Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Landing at Paradox

I tend to not like change in my life. When I find something I like, something that works, I keep it. The church I first heard the gospel message at is where I stayed and got involved. I made many good friends and enjoyed many great experiences with God. The idea, in and of itself, of joining a different church felt about the same as an adulterious affair. But I did feel certain that I needed to pray and ask for God's guidance about joining Paradox, a planted church in the area. This need to pray came after attending three meetings where the vision of this new church was shared. I felt some very serious conflict between sticking with what I knew and stepping into unknown territory. I tried to put a date with my prayers, because I heard of someone doing that with good success, but it did not work that way for Marlena and I. We prayed for guidance for a few months. We attempted to pray together, but leave what we believed to be the answer a secret from each other. The first time we talked, we were in disagreement, so we prayed more. The second time we talked we each had changed our position, so we prayed for another month or so.

Time passed and we were now approaching our one year wedding anniversary. I could write a whole different God-sighting section about my wife, but I will leave it at that. We had a very relaxing weekend in Port Sanilac. The day we were leaving, we stopped off for lunch at the cool pizzaria. It was probably the best independant pizza joint that you would ever find in the middle of no where. As we finnished this great meal, we both kinda looked at each other with that stare that says "so what are we gonna talk about now?" As it would be, we both wanted to discuss our potential involvement with Paradox Church. I don't know how to describe it, but we both had this confidence (this time being in agreement) that we had to take a step of faith and join the mission at this new church. This happened to be at the time where we finally found great fellowship with a small group at Grace Chruch. That was a big part of our prior dilemma, but we knew what path we needed to take. So the conversation basically ended with "ok, well, we will join paradox." It was a wierd feeling, but a certain feeling.

I believe God has directed our transition to this new segment of his body that is called the Church. This decision was one of the most important decisions I have ever participated in, and I believe God has answered our prayers and guided our steps.

Cliff Notes: God showed me what part of his Church he wanted me to join.