Coffee Talk Redux is a reflection on things God is teaching me. In some cases the ideas for these topics come from the Coffee Talk group that I meet with weekly at the Vintage Coffee Bistro located in Lambertville, Michigan. At other times the Redux topic may arise from some conversation I may have had with someone, or a thought that crossed my mind, or perhaps something I read somewhere, or maybe a combination of all of these. In any case think of this as a discussion on what God is teaching us to help us grow in our understanding of His will.
So last night at Coffee Talk we were weaving together the themes of peace, humility, community, and experiencing God in the NOW. To experience God in the NOW one must realize that all of these themes are related. To be an effective church means a community, the Body of Christ. To make the Body of Christ work requires that there be a community that is Christ-like.
But folks that belong to a church community also belong to other communities outside the church, for example their work, their neighborhood, their friends, and their family. Much of what is done outside the church is focused on making a living and satisfying these other interests. In today’s world making it means being focused on things in the future, acquiring more stuff, paying for the stuff, planning for this and that, over scheduling one’s life and kids, and perhaps regretting the things of the past, that is what has happened or should have happened. In our world today there is no time for the NOW since every moment is focused on what we are going to do next. To become more spiritual and experience God each day of our lives and not just for an hour on Sunday morning means that we have to focus on the NOW. We only experience and can know God in the NOW, we can only pray to God in the NOW, not in the past or in the future, but NOW. But focusing on the NOW means that we have to stop thinking of ourselves and think less about competing with the outside. By thinking less about everything else we begin to think more about God and begin to experience Him in the NOW.
But life for many just ends up being a competition of having and wanting more and more and chasing one’s tail for that illusion of a life that is better than others. This need to compete is driven by pride and one man’s pride is in direct competition with the other man’s pride. The need to impose our will on others rather than to let God’s will be done. The competition is in trying to be richer, better-looking, having better and more talented kids, and being smarter and more successful than everyone else. This prideful state is what leads one away from God just as in the Fall of Adam and Eve and in the fall of the angel that resulted in Satan.
The danger is that this pride and our own sense of superiority is then brought into the church community because with pride in its midst the Body of Christ cannot be effective. Worship is no longer directed towards the Gospel message but is directed towards an imaginary god that serves our own self-centered interests. We cannot focus on the needs of others but see others as the means to our own ends. To enter the church one must empty themselves and leave their pride and their ego at the door. The opposite of pride is humility and when we empty ourselves of our ego and our pride and all the trash and the competitiveness of the outside world there will be peace in the community and the starting place for carrying this throughout the world begins right within the church. If we can take this first step when we enter church we can transform our own lives and the lives of others as well. Christ showed us how to do this, for as Paul says in Phillipians 2:5-8, “Have this in mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a Cross.” A church works as the Body of Christ when its members have emptied themselves of their pride and become humble servants of Christ working together towards the common good and in this way as community they experience God in the NOW.
© Ronald L. Fournier – 2008
