Whenever our family drives to Listowel, Ontario, to visit my wife’s family, we pass by a christian billboard in a farmer’s field. It reads, “Friend, prepare to meet your God.” It makes me smile and think that God is in the next town over, maybe in Listowel, maybe Wingham.”
What if we had a similar billboard at the entrance to Redeemer? “Friends, prepare to encounter God here in simple and profound ways!”
Many of us wholeheartedly believe that God is present with us at Redeemer. Our Triune God is dynamically active in our midst – working and leading, speaking and sustaining us.
We can name the general ways that God is at work, but what about specifics? Can we, dare we name the particular ways that God is at work in our personal, communal and institutional lives?
I believe we can and we must. The Bible does.
In the Bible, we encounter a God who interacts with us in unique-to-us ways. With Moses, God spoke through a shrub; with Elijah, a faint whisper; with Balaam, a donkey.
God deals uniquely with each community and church. We see Him speaking specifically to each of the seven churches of Revelation. He commands the busy Ephesian church to fall in love again with Him, but gently prepares the church in Smyrna for their suffering to come. Each of the Epistles carry the same voice of God but contain different directives according to where the community is at.
Jesus deals uniquely and personally with each of us. Peter was curious about John’s future after Jesus told him about his, only to hear Jesus say, “What is that to you? You must follow me.” We cannot follow Jesus on someone else’s path – only our own.
And so this semester we are going to be hearing from a variety of students, faculty and staff around how they are seeing God at work here – in their personal lives, in their classrooms, dorms, and offices; on the sports field and in the chapel services.
I am always en-couraged when I hear how God is at work in the lives of others, and it moves me to pay attention to God in my own life. It also comforts me when it’s hard to see God in my own life. I hope this happens to each of us as well.
And we will ask two questions each Monday, which I present for your reflection this morning:
1) How are you seeing God at in your life? What is He showing or saying to you?
2) How are you going to respond?
Friends, be prepared to meet your God, here, with us!