at His feet

I'll give you the silly, sped-up version of my whirlwind-weekend. But the only way for you to understand how it was, is if I could build a roller coaster with my words, put you on it, and let you sample a 15-second corkscrew.

In a good way. Lots of great things happened, but they went by so fast.
It's hard for me to hold on to these good times now.

Instead of slowly drinking them in, like drizzling honey, the moments are raining down like a magical meteor shower, and I'm sitting in the trailer bed of the Life truck, laughing and letting everything whip my hair around.

So here's the main points of the weekend:
- went to Van Alstyne, played drums!
- spent the night at Meghan's aunt's house!
- learned how to waltz! (it's a big deal for me)
- ate a burrito and a half!
- watched Amazing Grace! ("I know two things to be true: I am a great sinner, but Christ is a great savior." amen brotha)
- had a burger!
- ice cream sundae!
- played drums again!
- played with a dog and jumped on a trampoline!
- listened to a really loveable guy talk about being a disciple of Christ!

When I look at all these things, I think, no one who reads this will say, "wow, Rachel, those are incredibly fun things!" Here's the thing: when you're with wonderful people, like Meghan & co., even little mundane things turn into sweet happy things.
I would be happy with people I adore no matter what I was doing. I could be in 110 degree heat wearing a giant mink coat and having to carry the Titanic on my back, but I think I'd still be in a good mood.

Then I think, y'know, maybe it's more than that. Maybe when your heart is in a worship mentality, it's hard to not be cheery, because it's what you were made for. And it's so easy to be in that mindset of worshipping the Lord when you're around godly people. Anyhoo - a good one.

Thought for the day

I think the biggest difference in my walk with Christ, that turned me from someone who just kind of went to church and knew all the right answers, and had all the right theology, and didn't have a worshipping heart, and the Love of Christ was not really in me.... the biggest difference happened when I really understood what being a disciple meant.
Okay, so that doesn't mean much to you. it's cliche. And I thought I knew what it meant. But hear me out.

There are those people in your life that are so WISE and AWESOME and you wish you could be just like them. I literally, when I met some of these wise people, wanted to sit at their feet and take notes. I didn't speak much because I was listening intently to what they had to say. Every chance I could get to be around them and learn from them, I took it. I asked questions and trusted them.
..You following me?

When you become a Christian, you pretty much sign off your Sunday mornings, and for extra credit you go to youth group or Bible class. Done. But let's be honest: that only works in class. That's how you treat mandatory things.

When you become a disciple of Christ... you hand over your life. You get up, leave your nets, and follow. Why? Because Christ's truths were so compelling that people got up to follow Him, sit at His feet, and listen to what He had to say. In church we get compared to the disciples a lot, but they're apples and we're oranges IF we aren't chasing after Him, trying to catch every word.
His teachings are in the Bible. I don't remember what church it was, but when the Gospel of Christ was preached to them, the Bible says that they "eagerly searched the Scriptures to find out if what they were told was true." That changed the way I looked at the Old Testament. And the notion of a mentor changed how I looked at Jesus.

Jesus Christ isn't our homeboy, a cosmic boyfriend, or a self-help genie. He's not that emotional twinge you get during a soft hymn.

If we profess Christ, the relationship might be compared to like in the medieval days, when knights had utmost respect for their king, and dearly loved him. The Chronicles of Narnia have some of my favorite illustrations. The Narnians (who loved Aslan) trembled and fell at his paws when they met him, but loved him. I like to say, "trembling in adoration."

I don't think American youth group kids feel like they should fear the Lord. They keep out of scary books like Leviticus and prefer to talk about the love of Christ and forget that He holds Justice in His other hand. "Let there be a flood of justice, an endless procession of righteous living..." But do we practice justice or righteous living? It's about as useless as a screen door on a submarine...

"[After You left] I memorized every word You said..." - R.M.
"I want to take my passion, put it in a bottle, just to waste it at your feet." - M.Edwards

I think the reason that the "church isn't just Sunday and Wednesday" message gets preached so much to the youth groups is because they aren't getting it. They don't know how to follow and devote themselves to a teaching. We grow up flitting from one thing to another. Back in the village days when kids learned a trade from an older person, the concept of studying under a person was easy to grasp. So they rearranged their lives to reflect that they followed Christ.

Now?
We're the center. We're in charge of our own destinies. They tell us to follow our hearts. The glorified doctrine of American individualism.
So nobody even knows what it means to follow Christ. All they know is the whims and wishes of their hearts.

And that's my theory of what happened to discipleship.....