When Headache, Exhaustion and Church Collide

Today as exhaustion and headache met church - I felt the message in addition to hearing it.  Our Pastor,  Mark Leech talked about intimacy, and not just with God, but with each other.

This hits open nerves.  We don't want this, but we desperately want this. I am positive that God is trying to teach me that not only is intimacy important for the health of our church, and as I am prone to care most deeply, our women - it is part of His plan and our design.  It is for our wholeness, and our freedom. And a lack of intimacy in our relationships exposes us.

I am deeply convinced that every relational issue that we have - every wall that we keep up, every anger we harbor, every hope we don't explore - end up between us and God, even if they began between us and the people we don't want to hurt us.

And women - as a rule, we are hard.  We throw things between ourselves and our Father like it is a sport. We even clean it up and celebrate it.

So the questions I seek to find answers to as I move ever closer to mail date and ministry design team date - What are the critical aspects of intheVine that will put us in the best position to follow God's calling in our lives?  How will intheVine help women move closer to engaging in their lives and knowing their God?  We need each other, I am deeply committed to this truth.  And, in the constraints given to us here on earth, I want to be part of a ministry that breathes life; learning to share ourselves for the sake of something greater than ourselves is going to be part of the answer I am looking for.

I want to see God's love multiplied as we continue to learn to hold each other up in an atmosphere where women believe for each other in the dark times and, with great care and love, push each other not to minimize issues to just the issue itself - but rather to find God in the struggle. To ask each other the real questions - to walk beside each other as we wrestle with the harder reality of our faith and our rebellion; our hope and our surrender. I cannot stop seeking to follow God through the wreckage of earth to believe His hope and life.

He has so much left to bring to this world. Oh, that He would teach us to believe so deeply - so deeply we couldn't not.

I need His wisdom intensely; His wisdom and His creativity.  I want intheVine to never become something that just fills space or adds time on a to-do list that is already too full.  Lord, Father, teach me, and make me into someone who can learn. 

His timing.  His way. His women.  These are the things I go to bed thinking about tonight.  Well, these things and a to do list greater than the time left to complete it.  T-2 days!  Ready or not!! It's coming!