Blog 500
What’s up, New Life Family!!
Mary Messerly here, and I’m SO excited to write this month’s blog! I have the privilege on Sunday mornings to see your faces from the platform during worship, and to pray over you as we step into the new week together. I also have the honor to lead our youth every Wednesday evening in learning more about the character of God, and what it means to be in a relationship with Him. And even more to that, I have the joy of being a part of women’s ministry. Across all platforms, over the last several years, I’ve gotten to see the hand of God move in a mighty way through His church, both in local community and across the world. Can I share with you what I’ve seen?
The world has felt pretty shaky this last season, hasn’t it? A couple of years ago during any time I spent with the Lord, I kept seeing a recurring theme in my mind. I kept seeing a fence, and on that fence, people straddling it, while looking at both sides. But the looks on their faces weren’t that of admiration or excitement, but of discontent, worry, stress, and even some anger. Suddenly, a shaking happened and people started falling left and right. What we have experienced as believers these last couple of years has been a holy shaking, not to hurt or scare us, but to wake us up to the areas of our lives that were either sleeping, or have been a breeding ground for compromise.
Now bear with me, because this is not a letter of condemnation, but of encouragement. This is part of being a community together, where we get to lean into the tense moments together, and ask God to heal what we may not even realize is broken. As a mama of two incredible teen girls, and a youth pastor who adores your very own teens, I can tell you that yesterday’s youth group model doesn’t work for today. In a world where we have every single news source, everybody’s personal stories on display, and a constant barrage of information, we are more isolated than ever before. From going to school where a Godly moral compass is a thing of the past, to home where screens bring you specially curated dopamine hits that tell you how to think and what to do, our society is absolutely starving for real intentional love.
But even more than that, today’s world celebrates a mindset that seeks to discover our very own “truth”. Subjective truth becomes objective truth. Comfort becomes gospel. Offense becomes this deeply painful thing to avoid until we disagree, and suddenly the face on the other side has lost their humanity. What if there are 50 people in the room and one person’s truth is polar opposite to another person’s truth? How about 100? 1,000? Suddenly reality doesn’t have a name, and the ground beneath your feet crumbles at every step. The result? You have a society that is starving for something steady and real, and they begin searching for it, even at the cost of comfort.
So then, how do we, as the salt and light of this world and ambassadors for Christ, offer love and truth to a hungry, dying world? Not everyone is called to be an evangelist, yet we are all called to be disciples, and to “go and make disciples…
”But what does that look like? You’ll often see loud Christians standing on street corners, or missionaries operating in the 10//40 window, but what does that look like for us here and now?First, I want to encourage you. We are tired. I get it. I know there are days where you might feel like you can barely keep your head above water; you get home from a long day of work and try to process everything but it feels impossible, so you reach for distraction, comfort, or some other sort of way to numb the pain. Read this with me:
The Hebrew translation for the word “truth” here is “Emet” which means standing firm, faithful and sure (side note: in Hebrew, there are many translations for one word. The variety of the language is incredible!). How many things in our lives can we say we practice “Emet”? When we are intentional, faithful, and sure– with our whole hearts. I can tell you honestly that some days I struggle with it. Just now, my younger teen came up to me and wanted to wrestle with the topic of identity. I’m in the middle of writing mode, but what comes first in my life right now? Her heart.
So, I put the computer down for a bit and chose to be present. Coming back to what I was writing, this word alone (Emet) paints a picture for this entire verse, a picture of what it means to walk alongside God in a relationship. Just yesterday, I had a teen ask how he could speak less death and live life more honorably. He wanted a formula that locked down his sin nature. The problem with that tactic is if it’s solely by our own volition, we will fail. Every time. But when we ABIDE in Him, what comes naturally is the fruit. When weABIDE in Him, there will come an overflow of His spirit that pours out onto the people around us.
Our families. Our neighbors. Our friends. Our workplaces. The people we walk past on the street. You suddenly find yourself buying lunch for a family in need and sharing hope in Jesus. Can I encourage you today? Stop striving. Start abiding. Be insanely intentional with your time with God, whether it be through the music you listen to, the things you watch, the things you read, or the time you take to simply be still and listen. Choose Him above all else, and watch it overflow to the people around you that you know and love.