Turn to the person beside you and say…
LETTER BY BRIAN MORYKON
I sensed the Lord’s invitation in my wife’s invitation to attend a multi-church worship gathering in our city.
But I was tired. My soul craved quiet. This gathering, I was sure, would require energy and earplugs. And I only had earplugs.
I wasn’t wrong. But I wasn’t right either — because the gathering gave more than it took, and God was at work in ways I didn’t expect.
During the thumping music, I remembered that all churches are liturgical. Some have written liturgies of collects, creeds, and confessions. Some have unwritten liturgies of screens, synths, and sermons. Maybe different expressions of worship are God’s way of meeting different personality types in different seasons.
If you find yourself in a worship service that glorifies Jesus but doesn’t align with your personality or preferences — an experience we all need from time to time — here’s a tip to combat judgmental thoughts: put your body into it. Bow low. Rise up. Raise your hands. Raise your voice. A body in praise sends the Devil away.
After the music, a local pastor named Bishop Younger started speaking. He was alive. He spent several minutes calling out the good in the other pastors and churches represented in the room. He preached with life and truth and the Spirit’s presence was palpable.
He said we like the idea of unity but not the practice of it.
He said we need to start seeing people and not just their ideology.
He asked, how can we say we love God, whom we haven’t seen, but hate our brother and sister right in front of us?
He said we need more than a private relationship with an invisible God; we need Christ in each other. “Turn to the person beside you and say, I need you.”
I left filled up and grateful to be part of the Body of Jesus.
But not every interaction with other believers is that good, is it? The Body of Jesus on earth has some pretty dysfunctional parts. A pastor’s abuse comes to light. Un-Jesus things are done in Jesus’ name. People are hurt. In turn, many Christians question the faith they grew up in. They are looking for something real — something like what I experienced at the gathering — and they want something deep, a centuries-old anchor.
Thankfully, such an anchor exists. Not only do we have the tether of Scripture, we’re also given a lifeline by two thousand years of saints. And, as my friend Bliss reminded me this morning, those saints are quite human and often peculiar, like us. In learning their stories, we find strength and permission to become uniquely who God made us to be.
We need Christ in our brother and sister. We need Christ in the communion of saints. We aren’t alone. We’re part of a living Body and a living tradition.
So, Lord Jesus, anchor us and buoy us up as we find you in our sisters and brothers yesterday and today.
Brian Morykon
Director of Communications
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LET’S DIVE IN...
CURATED BY GRACE POUCH
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1.
Brandan Spencer, Renovaré’s Director of Church Engagement, talks with Nate on the Life with God podcast about family life, the gifts of community, and Renovaré’s new initiative to spark renewal in churches.
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2.
Richard Foster writes, “We prayerfully watch for others who are living and walking in the life and powers of the kingdom of God.”
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3.
“Today, many Christians feel rootless,” says Ben Lansing. His recommendation? Refamiliarize ourselves “with a Calendar of Saints, rightly contextualized around Christ.” Read an excerpt from Our Church Speaks: An illustrated devotional of saints from every era and place.
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4.
I just relistened to a Life with God episode from earlier this year in which Audrey Elledge and Elizabeth Moore share how human friendships help us learn to be our true selves with God.
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5.
Sri Lankan pastor Daniel Thrambajaya Niles reminds us that with-God life is not solitary. In Christ, we enter a family of fellow believers. And in Christ, we are to embrace all the world as brothers and sisters.
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6.
2025 marks the 1,700th anniversary of the first Christian Ecumenical Council in Nicaea. An international team is inviting Christians around the world to participate in The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Communities can adapt and use the prayer resources during the official week (Jan 18 – 24) or at any point during 2025 “to express the degree of communion which the churches have already reached, and to pray together for that full unity which is Christ’s will.”
Grace Pouch
Content Manager
WORTH QUOTING
“In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a pocket handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.”
– Frederick Buechner (source)
TO CONTEMPLATE
The murals of Akhtala Monastery
c. 1200
(source)
We are shortsighted if we picture God’s people as only our church, our denomination, our countrymen, speakers of our language, or representatives of our culture. The murals at Akhtala Monastery in Armenia are a stunning visual reminder that drawing near to God means entering a communion of saints — ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, well-known personalities and nobodies. I can imagine that to worship in this space is both encouraging and humbling. We are not alone. A “great cloud of witnesses” illuminates the with-God life for us. And we do not possess the way. We are “in via,” as Lesslie Newbigin says, “part of a living tradition of discipleship, on the way to the truth that will be perfectly known on the day when the Author of the story brings it to its end and consummation.” – Grace Pouch
TO PONDER
Take a moment to thank God for role models, past and present, who inspire and illuminate your walk with Jesus.
Is there someone you sense God inviting you to learn more from?