Gray Matters

I am joining a church.  Gasp.  I know.  I have gone to church my whole life and have been a part of many great churches; however, I have never been an official member.  So, huge deal for me.  My homework for this week was to write a quick thing about faith in my life, how I have seen Christ working in my life.  I had to make a chart of the ups and downs of my faith as well, which was an interesting assignment.  Here is what I came up with.  I feel that it is kind of weak, but I am not sure what I want to change yet.  Gray matters may be popping up here again, but this is the first draft:

Gray Matters

 

There isn’t a time that I can recall where Jesus wasn’t a part of my life.  I was raised in a home where faith, hope, and love were the center of our being, where attending church was more important than sports, where we prayed together everyday, where we shared our issues, where we ate dinner as a family, and traipsed around town supporting one another in our various individual activities.  My parents became radically saved, a term familiar to me as we attended an evangelical church, about a year before my birth.  Prior to this new lifestyle with Christ, they had been sowing their wild oats and living a life of self that ended not working out as planned.  My mother recalls how my dad was speaking in tongues and making sure that she was “really saved” during my birth.  Not may people can say that they had an entrance like this.  Out I popped into a world that looked fairly black and white.

While my father was quite loud about his faith, my mother was more reserved or reverent.  Together I was raised by an oil and vinegar type of faith, both different, both unique, both good.  For this most part, this was an awesome experience, but at times I wondered how I was to live out my faith.  Like dad or like mom.  Today, I am finding more and more that I need my own style and I am excited about that.  And, so, from the early days of my life, God was present in my everyday life.  I am thankful for this foundation.  Like black and white, I was raised by two extreme styles of faith, and I sort of became gray. 

As I grew into adolescence, I believed that the world was black and white: a sin was a sin.  There seemed to be no middle ground.  I prayed, mostly out of fear, for the salvation of everyone that I knew.  I invited kids, who I now believe to be Christians, to my church because I wanted the to be “more saved”.  While I know now that worship services might look and sound different, and what matters is who is being worshipped, I didn’t get that then.  It was a faith lesson that I wish I had learned earlier.   It was during this time that I realized that the Church was made up of man, not always a good thing.  I had to get back to the fact that my identity needed to be in Christ, not in man. 

It seems that soon enough I was at Grove City College, where I met Ryan and things started to really change for me.  My world of black and white was starting to find hues of different shades.  Ryan is a thinker.  He challenges me to do the same.  For good, he wrecked my world of neat and clean concepts.  Out of his love of man and compassion for the hurting, he showed me that I needed to redefine a few things.  Christ brought to me a partner in life who would not make me comfortable with the easy way out.  To this day, we continue to work on a faith that is unlike anything I have ever experienced.  Boy, it is difficult sometimes to be stretched this much. 

Now, I wait for Christ.  I wait to hear what he has for me today.  This outlook of compassion and kindness helps me to focus on showing the love of Christ.  I continue to need the reminder that my identity is in Christ, that my desire is to honor Him, that my every day needs to be about Him.  I get dazed and stunned by the world at times.  Out of balance I become, focusing on pleasing man, about being good enough, smart enough, and I have to be re-centered.  Thankfully, as you might know, Christ welcomes me.  So, here I am today, out of obedience, out of a desire to know Him and be known by Him,  And, gray matters.  That’s where people fall, in the cracks of life, needing love, needing Him.  I’m excited about that.