Today at The Gathering, March 18

Today at The Gathering, March 18

Today at The Gathering was an exciting day. I had forgotten how much fun it is to see people setting up and taking down and creating environments and experiences that help people get to God to change their lives.

When I moved to Nashville to plant a church for the unchurched, we met in a school for ten years. While it wears on you, there is something that we lost when we moved into our facilities; and that is the connectedness we felt which provided not only for relationships, but for meaningful tasks for people to accomplish. There is something incredibly fulfilling about going into a neutral public space and creating sacred space out of it in which hundreds and hundreds of people come and experience God – many for the first time – where God does eternal business. And then fold up and exit that space, return it to its public use, and then do it again the next week. What a joy! What a privilege!

I’m learning over and over again that there is nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer. This week the music was amazing as usual and really engaging. It was great to see Hal Wilson do the greeting this week. Hal is a mature, seasoned, wise, godly man who has been a success in every area of his life – business, home, and his relationship with God. It also doesn’t hurt that Hal and I are motorcycle-riding buddies. He brings a real air of class. I’m also excited that I’ve asked Hal speak on Father’s Day this year, because I think he brings a real insight that young men and fathers and young families need to hear.

For me it was an exciting time to continue to teach through “A Renegade’s Guide to God.” I really began to challenge people today to transfer from being a listener to a learner, and from a learner to a teacher; then to take the truths in the book and begin to apply them and teach them to other people, to develop new study groups around the principles in the Renegade book. It’s exciting for me to get a lot of feedback about the impact.

This week I talked about “The Single Key to Everything Else.” It sounds like that’s a cute title to get people to come, but the truth of the matter is, there is only one thing that God wants or needs from you or me or anyone else, and that’s trust. Trust is the single key to everything else with God, without question.

Oftentimes we confuse what God really wants as obedience. As a matter of fact, I’ve heard that all my life; that what God wants is for you to obey. The truth of the matter is He can force obedience. An awfully lot of people obey God, expecting that God will be indebted to be good to them. But when we trust God, it means we love God. And when we trust God and love God, we trust His motives and His methods. We know that both are for our good, so it’s easy to submit to them.

One of the points I made this weekend at The Gathering is that trust requires the same of every person. Trust is the place at which all spiritual life becomes level. It’s not a matter of talent, skill, opportunity, privilege, position, or earning power. Trust is something each person can do, from a person who is a high school graduate, to a PhD; from someone who works outside with his hands, or inside with his mind. God requires trust of us all. And it’s that single ingredient that changes everything about our lives.

I can say after a lifetime of walking with God, that He can be trusted, that every single day my greatest challenge is to trust God for even greater things. At every level of trust we go back through the maturing process all over again. We face something that scares us, we opt for fear, we dare to trust, we take the risk, God shows up, things change, a victory’s won, and God takes us to the next.

It’s a beautiful cycle of life, the abundant life Jesus talked about.

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