I was thinking about this phrase today: In many ways strange places are the normal places. God wants to have his people involved in normal places, yet because we have become so incorporated into a christian sub culture normal places appear strange to us!!!.
As a Jesus follower there is a mandate for me to be involved in strange places, a call to be light in darkness, salt of the earth, an agent of change.
This faith that I am called to was meant to be expressed outside the walls of my typical church experience. I think God wants us to move beyond the walls we have created and get more into the world that He has created. Does church culture hold us back?
From his last command to "GO" to the very lifestyle he lived here on earth, Jesus lived, and asked us to live, beyond the walls, out in strange everyday places.
There is still a voice within me that says "there has to more than this, more than we have got right now?"
An aching and a longing (wasn't that a song by a mediocre christian singer called Martyn Joseph?)to see god expressed in strange places.
When I check out the bible and see where God did turn up, it was very rarely in a meeting or pre-organised church event.
A burning bush, a rock in a desert, a fishes belly, a fiery furnace, a threshing floor, in a dirty river, up mountains, by rivers, in lions dens and through a donkey, God showed up in these strange places.
Jesus connected with mankind at wells, on mountains, in gardens, in homes, with prostitutes and tax collectors, outside city gates, on stormy seas, by the beach, at weddings and at traditional festivals, sounds fun.
The early churches culture was very outwardly focused they did have meetings but God showed up in the market place, the roadside, in prison, in homes, in shipwrecks, on strange islands, walking about, in debating houses and generally all over the show.
I mustn't box Him in, when God is a God who wants to move in the strange yet normal places.
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