Forcefully Advancing

I've been delinquent in my blog this past week. Last weekend was my wife's annual family reunion, and thanks to the generosity of one of her brothers, we were able to attend.

Each year her great-grandfather's descendants gather in Manton, Michigan (off the 131 north of Cadillac, Michigan) for a few hours on a Saturday in July to catch up, eat, and spend money at the white elephant auction. This past weekend was the 29th reunion, but my lovely bride and I have only had the privilege of attending four of them.

Even though we were only gone a few days (we left Lexington at 5:30 pm on Thursday and were home again by 11:30 pm Sunday), the time away threw off some of my rhythms. Blogging regularly was one of those things that was easy to let slide. Reading my Bible prior to eating while on the trip was also something easily forgotten. It wasn't until sometime late Friday I realized I had not done my daily reading and yet had eaten breakfast with her brother and sister-in-law in Hastings, Michigan and grabbed lunch as we made the next leg of our journey north to Traverse City, Michigan where we would be staying at her uncle's house.

Fortunately, I have a lovely wife who desires to help me be better, and she read to me as we drove north that afternoon to help keep me on track. That became our daily ritual, each day as we were in the car making the journey to some destination, my bride would read to me from her Bible. I was able to remain connected to God through daily bible reading, and able to share some of my thoughts about the reading with my wife.

I am grateful my wife helped keep me on track and focused each day of vacation as it pertains to my commitment to read God's word. However, I am concerned at how easily I was able to forsake a practice I thought had become habit; a daily routine I had managed to maintain even while traveling for work. Somehow, going on vacation physically offered my spiritual routine a chance to also "check out."

As I sat at home this afternoon thinking about how easy it was for me to get off track last weekend, I received an email from a church I follow through the internet. Eastside Christian Church (www.eastside.com) is located in Fullerton, CA. In the past year, this church has experienced significant growth as a new pastor has come in and challenged the church to allow God to breath new life into their midst. The growth of the congregation, not simply in numbers, but in spiritual matters as well, has been a joy to watch.

As I read about the new series Gene Appel will be starting this weekend, Dangerous, I was reminded about Matthew 11:12: "And from the time John the Baptist began preaching until now, the Kingdom of Heaven has been forcefully advancing, and violent people are attacking it." (New Living Translation)

Listen to Gene's description of the Christian life he desires to live: "I want to be a more dangerous follower of Jesus. Jesus doesn't call us to a bland mediocre life of safety, but to a life of risk, adventure, and on-the-edge faith. I want to live with a more dangerous faith, pray more dangerous prayers, see Eastside be a more dangerous church, and take some new dangerous risks with those who are far from God."

Doesn't that sound similar to the passage in Matthew? Wouldn't living life as a more dangerous follower of Jesus be necessary to forcefully advance the Kingdom of Heaven?

Gene has just returned from his summer study break, and I have just returned from a very mini vacation with my family. Yet somehow, despite the differences in the length of our time away, we have both realized we must be intentional if we are going to make a difference for the cause of Christ. How we live each day, the decisions we make while in our normal routine or while on vacation, are important to the big picture.

I look forward to hearing the sermons online as they are posted. I can't wait to see how living dangerously for Jesus continues to change the Eastside family, and me.

Are you forcefully advancing? Maybe you've been on vacation too long. I invite you to join in our quest to live dangerously, forcefully advancing the Kingdom of God.