What's Your "More" For?

2 Corinthians 5:20 (MSG)

20 …Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you.

What Wildwind has always done, and what we do better than any other church I’ve ever known, is assure people that God is already their friend – they may not know God, but God knows them. They may not love God, but God loves them. They may think their guilt is God, but it’s not . They may think their harshness with themselves is God, but it’s not. They may think their perfectionism is God, but it’s not. They may think their strength is God, but it’s not. They may think their obsessive need to root every single sin and vice out of their lives is God, but it’s not. They may think their independence – their not needing anybody – their going it alone – is God, but it’s not.

This is what Wildwind is about. We’re about saying, “God is closer to you than you know – closer than your own breath, and your own heartbeat.” But the truth is that God is simply not in much of the things we think He is in, and God is in a lot of the stuff we think he has nothing to do with. God’s not in a lot of the stuff I just mentioned, but you know where God is? God is in your weakness.

2 Corinthians 4:7 (MSG)

7 If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That's to prevent anyone from confusing God's incomparable power with us.

God is in that thing in your life that is dogging you and driving you crazy, perhaps the very thing that you think is keeping you from knowing God:

2 Corinthians 12:9 (MSG)

9 and then [God] told me, My grace is enough; it's all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.

The more you become part of Wildwind Church, the more you learn to find God in your weakness – know why? Because that’s all you’ve got. Compared to God, all we have is insufficiency, and if we cannot find God in our weakness and insufficiency, we cannot find God at all. Likewise, all we have is this present moment. The past is past and the future doesn’t actually exist yet. If we cannot know God in this present moment – no matter how chaotic, how dull and boring, or how seemingly meaningless it might be, then God simply cannot be known. That’s why ministry is not about programs and what are you offering my kids and what kind of music do you do. That stuff can have some validity to a limited extent, but about 90% of the time our objections and arguments over that stuff is a smokescreen to cover up one fact: we do not know where God is in this moment. We so often think that if the music was right, I could find God. If my neighbor weren’t so noisy, I could find God. If I went to church in a beautiful building instead of a school, I could find God. If my wife or husband or professor or boss understood me better and would give me some credit, I could find God. If my pastor preached more inspiring sermons, I could find God. If only that person would love me, or apologize to me, I could find God. None of this is true, and at Wildwind Church you will continue to learn how to find God in this moment. As you go out and invite friends to Wildwind, this is what you are inviting them into – not simply some talk to get them to come up front and pray a certain kind of prayer that will get them “saved,” but rather helping people to enter a life where we understand salvation as happening now – we are either responding to God in the present moment, or we are not. We are either connected to God in this moment, or we are not. Wildwind is a terrible place for people simply seeking fire insurance. For people who are lost in their own denial and illusion, who have bought into their own mythologies, hell is already here. As as great saint once said, hell is hell all the way to hell, and heaven is heaven all the way to heaven.