Our church has been struggling for the past two years to implement the G12 plan. If you're not familiar with G12, I'm pretty
sure you can look it up on the web. It involves 'encounter' weekends with God, and a number of different courses for discipling
people. Ewa and I have not entirely agreed with the way it has been implemented so far for a number of reasons that I won't go into here. However, this fall it seems that
things are starting to come together. Because of the things that have happened in the past two years though, its been hard for us to
jump on board wholeheartedly.
The focus this fall in church is getting to know God. This sounds great, but when it is accompanied with encouragement to get up two hours
earlier in the morning to read your bible and pray, I found I wasn't very enthusiastic about it. As far as I'm concerned, telling people to read their bible and pray without
teaching them how to really meet God in doing that is a perfect recipe for creating pharisees. I was stubbornly refusing to follow
the plan laid out by the pastor leading my cell group (not openly, but certainly in my heart).
As fall has progressed, the message is balancing out. I met with one of the pastors, and he encouraged me that the G12 conferences
that they had been going to were different from any other conferences that he'd been to. The focus wasn't so much on teaching (although
that's part of it). It seemed to him that 'impartation' was more what he was getting out of them. Fine I though, but we can't send everyone
in church to a conference, can we? What I felt like I needed was an 'impartation' of my own. Why? Because then I could be motivated for the
right reason to get up earlier in the morning to read my bible and pray.
So I asked the guys in my cell group to pray for me. And I started having dreams. At first I would wake up in the morning, just remember parts, but
left with a really nice feeling - like I was accepted and goals that I've had for my life were being me. Then one morning a week ago, I had a very interesting
dream.
In my dream my brother and I were in my mother's car. We still going to high school and we were being driven to high school by a man niether of us really knew, except that he
was some kind of preacher that my mother listened to on TV. For some reason I had the impression that he
was visiting us for a couple of weeks. We were listening to one of his sermons (on tape) while we were driving. I don't remember anything about what was said
in the sermon. When we got about a block away from the school, the preacher-guy stopped the car, turned off the tape, and turned around in his seat and looked at us. It was not
a disinterested look - he wanted our attention like he was going to say something serious to us. And he did. Simply, he said that if we ever wanted to talk, about anything, he wanted to be available
to listen to us. That's all I remember him saying. But that's not everything that was communicated. I felt like he was deeping interested in making us better people if we would give him a chance.
There was no superior air about him, he was just making himself available. I was hit with the thought that this guy really loves us and wants to help us out in whatever way he can in the next two weeks.
We knew he had appointments ecetera, and he wouldn't be available ALL the time, but when he had time, he wanted to be there for us.
I woke up. After reflecting on the dream for a few days, here's what I'm thinking:
This fellow was genuine. If something like that had actually happened, I'd like to think I would have taken him up on his offer and spent some time getting to know him and asking him some questions.
Not only that, but I wanted to be like him. Love like that draws you, it makes you want to emulate it. If I could love like that, ministry would just happen. I wouldn't have to try and
make it happen or look for opportunities. I think that many people, when confronted with love like that would feel the same.
