Some Jesus with your Latte...

This note is a little out of order.  I promised a note about "High Places."  But this came up in the interim and I wanted to process with you.  What have you experienced in your life with regard to allowing God to excavate your soul?  Read on....

I was reading an recent article in Christianity Today talking about Hipster Faith. I found it interesting in several ways, and began to process about how we see Jesus in these days.  

In the "Emerging Church" movement, it seems that many people are being drawn to Church and the Fellowship of the Saints, but it "feels" more like a "come have some Jesus with your Latte" instead of a "come take up your Cross and die daily" call to Faith.  This was the kind of faith I was raised on...down and dirty; no frills!

Now I realize that every generation must redefine how they worship for themselves.  But I wonder about a correlation with the Parable Jesus taught about the seed sewn along the path.  Some seed fell on hardened ground, some on stony, some on weed-choked terrain, and some on good soil.  The seeds on hard, stony, and weed infested soil did not grow deep roots or thrive, and some actually just died.  None of them really produced fruit that would last.

Are we refusing to allow the Holy Spirit to dig deep in our spirit?  To painfully till up our ground, gather up the hard rocks, kill the weeds, and break up our fallow ground?  Have we grown too busy, too distracted, too unconcerned, too eaten up with torpor to care?

When I was growing up, our family had a little garden in the back yard.  Oh how I lamented spending perfectly good Summer days pulling weeds, hoeing the beans, tomatoes, squash and such, when others were playing!  Then there was the getting all wet and sticky from watering the plants at sunset because our garden hose had a leak, and being bitten by every mosquito between the garden and the house when it was time to wander in for dinner.  Raising a garden was PAINFUL for a 10 year old!  (smiles!)  

But then, when it was dinner time, and we were all washed up, we would sit down at the table and throw down to the most delicious, lightly-salted, mouth-watering tomatoes, "just-strung" green beans (with a little bacon fat to flavor), freshly dug potatoes slathered in butter, and some chicken.  Ah...the fruits of our labor!  Most times, I didn't have dessert, but instead chose a second helping of veggies.    

Our garden was especially lush and we were still digging potatoes even after the frost had come in the Fall.  The apple tree whose roots went deep under the garden, also benefited from all the care we gave to our vegetables and produced many, many good apples.  We froze a lot of food and canned a lot ourselves...and that garden fed us all winter long.  It bore "much fruit."  

While I respect the "emerging church" movement for trying to breathe some life into stale American (and sometimes un-Biblical) Christianity, I think in a lot of ways it lacks depth.  It is a young movement....but where is the discipleship from spiritual mothers and fathers in the faith?  Where is our intensity and hunger for Jesus and for His Kingdom on this earth?  Where are our hearts?

Take a look at your own relationship with Father God.  Are you spending time alone with Jesus, face to face, searching His Word, seeking His beautiful Face, worshipping Him one on one?  Are you throwing down your heart at His throne and crying out to Him for your family, your church, your community, the world...and your own soul?  

Is the soil of your heart broken and open, or busy and stony and hard and weed-infested?  What kind of seed is being planted in your spirit?  FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, BBC?  Just sayin'.....

Beloved of the Father, have you prostrated yourself before the Beautiful One to worship and adore Him, be nourished by Him, Loved by Him, and then to just "be" in His Presence and listen to what He would speak to your spirit?

These are not easy things to do.  They require effort and focus at first.  They require a sacrifice of pleasure and time and energy and "self."  And don't be surprised that as you do, there are things He will call you to lay down at the foot of His Cross in order to take up your own to truly follow Him...and that can be a very painful and incredibly wonderful process.

I challenge you:  Don't just fit Jesus in to your lifestyle.  Lay down yours to take up His.  Allow Him to dig up your "fallow" ground, throw out the rocks, kill the weeds, and go deep to turn up soil that hasn't seen the light of day (His Light) in a long time.  

Then, and only then will your soil be "broken" enough to allow roots from the seed He has planted there to grow deep and strong to nourish your shallow soul into richness, and to become more fruitful than you have ever been.  Being broken is painful, but fruitful.  

In one of my favorite songs, U2 sings:  "A mole digging in a hole, digging up my soul now, going down, excavation!  Higher now, in the sky, you make me feel like I could fly so high!  Elevation!"  I believe this describes the work of the Holy Spirit.  To go higher, you have to let God dig deeper.  

Are you willing to start that process?  To have more than a "little Jesus with your Latte?"

Next time:  High Places

Tess Cox