I can reminisce about the days of my youth. Not even how much more agile or able to do more things I was, but the time and the season in my life where life was dear. Where the pace of life was different unless you chose to speed it up. Would I not want children to spend less time in front of a TV screen or imagine life without a cell phone in favor of being outside? Now understand, I value technology, but I do not value our response to it. Anymore than I appreciate one sided reporting or the drama of a storm. I can bemoan the fact that people are too knowledgeable yet lacking in common sense. That we have chosen safety over reality in so many cases. That we have allowed ourselves to be regulated into a corner. Or be concerned that simple education has become so simple that it seems like everyone must pass or else.

Folks, that is not a rant. Nor is it leading me to depression over the way things are. We have a bright future. Will we incur difficult things? Of course, for that is often the pathway of a person set on change.

One of the greatest things in Christ is the empowerment of His people is to do awesome exploits. In one corner we have the group that believes in the spiritual moving side of that statement only. Raise the dead, heal the sick, cast of demons. We have more powerful signs in the scriptures of water into wine, parting water and rising waters we can view. This side often misses out on a lot of day to day life.

In the other corner we have seen a people seeking to find who they are and what they are called for, meanwhile walking through life and not changing themselves or the things around them because they have not applied the truth of the other side (yet). Comfortable yet not moving to see things accomplished but waiting to see. This side often gets caught in how to change things about them.

Both sides have spiritual value.

Ironically both those corners are falling under the heading of mighty exploit. Yet there is a chasm containing millions, perhaps billions of people that are looking to live out life. Some may have salvation while others may not. The fact is they feel as though they must “pick” a side as in “pick a team for the Super Bowl”. The “team to be chosen ought in fact be the life of Christ being lived out with no one “in a corner”, where everyone comes together in worship and is meaningful in the body of Christ. In actuality they want the values of both sides.

I began this with a “nostalgic” look at life, but the more I look at the life I had as a child, I ask myself, is it possible that in missing it we have accomplished something? Or ought we be moving differently than we are in this current state?

There was an overriding thought in my life and it was called “family”. My parents were not church going people and neither were many of my friends and neighbors, but they understood family. They knew community.

• When a young woman married a guy that was wrong and ended up divorced the community pulled together to help her and her daughter recover.
• When a family member passed away, food showed up, people sat for days with the grieving family. Lawns were mowed, driveways shoveled, errands done.
• When someone became sick for a “longer season” the line of cars in front of the home never ended. Food and people appeared. Children were cared for.

You may think I am nostalgic, but I think that is what is needed to receive that group of chasm dwellers, I spoke about. I think we may fellowship miles away from one another but we will be seeing changes coming and I think this is where healing, deliverance and even raising the dead will occur. It is also where salvation, identification with Christ, vision and destiny will occur. This chasm has tremendous value for the church.

One of the greatest pulls of the body of Christ is when it begins to see itself as family in word and in deed. As I read the story of 40 Churches In 40 Weeks, “I saw that the church is not dead”. (Not that I thought it was.)But was in fact bringing encouragement and change to people’s lives. In the midst family may “huddle” up in crisis but then it begins to gain strength and change things.

I see that the family is going to be one of the leading impetuses in change across our nation. Do not put it aside as something “non-spiritual” but see it as the value for what is to occur.

Family is not a nostalgic thing. It is the heart of the Father.