Courage

Here’s the thing. I have a growing feeling. Deep in my spirit.

That I cannot shake.

And I know a lot of people who also have this same growing feeling.

Which they also cannot shake.

More and more and more and more people.

God is on the move. Again. Calling each of us to rethink certain beliefs we’ve held. How we do what we do, and what we think is True.

Again.

Open the doors wider.

Let pieces of our orthodoxy go.

Again.

As God has done so many times.

Over and over.

Periods of orthodoxy and periods of movement.

Where God invites us Forward.

— Excerpt From: Stacy David Lutz. “A Necessary Heretic.”

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Weekly Prayer:

I think it can be so hard to re-examine things we believe. Especially when it comes to things that are so personal to us. The other day I did a training from this book, A Necessary Heretic, for a staff of counselors who often work with folks struggling in their faith journeys.

To start things off, I asked them each to write down a few words that would describe their own faith journeys up to this point. What I found? So many of their stories contained words of pain and feelings of being let down or hurt. Sometimes by how they had pictured God, and sometimes by how they had experienced the church they attended and the world around them.

Today my prayer is for courage. I never like having to experience courage, because it means I also have to experience something I am scared of. My belief is that courage mostly comes in the midst of fear. Without fear, what looks like courage is probably simply action or bravado.

Lord, my prayer is for your Spirit to help us be people of courage. Courage to face what we need to face. Re-examine what we need to examine. Choose new paths when it is time. For those who struggle and feel alone? Grant them so much peace. Let them know that no matter how they Feel, they are never truly Alone.

Amen.