Better Together

Our theme for 2008 has been ‘Better Together’ and I regret that we haven’t been able to ‘work’ that theme more because it really is a good theme. I think we are making progress in terms of this whole communication thing and I’m hoping that we are getting better at doing life together.

The present series of messages we are presenting is on ‘Growing A Culture’ and one of the points I tried to make up front is that we are not necessarily ‘better together’. We can actually be worse! (See 1Cor 11:11:17) Whether we actually are better together will be determined by the health of our culture and that will be determined by our real beliefs and values; not what we say they are, not what we write out in a brochure, not what we try and project on the surface, but what they truly are as is evidenced by what we do and how we treat each other. We have to be willing to go deep to evaluate these things.

Blogs are supposed to be personal. That’s the whole idea. That is also the whole idea when it comes to God. He wants to get personal. We need to be willing to deal directly with God and His truth. We need to allow Him to search our hearts. It doesn’t get any more personal than that.

I read a quote the other day. It was in the September issue of ‘Worship Leader’ magazine. It was from Alan Alda who is quoted as saying, “Listening means being able to be changed by what you hear.” I like his idea. Though I would be tempted to say it more like, “Listening means being WILLING to be changed by what you hear.”

It reminded me of how Jesus was always saying, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Kind of a curious statement! We all have ears so what does it mean? Could it mean that to really ‘hear’ involves the willingness to be changed by what we hear?

I think Alan Alda might be onto something. It’s all about being willing to allow the truth to judge us rather than standing in judgment of the truth. If the truth of God hasn’t changed us, then we haven’t really heard it.