Southwood Lutheran Church

Reflections on a Sunday Sermon

Use it On Monday, by Michelle DeRusha

Michelle writes a daily blog about finding faith in the everyday at Graceful. On Monday's she reflects on Sunday's sermon in a weekly post entitled "Use it on Monday." She's nice enough to let us re-post it on Southwood's blog. You can read it here each week and then click over to Michelle's blog for more of her writing.

Even on the Raving Lunatic Days

Would there be anything I could do that would get you to not love me?” Noah asked me the other night as we were tucked under his comforter, watching the pine tree boughs wave against the moon. “No, absolutely nothing,” I assured him. “Even if you did the worst thing you could think of, even if you were in jail for your whole life, I would still love you.”

Yesterday morning, Mother’s Day, Rowan asked me nearly the same question. And I answered the same: “I love you guys every minute, every day, no matter what.”

“Even the lamp day, when you got super mad…did you love me the same that day, too? Or did you maybe love me a little bit less?” Rowan persisted.

Ah yes, the infamous lamp day. Not exactly the parenting moment I wanted to relive during the first 20 minutes of Mother’s Day: the day Rowan hurled a pillow across the living room and broke the lamp, mere hours after my mom had bought me a new lamp to replace the other lamp Rowan had broken more than 8 months before. The day I’d morphed into a maniacal lunatic.

I’d gripped the lamp base white-knuckled in my fist and raised it over my head, shaking it and raving incoherently. My mother stood speechless next to me, paralyzed along with the boys by my bellowing outburst. I ordered the boys to their rooms while I swept up the fragments, ranting about how they’d spend the entire day behind closed doors. My mother followed suit, retreating to the basement guest room as I crashed around the kitchen, slamming the box of fresh donuts into the trashcan and fuming aloud to myself while the boys howled in their bedrooms.

Not exactly indicative of the kind of overflowing love Paul talks about in his letter to the Philippians:

“I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep growing in knowledge and understanding.” (Philippians 1:9)

As Pastor Greg preached about how parents must practice sacrificial love, tough love and gracious love, I thought about how much I'd failed as a mother on the lamp day. I thought about how I’d spread fear, how I’d burned with anger, overflowing not with love, but with bitterness and resentment; how I’d epitomized gracelessness.

But as I slumped in the pew, I also thought about the conversation that had taken place in the kitchen on Mother's Day morning, and the answer I’d given Rowan when he asked if I’d loved him less on the lamp day. “Even though I was really mad, and really disappointed about the lamp, and even though I really yelled a lot, I still loved you just as much,” I assured Rowan. “My love wasn’t even a tiny bit less. Love stays the same no matter what.”

My answer seemed to satisfy Rowan as he slurped the remainder of his milky cereal. And you know what? Later, after Pastor Greg's sermon, I realized that my answer applies to me, too. No matter how disappointing my behavior, no matter how God may grieve my raving lunatic lamp days, he still loves me just the same, not even a little bit less. No matter what.

How does God's limitless grace make you feel {especially on those raving lunatic days}?

You can read more of Michelle's writing on her blog Graceful.

 

Reflections on a Sunday Sermon

Use it On Monday, by Michelle DeRusha

Michelle writes a daily blog about finding faith in the everyday at Graceful. On Monday's she reflects on Sunday's sermon in a weekly post entitled "Use it on Monday." She's nice enough to let us re-post it on Southwood's blog. You can read it here each week and then click over to Michelle's blog for more of her writing.

The Vine

As Pastor Sara lifts the bread high, the boy in the plaid shorts with the crown of whorled blond hair climbs onto the padded pew. Grabbing his dad’s shirt with one hand, he raises the other hand toward the ceiling, fingers splayed like a small, creamy starfish.

The dad knows what’s next – clearly this is a weekly routine. He lifts the boy until his flip-flops rest on the back of the pew in front of him. Clenching a fist-full of polo shirt, the boy straightens tall and steady, feet firmly planted on the back of the pew, his father’s arm encircling his waist like a lasso. And then the boy watches, steady and solemn, as Pastor Sara lifts the cup of wine toward the sky.

The little boy with the blond hair knows instinctively what I so often forget. He reaches, he climbs, he clings. He rests steady, comfortable and secure in his father’s arms.

He knows and accepts what I can never seem to remember: that apart from his father, he can do nothing.

“Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. “ (John 15:4)

You can read more of Michelle's writing on her blog Graceful.

 

Reflections on a Sunday Sermon

Use it On Monday, by Michelle DeRusha

Michelle writes a daily blog about finding faith in the everyday at Graceful. On Monday's she reflects on Sunday's sermon in a weekly post entitled "Use it on Monday." She's nice enough to let us re-post it on Southwood's blog. You can read it here each week and then click over to Michelle's blog for more of her writing.

A Crowd of Witnesses in Real Life

Yesterday was confirmation Sunday at church, and I cried my way through most of the service without a shred of Kleenex in my purse. The young people kneeled straight and tall, white gowns cascading onto altar steps, scarlet carnations pinned to their chests, and as our pastors prayed over them while their parents crowded behind with bowed heads, hands on their shoulders, one word rang in my head: community.

In her sermon, Pastor Sara talked how each of us is surrounded by a “huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith” (Hebrews 12:1) – those who run the race of faith with us, paving the way before us, carrying us along as we grow weary.

“The people who have gone before us and who we spend our time with now help us tell our story,” Sara acknowledged. “The spirit of people both past and present cheer us on in our faith.”

As I listened to Sara I thought about the community of women Deidra, Erin and I hosted in my home on Saturday. Some of these women I know well – friends, colleagues and neighbors – and some I just met for the first time Saturday.

Truthfully, I’d been nervous about hosting this event. In fact, I’d awakened the night before at 3:30 a.m. in a panic. Should I buy flavored creamer? Did I have enough chairs? Should we wear name tags? Would I have to pray out loud? Would we stand around with our arms folded over our chests in awkward silence? Would people notice how sprongy my couch is with the broken springs?

How is this going to work with such a disparate group of women – women who don’t even know each other, who aren’t even in the same place in life, I wondered as I tossed and turned, sleepless and sweaty.

I worried about the fact that we were probably all at different spots on the spiritual spectrum. “What if it’s too Jesus-ey?” I worried. “What if it’s not Jesus-ey enough?” I fretted.

You know what?

It worked. It worked beautifully.

Sure, some of us had never met before. And it’s true, we were different, all of us at various life stages – married, single, divorced, empty nester, grandmother, young mother, working, stay-at-home, retired. And yeah, we were undoubtedly at various points on the spiritual spectrum, too. But despite all that, we laughed. We shared stories. We ate scones.

We connected.

And when I dashed out the door to head to work before the meet-up had even officially ended, and I saw Deidra up to her elbows in a sink full of soapy water, and Frances with a dish towel in her hand and Amanda clearing my table (two women, by the way, I’d only just met two hours before), I knew I was witnessing something beautiful.

As I stopped for a second to glimpse those three women cleaning my kitchen, I witnessed in-real-life community unfold right before my harried eyes.

Where have you found unexpected community?

You can read more of Michelle's writing on her blog Graceful.

 

Reflections on a Sunday Sermon

Use it On Monday, by Michelle DeRusha

Michelle writes a daily blog about finding faith in the everyday at Graceful. On Monday's she reflects on Sunday's sermon in a weekly post entitled "Use it on Monday." She's nice enough to let us re-post it on Southwood's blog. You can read it here each week and then click over to Michelle's blog for more of her writing.

Heaven Doesn't Feel Real

I’ll never forget the evening Brad and I walked past Noah’s bedroom a couple of weeks after Brad’s mom had died. Cat Stevens’Morning Has Broken was blasting on his CD player, and Noah sat tucked under his comforter next to the wide-open window. “I open my window and put this song on loud so Haukebo can hear it while she’s painting in Heaven,” Noah explained matter-of-factly to us.

Heaven doesn’t feel real like that for me. I know I’m supposed to believe in it, and I do, in a vague, religious kind of way, but it bothers me that I can’t wrap my head, or my heart, around it concretely.

I wish I believed in Heaven the way my kids do, but all I have is an amorphous, Christianese vision of Heaven. Frankly my view doesn’t offer much comfort; it doesn’t sustain me the way I suspect it does other people. I get some comfort from the thought of eternal life and the opportunity to spend face-to-face time with God, but Heaven? When I think of Heaven I draw a big blank.

Biblical descriptions of Heaven don’t help either. Pearly gates, streets of pure gold and a river bright as crystal sound like someone else’s vision (and I guess it is someone else's vision: it's John's). Like Brad said yesterday after we heard the description of Heaven from Revelation, “Gold streets don’t appeal to me. I think I’d prefer a softer, spongier material to walk on.”

When Noah was very young, his definition of Heaven consisted of “lots of white pine trees and mint chocolate chip ice cream all the time.” Yesterday after church when I asked him if his view of Heaven has changed since then, he told me that now he envisions “really puffy, soft clouds that you can walk on, and Ailanthus trees everywhere, growing right up out of the clouds, because Ailanthus means ‘tree of Heaven,’ you know.”

Rowan added that he thought Heaven will be a place where there’s “lots of fun stuff to do all the time.” I suspect he envisions infinite Mario Bros…without the nagging mother who puts a limit on screen time.

In the wake of my in-laws’ deaths, we’ve talked about Heaven more than usual in the last 18 months. I know I’ve used Heaven as a balm for the fear and pain that’s come with that loss, a way to offer brightness and hope for my kids in the midst of their grief. As a parent I’m desperate to ease my kids’ suffering, so I toss out Heaven as the only antidote I know. But to me, it feels like a weak consolation when they are missing their grandparents in the here and now.

I often ask the boys what they think Haukebo and Papa are doing in Heaven in an effort to create a link, a lasting connection between them and their beloved grandparents. But I think part of me is also trying to cement a vision of Heaven that they might carry with them into adulthood. While I know they won’t always believe that Heaven is comprised of mint chocolate chip ice cream, Ailanthus trees, Haukebo painting landscapes and Papa dancing to Johnny B. Goode, I hope that talking about Heaven now will somehow keep a sliver of it real for them later.

What about you? Does Heaven feel real to you?

{As an interesting side note: when I looked for images of Ailanthus trees on the web, I came across this description on the Duke University site: "More appropriately called the tree from hell, this common weedy tree is a seriously invasive species from China, most often found in disturbed areas and along roadsides." Hmmmm. Mabe Heaven really is in the eye of the beholder?}.

You can read more of Michelle's writing on her blog Graceful.

 

Reflections on a Sunday Sermon

Use it On Monday, by Michelle DeRusha

Michelle writes a daily blog about finding faith in the everyday at Graceful. On Monday's she reflects on Sunday's sermon in a weekly post entitled "Use it on Monday." She's nice enough to let us re-post it on Southwood's blog. You can read it here each week and then click over to Michelle's blog for more of her writing.

With His Death

When I was 25 and working as an editor at an art magazine in New York City, I came down with a mysterious illness. For several weeks doctors couldn’t figure out what it was – test after test revealed nothing, despite my worsening symptoms: searing headaches, blurred vision, twitching, aching muscles, extreme fatigue, severe nausea. Once a long-distance runner, I didn’t have the energy to walk to the mailbox or lift my arms to brush my hair. Riding Metro North for an hour to my job in the city and working 50 hours a week was out of the question, so I took a leave of absence from work and moved back in with my parents.

Each night, limbs splayed, window open to the stifling August heat, I’d lay gripping the sides of the twin bed in my parents’ guest bedroom, paralyzed by the fear that I was dying. I was convinced I’d be dead by the end of the year. In my mind there was no other explanation – no one, I reasoned, could feel like I did and survive.

The absolute low point was the night I crawled into my parents’ bed and slept between them. I was 25 years old and sleeping with my mother and father like a three-year-old.

I eventually recovered from the illness, but the fear of death that had dogged me since childhood and intensified during the year I was sick never abated. More than ten years after that illness, married and the mother of two children, I continued to lay awake nearly every night gripped by the fear of death.

I didn’t pray about it, because I didn’t believe in God. I didn’t hope for a reprieve from the ever-present fear, because I didn’t believe that hope existed.

“With His death, the power of death over us is no more,” I heard Pastor Sara exclaim yesterday during Easter service, and as she spoke those words, I nodded yes, yes. It’s true. I believe it now.

I still think about dying from time to time, but not the way I used to. I don’t obsess over it any more. It doesn’t keep me awake at night, sheets balled in my fists, eyes wide at the ceiling. Nor do I believe that when I die, I will simply cease, that my body will be put into the ground, end of story. While I can’t quite envision what eternal life will look like, on most days I believe in my heart that it exists.

I tell you this story today, the day after Easter, for one reason: to give you hope.

It may be that you know someone lost, unmoored, hopeless. Someone who feels the talons of death grip tight. Someone who doubts or downright doesn’t believe.

It may even be that that someone is you.

My story isn’t dramatic or exciting. There’s no sky-splitting, fall-to-my-knees conversion. I never heard the voice of God or felt the presence of Jesus come suddenly into my life. I didn’t escape death or overcome insurmountable odds. This transformation from fear to hope, from death to life, unfolded slowly and uneventfully over a period of years. Truth be told, it’s still unfolding, this process of God replacing my heart of stone.

My story is pretty mundane, as far as conversion stories go. Yet it’s a story of hope and truth nonetheless. I am free from the power of death. With His death, the power of death over me is no more.

I pray you know that hope and truth in your heart, too.

You can read more of Michelle's writing on her blog Graceful.

 

Reflections on a Sunday Sermon

Use it On Monday, by Michelle DeRusha

Michelle writes a daily blog about finding faith in the everyday at Graceful. On Monday's she reflects on Sunday's sermon in a weekly post entitled "Use it on Monday." She's nice enough to let us re-post it on Southwood's blog. You can read it here each week and then click over to Michelle's blog for more of her writing.

Betrayal

As a kid I had a love-hate attitude toward Palm Sunday.

What I loved were the palms themselves, the perfect instrument for tickling my sister’s nose, or, depending on my mood, jabbing her in the neck. I loved, too, that we’d head over to Nana and Papa’s house after Mass, where we’d eat chocolate-frosted donuts from Donut Dip and watch my grandfather weave the supple yellow-green fronds into crosses.

The part of Palm Sunday I hated was the Mass itself, because we read the dreaded Passion, the interminable story of Jesus' crucifixion. It was long and boring, and we stood for the entire reading, shifting from foot to foot and leaning heavily on the pew.

I was always shocked to witness my mom repeat the words, “Crucify him. Crucify him. Give us Barabbus instead,” with the rest of the congregation. “How could she?” I’d think, horrified by what I perceived as my mother’s betrayal of Jesus. I refused to speak my required part, clamping my lips tight when we got to the courtroom scene, convinced that I was the only honorable Catholic in the bunch.

Part of me hasn’t entirely abandoned that self-righteousness, even thirty years later. When I read the scene in which Jesus rides in to Jerusalem on the donkey, the bystanders laying palm branches at his feet and singing his praises in joyful expectation, I’m unnerved by the disparity between this triumphant entrance and the violence and abuse that quickly follows.

“How could they dismiss him so easily?” I wonder. “How could they turn against him so quickly?”

I’d like to think I wouldn’t have reacted the same way. I’d like to think, just as I refused to condemn Jesus when we performed the Passion in Mass as a kid, that I would have been one of his few, loyal followers until the bitter end.

But I’m kidding myself. Sometimes God doesn’t act or respond the way I want him to, or the way I expect him to. Sometimes I wonder why he’s not changing a particular situation in my life, or not answering a specific prayer.

Sometimes I get angry, frustrated or disappointed with God. My trust in him falters; my faith wavers. I turn my back against him.

Even today, two thousand years later, even when I know how the story ends, I’m still capable of betraying Jesus. I’m still capable of turning from praise to protest. My crucifying may be metaphorical, my abandonment may occur in my heart, but that doesn’t make it any less real.

You can read more of Michelle's writing on her blog Graceful.

 

Reflections on a Sunday Sermon

Use it On Monday, by Michelle DeRusha

Michelle writes a daily blog about finding faith in the everyday at Graceful. On Monday's she reflects on Sunday's sermon in a weekly post entitled "Use it on Monday." She's nice enough to let us re-post it on Southwood's blog. You can read it here each week and then click over to Michelle's blog for more of her writing.

Treasures and Hearts

When I announced to my kids recently that I would be leaving my part-time job at Nebraska PBS/NPR to pursue a freelance writing career, Rowan’s first question was, “After you’re done being a writer, will you become a veterinarian?” {perhaps some projection on his part there}

After I assured my children that veterinary science was out of the question, especially considering the fact that I find cats creepy and am genetically programmed to abhor dog hair, their next question was this: “So are we going to have more money now so we can go to Florida and buy more stuff?” When I explained, in fact, that not only would we not have more money, we would undoubtedly have quite a bit less, at least for a while, they seemed almost panicky. I can’t blame them, really. They hear Brad and I talk frequently about money – what we can and can’t afford, the status of our savings account, how our 401(k) is weathering the volatility of the stock market. They listen to us explain to them why we won’t be purchasing the Nintendo 3DS Portable Gaming System or a new flat-screen TV, or why, just because they break a favorite toy, we aren’t going to zip over to Target and replace it with a new one. 

But what the kids don’t hear us talk a lot about is the reasons why we’ve chosen the professions we have, despite the fact that there are more lucrative options out there. That, I think, is a grave oversight.

Truthfully, the day-to-day reality of Matthew 6:21 isn’t always easy. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” looks great on paper, but is remarkably difficult to live out in real-life. 

The fact is, sometimes I want more money, a bigger paycheck, a nicer house with a master suite in which I don’t have to share a bathroom with two toothpaste-globbing boys. Sometimes I want to shop something other than the sale rack. Sometimes I want to plunk down the Visa card without a second thought.

The other night at dinner as we discussed what my move to freelance writing will look like for our family, Rowan asked Brad, “So why do you work part-time?” Brad and I laughed hard at that one, because, in fact, as an English professor, Brad does work full-time.

We explained to the kids that the flexibility of Brad’s schedule –that he doesn’t teach during the summer, that he’s home every day in the late afternoon, that he’s able to attend virtually all of their games and extracurricular activities, picks them up from school several days a week and even volunteers in the classroom from time to time – is one of the reasons he chose that career path (that and the fact that he loves literature and enjoys conveying that appreciation to others). That flexibility enhances our quality family time, we explained, and is even more valuable to us than a bigger paycheck.

They looked unconvinced.

Later, after the kids were in bed, Brad wondered aloud whether they realize or will ever appreciate what a rare gift they’ve been given. Honestly, I don’t know. What I do know is that even if they don’t consciously realize the benefits of quality time versus a heftier paycheck, on some level I think they’ll understand that their parents’ hearts and treasure were in the same place.

You can read more of Michelle's writing on her blog Graceful.

 

Reflections on a Sunday Sermon

Use it On Monday, by Michelle DeRusha

Michelle writes a daily blog about finding faith in the everyday at Graceful. On Monday's she reflects on Sunday's sermon in a weekly post entitled "Use it on Monday." She's nice enough to let us re-post it on Southwood's blog. You can read it here each week and then click over to Michelle's blog for more of her writing.

Shards

Rowan dropped the sugar bowl yesterday morning about 15 minutes before we left for church. The full-to-the-brim sugar bowl. As he kneeled on the counter to reach for the box of Life, he knocked the covered bowl from the shelf. It bounced off the counter, hit the floor, broke into 9 pieces and spread a swath of sugar halfway across the parquet. Then he burst into tears, because he knew what I was going to say. He knew because I tell him nearly every day: “Don’t kneel on the counters. If you need to get something use the stool or ask me.”

“I’m sorry,” he squeaked, his face scrunched scarlet, tears rolling down his cheeks as I flung open the cabinet to grab the dustpan and broom. “Are you mad?” he asked, as I tossed ceramic shards into the trash and shook sugar granules from the bills strewn across the counter.

“I’m highly irritated, highly irritated,” I muttered, teeth clenched as I brushed the grit from the bottom of one bare foot and then the other over the open trashcan. “Highly, highly irritated.”

Forty-five minutes later I saw in the pew as Pastor Greg preached on Acts 1:1-11, which includes these verses about being God’s witnesses:

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8).

I admit, I felt pretty good about myself when I read that verse: “Hey, I’m a blogger; I write every day about God and faith. I write a newspaper column about faith. That’s witnessing, right? I’ve totally got that one covered.”

That is, until Pastor Greg mentioned that our first priority as Christians is to witness to those closest to us. Oikos, he called it, the Greek word for “household evangelism”:

“Witness starts in your smallest circle of family and friends, with the people in your own home and those closest to you. And then it ripples out from there.”

That’s when I remembered the sugar bowl.

Why, I wondered as I sat in the pew with my arms crossed over my chest, am I much more willing to offer grace and forgiveness to acquaintances and even strangers than I am to my own family members – my own children and my husband?

Why is it so easy for me to let a stranger off the hook and not my own child?

What kind of message about love, forgiveness and grace do I send when I don’t willingly accept my child’s sincere apology?

What kind of oikos is that?

What if a co-worker or a neighbor had knocked that sugar bowl onto my counter and strewn sugar across my kitchen floor? Would I have muttered, “Highly irritated, highly irritated,” through clenched teeth while I cleaned up the mess? Would I have ignored her apology? Would I have turned my back when she expressed her sorrow and remorse?

Of course not. “Oh no, no, don’t worry about it, don’t worry about it all,” I would have consoled. “It’s fine. It’s just sugar; it cleans up easily. No problem at all,” I would have said.

I would have handed out the grace card without a second thought, the grace I didn't offer my own child.

Yesterday morning I missed an opportunity to react as Jesus would have. I missed an opportunity to demonstrate love and forgiveness and to teach a lesson with kindness.

Yesterday morning as the sugar bowl lay in fragments and my son cried tears of regret and remorse, I missed the very best opportunity to serve as God’s witness, right in the middle of my own kitchen.

What about you? Are you more willing to grant grace to strangers than you are to those in your inner circle? And if yes, why do you that's so?

You can read more of Michelle's writing on her blog Graceful.

 

Reflections on a Sunday Sermon

Use it On Monday, by Michelle DeRusha

Michelle writes a daily blog about finding faith in the everyday at Graceful. On Monday's she reflects on Sunday's sermon in a weekly post entitled "Use it on Monday." She's nice enough to let us re-post it on Southwood's blog. You can read it here each week and then click over to Michelle's blog for more of her writing.

What, Me? A Royal Priest?

When I was a kid I viewed the priest in my church with awe and reverence. He was clearly special, draped in ornate vestments, sitting solemn and statuesque in a throne behind the altar. He was mysterious, too -- a shadowy figure cloaked in dim behind the confessional screen, bestowing God’s forgiveness on me and wiping my soul clean with a few words and the sign of the cross as I kneeled next to the red velvet curtain.

I considered my priest powerful and authoritative, but also distant, set apart from us ordinary people. I remember asking my parents once if the priest was allowed to drink beer or smoke cigarettes. They shocked me when they answered, “Of course,” looking surprised that I’d ask such a question. But I’d assumed our priest was above such common practices. I pictured him alone in a stark room, sipping water and eating leftover Eucharist wafers. Beer and cigarettes, even fun for that matter, didn’t jive with my picture of priesthood at all.

I think that’s why I am always surprised when I hear myself – regular old flawed, foibly, loudly guffawing me -- described in the Bible as a priest, like we heard in 1 Peter yesterday:

But you are God’s chosen and special people. You are a group of royal priests and a holy nation. (1 Peter 2:9).

What, me? You’re talking to me? A royal priest? Yeah, I don’t think so.

After all, being chosen as one of God’s priests is special. It means I am important in his eyes, that I am connected directly and intimately to him. It means that I am set apart, and that I have a special role to fulfill in his kingdom – a role he created solely for me.

Feels like a lot of pressure, doesn’t it?

Truthfully, I don’t feel cut out for this job of “royal priest.” I’m too irritable. Too impatient. Too self-centered. I’m not solemn enough, or wise enough. I gossip from time to time and complain regularly and am short-tempered with my kids. I’m not priestly at all.

Of course, I’m forgetting one important fact: that the priests of my childhood were flawed, too. Though they wore fancy vestments, they still battled sin and despair, just like me. Though I thought they bestowed forgiveness on me, in reality, they, too, had to ask God for forgiveness just as often. Turns out, they weren’t much different from me.

What I’m learning is this: God chooses each of his people to serve as royal priests. Some of us wear ornate robes, stand behind church altars and lead congregations through worship. Others of us wear jeans or suits and work in offices or herd kids. But we all share something in common: God chose each one of us as a royal priest, to carry out unique and important work in his kingdom on Earth.

How does it feel to consider yourself as one of God’s royal priests?

You can read more of Michelle's writing on her blog Graceful.

 

Reflections on a Sunday Sermon

Use it On Monday, by Michelle DeRusha

Michelle writes a daily blog about finding faith in the everyday at Graceful. On Monday's she reflects on Sunday's sermon in a weekly post entitled "Use it on Monday." She's nice enough to let us re-post it on Southwood's blog. You can read it here each week and then click over to Michelle's blog for more of her writing.

More on My Big, Fat Idol

We talked about idols yesterday in church, and if you’ve been reading this blog for even a few weeks, you already know that I struggle with a big, fat idol: the writing life. I’ve written about this struggle before, but the long and the short of it is that my deepest personal desire and ambition is to become a full-time writer and a published author, and sometimes that ambition takes priority over just about everything else in my life. Including God.

I didn’t recognize my big, fat idol for a long time because it cleverly masquerades as something positive and good. After all, I reason, I write about God and faith – how bad can that possibly be?

Inherently, it’s not bad at all. A passion, an ambition or an enjoyment only becomes a problem, an idol, when it begins to dominate everything else, and most especially when it begins to dominate God himself. I’ve learned recently that even though my passion is intricately connected to God, it still has the capacity to displace God if I let it…which I often do.

Yesterday in his sermon Pastor Greg suggested that once we recognize our idol, the key to remedying the problem is to replace the idol with a new passion, specifically a passion for God. “To replace your idols, Jesus must become the master of your heart,” said Greg.

The problem, I thought immediately when I heard his suggestion, is that my idol is appealingly concrete. Creating a writing life seems doable, attainable, but cultivating a passion for God? That feels too amorphous to me. Exactly how does one “cultivate a passion for God” or “allow Jesus to become the master of your heart?” It sounds great on paper, but a little loosey-goosey when I actually think about making it happen in my everyday life.

I should have known Pastor Greg wouldn’t stop at the loosey-goosey, and yesterday’s sermon was no exception. He wasn’t about to let me off the hook.

“How do you make God the central passion of your life?” Greg asked. “You work at it.”

Turns out, I don’t need to look any further than my church’s own mission statement for a list of concrete steps:

Worship. Grow. Serve. Give. Invite.

It’s true. When I slack off in my pursuit of God, when I let any of these areas slide, my focus easily shifts from God to myself, from his needs and desires to my own.

Honestly it’s frightfully easy for me to get lazy in my pursuit of God. I’m inclined to skip my morning Bible study after I’ve watched one too many episodes of House Hunters and stayed up too late the night before. I’m tempted to sleep through Sunday service when from beneath the cozy comforter I hear the Nebraska wind howling. I reason that I’ve “served enough” lately or that I’ve “given enough” for now. I get squeamish when offered the opportunity to talk about God outside my faith community.

Yet when I consider these five steps I clearly see how they all contribute to cultivating a passion for God:

Worship keeps me actively praising and thanking God.

Growing through Bible study, morning devotions and my small-group study keeps God’s word front and center in my life.

Serving my community places others’ needs before my own, and reminds me to be grateful for the many blessings in my life.

Giving shifts my focus from my own wants to the needs of someone else.

Inviting encourages me to step out of my comfort zone to express how God impacts my everyday life.

It’s work, sure; honestly, it's a lot of work. But if these steps can help me keep my big, fat idol subdued and God in his rightful place, then I say it’s worth the effort.

What about you? Do you have any tips for keeping your idols at bay?

You can read more of Michelle's writing on her blog Graceful.