Well today (tonight) was our first meeting for the PDL group. Frankly, I had a grumpy evening and wanted to cancel. So, I had a text ready to send cancelling the group.

I didn't send the text tho because the women who want to do this group need to know that they can trust me with the schedule...especially if they are to think about trusting God with their life. Doesn't that suck sometimes? I feel like I need to be responsible because I am like part of God's delegation to these women. They have already met lots of Pharisees that they hated, and felt hated by. But how do you not let that wear you down, the being part of God's delegation. I am tired and cranky and want to pull the cover over my head and can only pray in that quiet heart sorrow kind of way...the middle of the night stark solitude-no words, just a little sad. But I can't hide. I have to go hang with these chicks and try to be real and not just intellectual.

So I did. I ate my BLT and prayed with each bite as they warmed up with their own discussion on how they were finding the book. Then it began to hit-"I am good with God until all this talk of Jesus." "I can't believe there is a hell. Hell is sort of here. Maybe you just go to another dimension when you die, not even heaven." "I don't agree with you [one woman speaking of another] when you say that trusting in Jesus you get to heaven. What about all the Muslim and the 3rd world countries and the atheists."

We talked about grace, how God reveals Himself, OT prophesy, what Jesus said about Himself, how God calls us to Himself. We talked about eastern philosophy and how Buddha was a man, not a god. We talked about the Bible. We talked about religion versus relationship. I had to shut them down after 1 1/2 hours because I was tired and needed to go to work in the morning.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Christ in His Distressing Disguise

Image
When I was much younger, I learned about this remarkable woman, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, then simply known as Mother Teresa. As a teenager herself, she had chosen to serve God by leaving her home in the former Yugoslavia to go practically around the world to India and become a nun. There she taught school, but she was distracted by the poor on the streets. Longing to care for them, she needed to be released from her teaching duties. Eventually a new religious order, the Missionaries of Charity, was formed by Mother Teresa to serve them, the poorest of the poor. I wonder today what attracted me to her. I didn't know much about India. The pictures of the suffering, the cachetic bodies that barely resembled humans, puzzled me. Growing up with movies and air brushed photographs, as well as a skepticism of news and government organizations, it can be hard to believe. How can there be such incredible suffering in my world? Mother Teresa was doing God's work; I know that was exciti
Read more

Blog Carnival-Seasons

Image
It was all so much simpler in my spring.  I suppose it is for everyone.  That is why babies and puppies and newness are squealed over.  I have been struggling.  Spring has long gone.  The leaves are falling. I loved what I had, what once defined me. Without it now, I feel like a crab without a shell-              vulnerable...                            homeless...                                           dry in spirit. I know, that all is not lost. I know, things change. I know, that God,              who brought me from there to there once,              will bring me from here to there again. I know, the story is not over. I know, the season will change, again. I wish my heart knew all this as well. Check out more blog entries on Seasons at the Carnival .
Read more

Blog Carnival: Community

Image
Blog Carnival: Community Community is getting to be a buzzword that hardly seems recognizable.  It has become permanently connected with a metrosexual worship leader at the hip church which has an outreach into some impoverished place.  But is that community? Yesterday I wrote about Facebook's social networking site.  Did you know that there are more than 300 million active users and that 50% of their active users (returned to the site in the last 30 days) log on to Facebook in any given day and that the average user has 130 friends on the site? Is that community? Do we really have a community or do we talk so much about it and request friends by the busload because we desire it intensely? We were made for community.  Creator said it was not good for that first man to be alone.  Even Creator was not alone.  We need to walk with others.  We need our village.  We need them to not only walk with us and love us and share our burdens, but to challenge us, to force us to grow.
Read more