Please take a moment to post your thoughts and feelings about the series, particularly about the Sept. 18 worship service. We are hoping that what is posted here will become a resource for mutual encouragement, refreshment and growth. We may also use some of them in an upcoming Sunday media. We’ve made the videos from last week available in case you missed the service or want to experience it again.
Message from September 18th 2011
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I have had a few situations this week where I have been pushed to the limit of my patience- leadership is hard. In the moments of my greatest frustration, where I have needed it the most, God has reminded me of the destruction my sin and rebellion has caused his heart and his world. I wish I could say that my attitude instantly improved (it didn’t), or that I suddenly became grateful to God for putting up with me (I didn’t). But in the quietness of my time alone with God, he has made his grace and patience readily apparent.
Wow! Heard about this services’ impact on many of my friends and hated that I missed it. Just finished watching it and with tears streaming down I just need to say Sorry. Sorry to God for helping mess up his perfect place, plan, and people. I am thankful to serve a gracious, forgiving God who knew all along how I would mess things up, but has LOVED me anyway.
Through this whole process, the preparation, the painting and the destruction, I have been overwhelmed by the fierce and passionate way God loves me, loves us. The destruction I inflict on His masterpiece breaks his heart and fills him with sadness. But even as I am destroying, he is longing to bring me back to intimacy with him. I hope the raw emotion of this experience lingers with me. I don’t want to easily forget the truth of the destruction of sin, of what it does to my relationship with God and others, the overwhelming overflowing love God has for me – the destroyer of beauty and perfection, and the true cost of his grace and forgiveness. Thank you, Creator, Artist, for knowing and doing it anyway.
I’m still floored by the simple realization that God doesn’t regret creating me. Despite the destruction I’ve caused he says “I would still do it all over again.” Just as Heather painted knowing her beloved creation would be destroyed and said “It’s worth it.” God created each of us knowing what we’d do and says “You are worth it.” That blows me away.