September. Can you believe it? And almost mid-September, at that.
Remember back in March when we canceled our in-person service for the first time? Remember wondering whether we’d be back in time for Easter? Can you believe we’re almost six months into this?
One of the words that has been used most often to describe the current state of affairs is crisis. One dictionary definition of crisis is “a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger.” That certainly applies. We don’t like a crisis; we’d prefer to avoid it; but with crisis comes opportunity. And the history of our nation shows that innovation is born in crisis.
Remember back in March when we canceled our in-person service for the first time? Remember wondering whether we’d be back in time for Easter? Can you believe we’re almost six months into this?
One of the words that has been used most often to describe the current state of affairs is crisis. One dictionary definition of crisis is “a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger.” That certainly applies. We don’t like a crisis; we’d prefer to avoid it; but with crisis comes opportunity. And the history of our nation shows that innovation is born in crisis.
Innovation is born in crisis.
The Long Depression of the 1870s and 1880s saw the inventions of the incandescent light bulb, the radio, and refrigeration. Half a century later, the Great Depression of the 1930s brought us magnetic tape recording, the helicopter, nylon, and the ballpoint pen. That era has been described as the “most technologically progressive” decade of the 20th century.
But innovation doesn’t just happen, it takes work. It takes a foundation of preparedness and a willingness to experiment—and to fail, sometimes repeatedly. Oswald Chambers writes in My Utmost For His Highest, “Crises always reveal a person’s true character.” The crisis doesn’t build something within us, “it simply reveals what we are made of already.”
So what are you made of? Are you ready for the battle of this crisis? Are you fit for the long haul ahead … for the opportunities that God is laying out before us? Those are hard questions to reckon with, aren’t they?
Chambers again: “A private relationship of worshiping God is the greatest essential element of spiritual fitness.”
Read that again. Let it sink into your marrow.
But innovation doesn’t just happen, it takes work. It takes a foundation of preparedness and a willingness to experiment—and to fail, sometimes repeatedly. Oswald Chambers writes in My Utmost For His Highest, “Crises always reveal a person’s true character.” The crisis doesn’t build something within us, “it simply reveals what we are made of already.”
So what are you made of? Are you ready for the battle of this crisis? Are you fit for the long haul ahead … for the opportunities that God is laying out before us? Those are hard questions to reckon with, aren’t they?
Chambers again: “A private relationship of worshiping God is the greatest essential element of spiritual fitness.”
Read that again. Let it sink into your marrow.
Spiritual fitness hinges on your own
personal, private worship of God.
personal, private worship of God.
Maybe you’re tired. (I am.) Maybe you just want it all to be over. (I do.) Maybe you just want to get back to the comfortable normalcy we knew before March. (Sometimes that sounds good to me, too.)
The reality is, we can’t go back, we can only go forward—to a new normal. And getting there depends on each one of us being spiritually fit … which depends on our own private worship. So, if you’re tired, worship. If you want it all to be over, worship. If you want to get to normal--any normal--worship.
How? Well, that depends on how God has uniquely made you. You have a worship personality, just as you have a psychological personality. You may worship best through music or arts or in nature; you may worship through silence or through celebration, with your mind or with your whole body.
For help on learning how you best worship, get a copy of Gary Thomas’ book Sacred Pathways, or read this article.
The reality is, we can’t go back, we can only go forward—to a new normal. And getting there depends on each one of us being spiritually fit … which depends on our own private worship. So, if you’re tired, worship. If you want it all to be over, worship. If you want to get to normal--any normal--worship.
How? Well, that depends on how God has uniquely made you. You have a worship personality, just as you have a psychological personality. You may worship best through music or arts or in nature; you may worship through silence or through celebration, with your mind or with your whole body.
For help on learning how you best worship, get a copy of Gary Thomas’ book Sacred Pathways, or read this article.
“God’s training ground is the hidden, personal, worshiping life.”
—Oswald Chambers
—Oswald Chambers