Let Every Man Have His Journey

This is some more thinking about community and bringing one more thought into my puzzle.

Some years ago Larry and I began to understand how important each persons journey before the Lord is and why we need to respect it because we found ourselves on this journey of moving from place to place and it was very hard when people wanted us to stay or to do something that we knew in our heart was not what we could do. We couldn't prove that what were feeling to do was right. Many of the things we've done haven't made much sense. Many of the things we've adopted as our standard for living this life we couldn't prove with chapter and verse - at least not at the time.

We just knew that we needed to do what we were doing. We knew we had to be what we were being. Even if we were wrong we needed to do it. We can look back now and say that we feel that the moves we made were really and truly the thing God wanted us to do. We can also say that there are plenty of times that the way we did those things was NOT what he wanted us to do. We have some things in the overall picture that we just agree to disagree with each other on and will have to wait for THAT DAY when we know as he knows to know the truth. We can also say that there have been many times when God would set us on some kind of course and we would simply do it and he would bring the word to bear on it later.

The point I'm making is that this is the journey as we walked it before the Lord and we quickly understood that we needed grace from others while we did it.

The following thought was that we needed to give to others that same grace as they walked out their journey before the Lord.

Chances are you can look into any life being lived around you and find something you would do differently. You might even question whether that person is really following God or not. You might wonder if the voice they are hearing is the voice of their soul or the voice of Holy Spirit.

If it's you looking at you and asking these questions then - that's OK. If it's you looking at somebody else's life and asking those questions then - what are you doing? Who told you (or me) that you could question another man's journey? That can so so so easily fall under the heading of judgement.

We're not blind. We're going to see things. Obviously we're going to have some opinions. We're going to find ourselves in the place of examining and re-examining what we know or think we know. This is a good thing to do. Larry and I have learned to keep quiet for the most part - unless invited to speak. We've left conversations with people and had misgivings in our heart from the decisions we heard - as I'm sure happened when people have heard us declare our decisions.

Sometimes thoughts and opinions are asked for. Sometimes they're not.

When they are we can say we've done our best to help them process and when they're not we have to be careful as we watch the unfolding events to not be judgemental when things don't go the way WE would have thought.

Our God works in our lives through processes more than miracles. Processes can take a long time. A loooong time.

We've been practicing this at various levels down through the years. It's important to us and as we were doing "house church" in KC a deeper feeling came down on this and we began to see the journey as a truly sacred thing before the Lord. Each one works out his own souls salvation before the Lord.

We're moving into another level of learning where this is concerned as we look harder at community - and commitment - and living closer. Our life as we have known it is changing. We did walk alone pretty much. We are confident that this was God's doing for his purposes.

We aren't to walk alone anymore. But how? How is this done? How to live close to one another in a way that causes you to affect each other's life in all the good ways and still respect that journey?

These are the questions that we are asking ourselves. We make no assumptions. We see everybody as seeing that differently from everybody else. Some people are not ready to let others in. There will always, I think, be that place where the line is drawn and the walk is yours and yours alone. You and God (you meaning you and spouse if there is one). Even the child at some point must start taking ownership of their walk for good or ill.

I am convinced that this is a very important piece of the puzzle of community.

A puzzle.

A body with many interacting yet independent parts.