Real Love in being home and departing again

"Love is doing whatever you have to do at whatever cost to yourself to help the beloved be enthralled - fully and forever - with what is most satisfying - God, not themselves" (John Piper; 01:01:25).

"There must be something inside of us that loves to be near bigness when we feel little" (John Piper).

"Your calling is His calling on you to Him for the body" (Matt Chandler; 39:45).

"You can toil away your whole life and be unbelieavably faithful to God and see little on this side of heaven.  But boy, we need to know it before we sell out and try to create cool Jesus" (Matt Chandler; 45:03).

Too often, I am learning, I regurgitate truth without crying out for it to impact and change my life.  This is a problem.  Not that I was insincere before, but it is really easy to lay truth over a life issue or problem or pain or failure, even if you really believe it, and realize you haven't processed or moved on or communicated meaningfully at all.  I have learned that too often the emotional, intimate, and relational aspect of being a Christian is elevated at the expense of the intellectual, and the intellectual is also too often elevated at the expense of the intimate, and reactions back and forth ensues.  I have learned that the spiritual truth, the Christian truth, is where the intellectual and the intimate meet, and this is a hard tension to love and hold on to.  Being home has stirred new emotions and relationships again that are in the process of being wedded to the intellectual truth of who God is and how He is working in me and others (Matt Chandler talks about this too.  It's just a great sermon.  Watch it or listen to it.  Throw it on your IPod or something.  It is well worth your time.).

When I changed my blog title to "Home Again" back in December, I did not yet know what being "Home Again" would hold for me.  I was leaving something "big" to come home.  I wanted home to be big, as in a big time of my life, not five months of small, and it has turned out to be big.  It has been made so clear that I needed this five months home in a different community to prepare for the ministry ahead of me.  Parts of my life have been stirred up here that would have never been stirred in Chicago, mainly because I am a part of a different community, not better or worse, but different, and so they push and pull and stretch me in different ways, and new places in my life are being pruned and there are new pains and failures and new joys and successes.

I have been blessed with incredible communities to be a part of, and getting to reunite with friends in Chicago was a great gift.  I received words there that I will cherish for a long time (Hopefully, I'll write them down so that long time will be a life time.).  I was impacted and allowed to impact, and it was exciting and exhausting and renewing, and I know that these last four weeks home will be similar, and that seven months in the Czech will be as well.