"Tossed By the Wind"

I had a great day yesterday here in Chattanooga! I first went out for lunch to "Sweet Basil", a Thai restaurant, with Anna and here friend Anna from church. This was my first Thai food experience and it was great! I got the lunch special, which was a combination of a ton of stuff: Some chicken stuff with rice, some salad stuff with chicken, a cheese roll, and coconut soup. Everything was delicious except for the coconut soup... and I love soup, so it must have been pretty terrible for me not to eat it. After our meal and a very awkward encounter with the waitress, me and Anna split a crepe with blackberry sauce... sooo good. :] After Lunch I went to the mall and finally bought a dress to wear at Autumn and Jordan's wedding... absolutely cannot wait until next week to see everyone again! At night I had the great opportunity to go to a bible study with some of the young life leaders and staff. We studied a few verses from Colossians 2 and thought about how to apply what we learned to the community of Chattanooga and beyond.

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As I look around the community of Chattanooga, I am amazed to see the Body of Christ thriving. It is incredible to see people reaching out to one another and the joy they have in their hearts. In Colossians 2:1-3, It talks about God's purpose for the church of Colossae- to be 'encouraged in heart and united in love.' This way the church can fully understand the mystery of God and experience his full riches of understanding and knowledge. We talked about what this means... to be encouraged in heart and united in love. For me it means having the body of believers being encouraging of one another, despite differences in personalities, values, political standings, age, or expressions of worship. How else do we come together and become united in love? There is no possible way to become unified if we are constantly getting hung up on the little things that have nothing to do with the big picture- Jesus. In order for the church to experience the fullness and richness of God's mysterious knowledge and understanding, we must first reach our fullest potential in love and unity.

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In verse 4 it talks about how the church must know how to not be deceived when people argue against them and their beliefs. It is so hard to be able to back up the things you believe when you're put on the spot or under pressure, but the truth is, the church is fully-equiped with what we need in order to stand our ground. First, we've been given a strong community, (talked about in verses 1-3) who through encouragement, we've been united in love. Second, we have a whole book of truths that God has given us. The bible contains the truths we can use to back up what we believe to replace the lies told by media and other worldly culture. Thirdly, we've been given the Spirit (which is talked about in verse 5.) Since Jesus is no longer with us in human flesh, he has given us the Holy Spirit to dwell within us and give us the power through Him to stand firm in our faith in Christ. He challenges us in verse 6 to 'live in Him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thank fulness.' Whoa, overflowing with thankfulness. This puts a picture in my mind of a super giddy person blurting out thanks all day long... which is so far from where I am right now. Though I haven't read the book, my aunt Mari often talks about Anne Voskamp's book, One Thousand Gifts. This book basically is written by this lady who thanks God constantly for just the simple things in life... making up one thousand things. That is what I think about when I think about the phrase 'overflowing with thankfulness.' Ann also uses the word 'Eucharisteo', a greek word meaning 'to be grateful, to be thankful, to give thanks.' Wow... imagine how the community of believers would change if we all had this kind of attitude!

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Although I love this whole passage and really learned a lot from it, verse 8 really just stuck out to me the most when reading it last night. 'See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.' Whenever I hear this verse I always think of the song by Jimmy Needham, Tossed By the Wind. Basically the song is about a guy who gets caught up in the lies of society and confused by what others had told him about his faith and what he believed. The chorus is his mom saying 'Be sure that no one takes you captive, by the deceptions of men- Cause you will find it to be tragic in the end.' This verse just really hits home for me and probably a lot of other believers out there because we've all had our doubts and been influenced by things other people have told us. For me, it was this past year while I was in school. I have never felt the way that I did during my first semester of college taking a biology class at my first public school ever. I loved the class and found it very interesting, and my prof. was great and passionate as well. About half-way through the semester, we started talking about evolution, which I've honestly always thought was stupid and never really taken the time to learn about. Sitting in class, I shook my head and smiled at a girl who went to my high school whenever the prof. started imposing his ideas of evolution on us... as if to say, "this is ridiculous and there's no way I believe any of this crap." But really inside I was a complete wreck. I have never been so challenged in what I believe and why. It was as if I couldn't defend anything and everyone else agreed with what the prof. was saying. During this time I was in a complete spiritual low... It was literally 'tragic.' I honestly couldn't have told you what I believe and felt so 'tossed around by the wind.' I didn't really tell a whole lot of people about what I was going through and mostly just kept it to myself. But I found myself going to the library and taking out books about things I had never cared about, just to get some other kind of perspective on evolution and creation. Although I still struggle with how I feel about certain things regarding evolution, creation, and the beginning of the world... I can say that I believe what the bible tells me to be true. Everything that is unanswered in the bible remains a mystery to me and I just have to be okay with that until I get to Heaven. But through these times, I really used the three things around me to back up my beliefs: First, I had a strong community behind me. Although I didn't tell many people of my struggle, my family and friends knew and were praying for me during this time. Second I had the book of truths to back me up and replace the lies I was being told and help me sort out the rest. Third, I had the Holy Spirit present with me the whole time. As much as I didn't think he was there... He was... and he helped me find a way out and back on track with where God wanted me to be. To me, the most beautiful part of the song is the last verse where it says; 'Now broken and hopeless he heard a voice calling to him... 'Lies always fail in the end... Truth will prevail in the end... My grace is sufficient my friend.’ 
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Through these things, the church can also overcome the challenges and deceptions it comes across. For me being in a new place, it is hard for me to pick up on the things that the body of Christ is struggling with down here, but I can sure tell you what the body up in West Michigan is struggling with. When I look at the churches of west michigan- I see a pull between the traditional way of doing things and the more contemporary, modern way of expression. It is so disappointing to see the church being split because of the way the old and the young express their faith in worship. How sad is it that fights break out because of this! The devil loves to see this in churches. He loves to see the body of believers being broken due to the differences of opinion, age, and expression. Why can't the body just focus on the big picture instead of getting hung up on the insignificant things. God loves worship, he loves praise, and expression. It is our job as followers of Christ to become 'united in love' once again and put aside our differences. It is time for the church to set aside bitterness and replace it with encouragement, so that it can see the fullness of God's wonderful mystery of knowledge and understanding.