Village Church - stillettos and joy

Visiting churches other than your own is always an interesting experience for me. Sometimes it's easy to happily be content in the world and community of your own church. I try to visit other churches in Sydney but it doesn't happen as often as I would like. When you start chatting with someone who may have welcomed you or start singing in worship or pray together, you realise how wide God's family spreads....and moreso when you find yourself in a church in the middle of New York!

The church I went to with M, recommended by A who was had also found himself over there for work, was the Village Church. http://www.villagechurchnyc.com/.

We had not even hit the church door before a young lady came up to us, welcomed us and introduced herself. As we sat in a pew another 2 people got up and approached us from their seats to greet us. This is possibly the most welcoming experience I have ever experienced!

Given the recent economic times and later we heard about how this congregation could no longer afford the rent for the church building, the pastor of this church challenged and encouraged through the reflection time and sermon which I really appreciated. Here are some highlights:

The meditation:
There is certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in travelling in a stage-coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place. Washington Irving. Tales of a Traveler

Inventory for silent self examination:

• Do I respond to difficulty by considering how I can more deeply trust the Lord, or am I quick to respond by lamenting for the good times to return?
• Am I open to receiving from the Lord the lessons He has for me, even when they come with difficult circumstances?
• Is my trust in the Lord so deep that my joy for him rivals even His very best provisions in my life?

Sermon: The Trail of Trials - Genesis 37:2, 37:17b-28, 39:1-23

In Sam Andreades sermon, he used the analogy of women who wear designer stilletto heels. One woman had shared with him that she rotates her designer shoes throughout the week. Each pair hurts her in a different place, so by the time she rotates back to the first pair, that part of her foot had recovered from the moulding and pain inflicted from the previous week!

Maybe the analogy was a little superficial, but it did help highlight the point that we look at suffering or our trials differently. This woman obviously was willing to trade wearing a beautiful shoe for suffering, but how often do we realise that God moulds us through our trials?

Sam also raised that we can think of ourselves as sponges. Whatever a sponge soaks up, comes out - it shows. In turn our relationship with Christ is shown through what we soak up in our relationship with Him and what then comes out.

Charge:

Go forth,to be shaped by the Spirit in your trials into the character of Christ.

*****

This visit I was really struck by how genuine and warm the people welcomed us.

The third challenge from the 'Inventory for silent self examination' took me and M a few reads to get our heads around. But this question really struck me:

Is my trust in the Lord so deep that my joy for him rivals even His very best provisions for my life?

It dawned on me that we do often measure our joy by our circumstance, what things we have or how 'blessed' we feel. But really our joy should be rooted in the Lord...certainly something for me to really absorb...like a sponge!