Blood, sweat, and tears…The grit and grind…Hours of labor, extreme exhaustion, pushing to the brink…Maximum exertion…Total commitment…
From athletes to musicians, actors to politicians, soldiers to statisticians…All reaching, grasping, lunging…In it for the glory…the fame, the acclaim, the renown of their name.
Make no mistake, its been translated from Park Avenue to the pulpit too…Piling up the followers, thirsty for the likes and shares. Oh, how’s my hair?Clout chasing, while their doctrine is quaking. More interested in sneakers than being expository preachers…Prophetically impotent because it may lead to cancellation…Enamored with the praise of man, even at the expense of 3rd heaven revelation…
It’s not always been, nor will it always be…
I remember when we were in it for the glory too…
Long before the narrative changed as the challenges mounted. Long before endless arguments about methodology and theology and biology. In the years before social unrest, political espionage, urban legends and conspiracy theories. Preceding masks, vaccines, open or close, CNN or Fox, faith or fear…
Oh the greatest fear…That which used to keep us up at night…
To look the part while lacking the prior substance
Having the accessories and accoutrements…Demonstrating the outward appearances…All the right moves…The proper vernacular, right rhetoric, accurate jargon…Precise volume, familiar sounds, same catchphrases…Looking, sounding, and even on occasion feeling like a move of God…
But living on fumes…
Simply rehashing days gone by…Merely an echo of a bygone era…Samson without the hair, reaching into his old bag of tricks, but coming up empty…
Form and formality absent powerful reality.
It’s time…A return is imminent…
Reinvigorated, rejuvenated, re-exhilerated, re-motivated…REfocus…REmember…
Those simpler days, before the cacophony…Those purer days, before the confusion…Those days of pure, simple, hunger driven pursuit…Deep-seated longing…Inescapable desire…Insatiable craving…Ravenous fascination…Unquenchable yearning…
The ludicrous, yet completely reasonable belief that rapturous communion is indeed available…better yet…attainable.
Yes…We are in it, for the GLORY…
For that which mesmerized Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration. That which passed Moses in the cleft…The whisper in Elijah’s cave…Patmos’ revelation…The train of the robe as Isaiah saw…The torch in Abraham’s covenant…The unceasing oil witnessed by Elisha…Damascus’ brilliant light…The 4th in the fire…Upper Room’s rushing wind…Stephen’s final vision…The flame of heaven which kissed earth’s altar…The torn veil…
The GLORY.
HIS GLORY.
We are audacious enough to believe that God still shows Himself…We are those people, living with great expectation…Inclined toward anticipation…Eagerly rounding every corner, aware of miraculous invitation…
We come together with eager confidence, that He will come for US.
We as a family have kept at our epicenter this guiding pursuit…
His presence in our midst. His Spirit permeating our community. His hand of favor and power resting upon us. The weight of His goodness saturating our company.
It all started with hunger for His GLORY.
It will remain focused on His GLORY.
Family, we are in it for the GLORY.