We are home, the Celebrate Recovery Summit couldn’t have been finer and our team attending it has a lengthy and aggressive plan for moving forward.  For all of this I am most grateful.  On a very personal note, however, I am most touched and humbled this morning as I write to you about the growth I’m finding in my relationship with God my Father.  As I write this I feel rather silly, but all that I write is most current and real.  This morning’s devotional said, “Within the heart of every man and woman there is a place that only God can fill.  We may try to satisfy our longings with different things; but until we come to a point of full surrender to Him, we will remain vulnerable to fearful thoughts, feelings of discontentment, and selfish desires, as well as pride and lust.”  It then goes on to say this:  “But when you fellowship with God, He….”  This is the part that hit me between the eyes–“when we fellowship with God, He”.

I’ve heard all my life how God created man to fellowship with us, I just didn’t realize He actually wanted to fellowship with me.  How hard I tried to earn the “fellowshiping” right with my dad but never made it.  I see so plainly now how this transferred to my belief about God my Father.  All this time I’ve been blinded to the truth about God’s desire to actually fellowship with me.  God gave us Jesus to show us what fellowship is like between Him and His Son but not to replace His fellowship with each of us.  For the first time I feel I now have access to the complete Triune God.  The devotional ended with this:  “Friend, the only relationship that can fill your longings, sustain you through difficulties, and bring you peace is the relationship you have with God.  Don’t hold Him back in any way.”  I want to take full opportunity to keep this in place from this day forward.

The Summit also left me with a keener interest in promoting the need to awaken the passion of the church to the hurting people silently sitting each Sunday in the chairs/pews.  Our church needs to be the same safe place people say they find at Celebrate Recovery.  The masks need to be removed for the sake of each one wearing them and for the person desperately needing to be reached out to.  I sense God asking me to speak this more boldly.