I’ve seen it in us before. You know when we have talked together and known it was right? Something clicked and we were humming along with full connection and meaning, enjoyment and hope. Our conversation was refreshing and we just knew God was in it!

That’s were we can be again with some engagement and intentionality. Let’s get into conversation with that same expectation. Let’s read God’s Word like we just heard the Gospel for the first time again, looking with every paragraph for the answers to the questions we stopped asking too long ago, like these:

How should I live now?
Who do you want me to show Your kindness and friendship to today, Lord?
What do you want me to let go of and what can I do to say Thank You?!
Thank You for the church family that led me to the Lord! Thank You for my friend who I just know has been praying for me for months/years!
Thank You for Your cross, Jesus, for being brutally tortured and yet never turning back! Thank You for having my heart and my eternal joy with you on your heart as You took the judgment of God onto yourself and handed me Your forgiveness and grace, Your righteous standing before God for me to celebrate!

We too often forget our First Love at least functionally, don’t we? Oh, we don’t forget to show up where necessary to still affirm that we have our ticket out of Hell, but are we jumping at the opportunity to show our gratitude for what Christ has done for us on the cross?

Dear friends, mobilizing the local church is a team effort at the direction of God through His Word, His Spirit, and Christian cooperation! What will it look like this week for you to more consistently coordinate with the other believers who live next door to you? I ask this of myself and I’m sobered and yet challenged by the opportunity to build into my neighborhood and town next door, Twain Harte, CA. I’m excited to keep getting to know believers around the county in all roles and activities. I’m excited to engage with non-believers and believers alike through my business and through simply being kind and intentional in natural interactions.

It’s a daily opportunity we all have to not merely fulfill Christian traditions in our local churches. We are called to incarnate the love of Jesus Christ to the neighborhood and town nearest to us. This looks different for each of us, and done patiently and with intentionality, it truly doesn’t have to be nerve wracking! Especially, it’s helpful to remember that we are family simply inviting others to join our family, following our Brother, our Savior, into the excellencies and majesty of God through the Person and Work on the cross of Jesus Christ!

Eternal realities are penetrating our weak and time-warped hearts. We are given a real gift. We are given the gift of seeing life as it really can be in Christ and daily experiencing the hope of God drawing us into Himself with His kids, to know Him as the all-satisfying LORD and GOD we once heard that He is but now are seeing Him to actually be!

The thing that makes me believe this is true more every day is this: The changed lives! Mine and my wife’s and my friends and family! These are miracles only possible when Jesus stops in the crowd, and says with piercing eyes as He looks knowingly across the crowd of jaw-set and stubborn people, “Who touched me?” He knows it’s the humble and weak, but He asks because He loves our affirmation of our need and want for Him.

Let’s reach out to Christ and find Him as all-satisfying! Then, let’s together reach out and draw each other and our actual neighbors and town members into the center of the excitement to touch the hem of Christ’s robe, only to find Him as ALL-SATISFYING, not merely a physical miracle worker.

Our LORD is LORD! He changes lives! He transforms the lost to being found, the lonely to having Him and His kids as their family members. He becomes all we want to know and celebrate together.

Worshiping our LORD with you today, my friends.

– Torrey