I don't like conflict and I don't like being vulnerable. If I could reorder the world the way I want it, there would be a lot less of both - but the truth is, the only world without conflict and vulnerability is a world of denial.
I have lived a lot of years in denial. A few years ago I went though a personal illness that kind of shattered the denial option. I suddenly had to face life, death, fear and reality. It was the first time I ever remember having only one option and that option was to go through it. I couldn't avoid it. I couldn't opt out and I couldn't deny it.
I wish I could say those lessons cured my issues, but they didn't. I shifted from denial to uncertainty and fear. Even as God healed my body, I could feel my soul being weighed down with worry. My brain got busy with a million "what ifs" and at times those fears can still dominate my inner life.
The truth is, it’s this stuff - the paralyzing fear that still lives in me - that I get the most angry with God about. Why won’t He just make it stop? That’s one of the real questions of life, isn’t it? Especially the life of faith.
It is that internal turmoil in the face of all that I passionately believe that has led me to speak on the theme, Inside Out. In the past couple of years I have been praying that God might help me steer the middle ground between denial and overwhelming fear. God is teaching me little by little, step by step, that He really does want to be in this part, the darkest part, of my life. I just want Him to make it go away - but that doesn't seem to be His plan. Instead, He wants me to be honest about who I really am on the inside. That's the point of this series. To say out loud that it is important to live inside out. It’s my prayer that as we can come together on Sunday, October 11 at Crescenta Valley High School - we do so as a true community. A community of people who are real and open, vulnerable and conflicted. Why? So that we can learn together what it looks like to let God inside...inside of our junk...so much that He begins to show us what He really wants to do deep inside lives.
Blessings, Pastor Dave