Archive - 2012

My coworkers have potted vines on their desks. They are easier to keep alive than flowers but harder than fake plants. Last summer, two of the vines had reached the floor. They told me that if I cut them off at the joints, I could stick them in water and they would grow roots. Then, I could plant them in dirt and start my own potted vine.

So I cut off two long vines, put them in a water  bottle, and stuck them on the windowsill of our apartment. A week later, my husband approached the subject with as much tact as he could muster.

“Renae, we’re not keeping those vines in water bottles forever, are we?”

I laughed and replied, “No. Just until they grow roots. Then we’ll plant them in dirt and let them grow.”

I watched them every day for three weeks. And every day for three weeks Kevin asked me, “Any roots yet?” My answer stayed the same, “Not yet.”

I had faith that my vines would grow on their own. For years, they have relied on other parts of the plant to bring its nutrients. It was the growth of another’s work. These leaves were merely the decoration that hung down the desk.

But then on week four, a little white thing looked like it was sprouting. Over night, it had grown a three inch root!

At the beginning of our walk with God, we are like that little vine. We (hopefully) are  discipled and taught how to follow Christ. But it’s not until we put the responsibility of having an individual quiet time on ourselves that we learn how to have a personal relationship with God.

John 16:7 says, “Nevertheless, I am telling you the truth. It is for your benefit that I go away, because if I don’t go away the Counselor will not come to you. If I go, I will send Him to you.”

The disciples could no longer rely on the physical steps of Jesus. They had to rely on a spiritual faith, one of listening to and obeying the Counselor, in order to grow in their relationship with God. And so do we.

“Your god – he is very powerful.”
 
He stopped gazing at the cargo ships in the harbor and looked directly into my eyes. The Lord had blessed us with many conversations about His love that summer, but that one statement wast he first time an adult came to the realization that our God is more than a character in a book.
 
My friend Joy and I were in Singapore the summer of 2010. The family we lived with decided to host a party in order for their friends to meet us. Somehow in the middle of dessert, we got to talking about an F4 tornado that had caused $40 million of damage to our college campus in 2008. After showing them pictures of the wreckage, they could not believe that God had spared every student’s life that night.
 
And that’s when it happened. For the first time in his life, this man realized that this God our host family had been telling him about was, indeed, a powerful God. Yet, despite this strength, He still chooses to walk with us today.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of saying, “God, I wouldn’t be sinning this much if only you walked with me in the garden like you did with Adam and Eve.” Or maybe, “God, I would stop struggling with my doubt if only I could be one of those twelve disciples that followed Jesus around.”
 
We have been fed the lie that the Holy Spirit is somehow the inferior member of the Trinity. Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit will dwell in us and guide us once we believe that Jesus is Lord.
 
We worship a God who is actively working in our lives and in the world. He is a God who sent His Son to the earth to get his feet dirty as He proclaimed the truth that God is the great “I am.” He is the God who walks with us through the good and the bad times. He is our pedestrian God. Praise the Lord!