I don’t remember when I first heard the verses. Four years ago? Five? But I remember when I heard it that it spoke volumes to me. Deuteronomy 6:4-9 ESV “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. (5) You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (6) And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. (7) You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (8) You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. (9) You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and
on your gates.” I knew when I heard them that I needed to start a book. A God book. In it, I would write my prayers and praises, my encounters with God, how He had blessed me, answered prayers, or just questions I had for Him. I wanted my children to be able to read it someday when I’m gone and know the God that *I* know, and use it to help deepen their faith.
on your gates.” I knew when I heard them that I needed to start a book. A God book. In it, I would write my prayers and praises, my encounters with God, how He had blessed me, answered prayers, or just questions I had for Him. I wanted my children to be able to read it someday when I’m gone and know the God that *I* know, and use it to help deepen their faith.
I also knew that, in times when I needed to strengthen my own faith, or climb out of whatever spiritual valley I was in at the moment, that I could read of God’s faithfulness in my own life and climb back up the mountain.
Recently I’d had a friend say to me how much she missed seeing me at my old church. And I’ll admit, I miss it too. My children miss it. They still haven’t quite fit into place at our new church, and honestly, neither have I. The Sunday School class isn’t quite me, and there are a few other spots where we don’t quite fit yet, but we’re trying. Sometimes I just like to take the children back to our old church. I struggle a bit because part of me thinks I’m just confusing them by taking them back to their old church, giving them a false hope that we’ll start going back again. And part of me thinks it’ll reinvent the monster… the one that, the week following a visit to the old church, starts in with incessant whines of “but I like our old Sunday class better” as we drive up to the parking lot of the new church.
I asked a trusted friend her thoughts on whether you could be an active member of two churches at one time. (It’s just a thought! Don’t flog me or anything!) She had but a few questions for me. One was: can you effectively serve God attending more than one church? And the second was, what does your heart tell you to do? So I questioned it – could I serve God from more than one church? Could we serve God in one church one week and from another the next? And I wasn’t quite sure of the answer, just that I felt guilty for even thinking I should have nothing but utter devotion 24-7 for the new church.
And then, while writing in “The God Book”, I paused back through some of the previous pages just to take a break for a minute…. and promptly stumbled upon an entry from 6/15/09. On this Sunday morning, I distinctly heard God’s direction on which church I should go to that morning. I listened, and ended up at a church where the Sunday School teacher was late, the backup teacher wasn’t coming, and there was no one to teach the children – no teacher, and every parent had dropped their child off and gone off to their own classes! I listened to the voice that said “just start teaching” and ended up teaching the class that morning for both services! The ending paragraph on that entry read:
“It’s amazing – God had a need, He knew there would be no teachers and He used me to fill that need! I was never angry, never felt that I was missing a Sunday School class or church service. I just knew that when I asked God where He wanted me to be, and every time He answered “there”, I was right where He needed me to be.”
And all the sudden (present day), I felt total peace about it. The answer to me was pretty clear: as long as you are seeking Me, and are useable in that location, that means more to me than the walls surrounding you. And this is exactly why *I* need this book. To remind me of conversations between myself and the Lord, and to allow me to share the God that I know and love lest I, in my hurriedness and daily life, forget.
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