go read this post, Corey asks a great question to think over – and for the record, I don’t have an answer for myself…