Wednesday, March 14, 2012

I'm Jealous

Happy Spring Break to you! My 2 oldest have gone to Colorado to snowboard but I'm here, home in Mansfield. The best part of that is what arrived in the mail on Monday. It was White Flag, the cd from Passion 2012. I've been listening to it frequently since Monday - it really is so amazing. I have it playing on my iTunes on my Mac right now. Really, in the last 6 months or so I've purchased 3 of the best cds ever - 10,000 Reasons Matt Redman, Give Us Rest David Crowder Band, and, of course, White Flag.  


The big thing going on right now is that Johnny and I have started a new Life Group at our church and we are teaching from the book of Philippians. I like it so much. The book of Philippians, that is. I like how you can almost read Paul's intensity, how passionate he was for the Gospel and for the people in the churches he founded and pastored. In 2 Corinthians 11:2 he wrote, "For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy." Paul so wanted his readers to get the Gospel, to be sold out to it, to be committed to Christ. Paul warned them so they wouldn't be led astray.

Last Sunday Johnny and I were in the first few verses in the book of Philippians. In that chapter, Paul wrote, "And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment." Christ's love is central - His love for us, in us and to the world through us. I told our class about how I have prayed for my children - because they have been in church their entire lives and, because of their dad's vocation, have been taken there just about every time the doors are open - to not just have head knowledge about God but for it to be heart-knowledge. Like Paul, I want my kids to really get it. I don't want them to just know the right answers but I want them to really know - the experiential knowledge of really knowing and discerning. Is that repetitive? Yeah, I think it is, but I'm jealous for them with a godly jealousy.

As I am writing this the song that started playing on my iTunes is "One Thing Remains." Part of the lyrics are as follows, "Your love never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me." That's what I'm jealous for my kids to know. To know with such a depth of knowledge that they know they can count on that whatever happens, where ever they go.

And that's what I want for the folks in our Life Group to know, too. I don't know if I will always adequately relate it but, just like the passion Paul had for his original readers, my passion is for our people to know and believe and, as a result, to live out the all-consuming, never failing, sustaining, empowering love of God. I'm jealous for them to that end.

Serving the King,

Jeanette 

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