Core 2-17-08

Leslie came to our core last night and it was wonderful! She spoke on our one-on-one relationship with God. Before she came, the girls gave her a list of questions they had about what it means to have a relationship with God, so Leslie did her best to answer some of the questions for us. The thing that stood out to me the most, well, I guess the several things that stood out to me was just the fact that a "quiet time" is not the relationship with God, but only part of how we spend time with God. She also stressed the importance of having a journal (which ironically enough I started one earlier that day) so that we, in a sense, set up spiritual markers for ourselves. She read several entries from some of her journals from over the years. It was so neat! She gave us a sampling of a time in her life when she was praising God, a time when she was struggling to hear God, and a time when God showed her a sin in her life and she was repenting. The girls in our group really seemed to love hearing from her and there was no shortage of questions afterwards.

Next week Cori is going to speak to us about forgiveness. I don't know her very well so I'm definitely looking forward to her getting to come to our group.

Another thing that has been on my heart lately is the idea of evangelism. Perhaps I can ask around and see if there are any women in our church who are really strong in this area and could come and encourage us. I know that I am really, really weak in this area.

One thing that occurred to me was that, as Christians, we are so excited to run into another Christian that we'll invite them to everything we're doing: hang outs, church, weekly small groups, etc. But, when it comes to meeting non-Christians, we're terrified to invite them to anything! Now, I do think its great to be excited to meet another Christian, but I know for myself that I have swung too far the other way and make it way too huge of a deal to "protect" non-Christians from God. Odd, huh?

What I'd love to grow in is to be more bold and real about about my relationship with God. Part of it too, is that I need to grow in my relationship with God so that I do have something real to share with non-Christians.

So I think the question I'm asking myself lately is what evangelism looks like for my life, here and now. Who does God want me to talk to? What does He want me to say?

Most of the time I feel like I just don't know...