Tethered In

At the Pastor’s Lenten Bible Study last night, we discussed an analogy that life can sometimes feel like tandem skydiving with God. Tom Berlin, the author of the book Restored we are using for the study, shared how there are many situations in our life where we feel helpless and unable to control what is happening. He likens it to his experience tandem skydiving. I loved the analogy, because it was a reminder to me that I need to be tethered into God in every aspect of my life. Think about it. Would you go tandem skydiving and carelessly tether yourself to the professional skydiver? I know wouldn’t. I would make sure that every point on the harness was connected to insure that I would survive the experience. So why don't we do the same with our relationship with God?

I think one answer is humility. I know that for myself, I struggle to trust God in difficult situations and I rely on my own strength instead. It is foolish to behave like that, but pride is a universal problem of humanity. We convince ourselves that we are weak and of lesser value if we cannot do something on our own. Then, we feel so ashamed for being so prideful, especially after we fail. However when we have exalted ourselves in pride, God does not want to punish us and bring us low. Instead God wants to forgive and restore us. God reminds us again and again in Scripture, humble ourselves, and God will exalt you. This should give us hope and encouragement.

God wants to restore within us a humble heart. I want to encourage you to join us this Sunday, March 28th, as we conclude our sermon series, From Rend to Mend, with a special Palm Sunday message called, “A Humble Heart”. We will learn that If we will take care of humbling ourselves, we can trust God to take care of exalting us.

In God’s Grip,

Pastor Chuck Church