Welcome to Finding Home!
While translations differ, these words are well known: “Make your home in me, and I will make my home in you.”
Most people struggle to know what this means and how to do it.
An intimate friendship with Christ feels elusive. After all, why hasn’t it already happened? It also feels intimidating. No one wants Jesus rummaging through the unprepared reality of their lives. It feels much safer to keep Him at arm’s length.
As new Christians, we typically attach to an organized church. We attend services, become members, join a small group, practice spiritual disciplines, tithe, and serve others. Some good things happen here.
Yet, somehow, astonishingly few ever experience spiritual maturity in Christ.[1]
If we fail to understand Jesus’ invitation and embrace it, we forsake the possibility of a radically transformed life. There is a lot at stake here.
Finding Home is a 7-month journey devoted to cultivating a transforming friendship with Jesus. We will explore both what empowers and obstructs this dynamic transformation.
Why this, why now?
The intersection of faith and 21st century culture is a rough neighborhood.
A worldwide pandemic. Natural disasters. Foreign terrorism. Domestic terrorism. Crippling poverty and starvation. And . . .
Against this backdrop, we wake up each day to a culture devoted to deconstructing its belief systems. No ultimate truth exists; the only reality is the one we create.
Besides the world’s struggles and a shifting worldview, we are confronted by deep divisions about racial history, Black Lives Matter, and Critical Race Theory; polarizing politics that tear apart families and friends; and raging cultural battles over homosexuality, transgenderism, and the meaning of marriage and family.
Fragmented and worn-out, it takes all of our energy to simply understand our times, let alone live in them. How can we be difference-makers for Christ in this world?
Our endless posts on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook only prove that apologetics, political debate, and logic change nothing. For over 2,000 years, the world has changed just one human heart at a time, through a personal encounter with the love of Christ.
So where do we start? Amid complexity, Jesus offers us unblushing simplicity: “Make your home in me, and I will make My home in you.” This is a season for Finding Home. Of getting back to first things first.
The cost of discipleship
This adventure is not for everyone. It might not be for you.
Finding Home is for those who desire “something more” in their relationship with Jesus.
Christian spiritual formation is about the recrafting of personhood. The Apostle Paul describes it as, “Taking off the old self . . . and putting on the new.”[2] This is not easy.
When Jesus asks, “Do you want to get well?”[3], He knows that the obvious answer is not so obvious. The promise is a new life; the cost is giving up the old one.
The person who sets out on this journey is rarely the same one who returns. Along the way, we will make choices and those choices will make us.
The more we understand this upfront, the better things will go for us.
Question
What do you want most out of this 7-month journey? What motivates you to be a part of this adventure?
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See, George Barna, Maximum Faith, a six-year research study on Christian transformation in America. In terms of spiritual maturity, the research shows that only 0.5% of Christians ever reach the stage of “Enjoying a profound intimacy with and love for God”; and 0.5% “Experience a profound compassion and love for humanity.”
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Ephesians 4:22-24.
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John 5:6.