The One

Sometimes, God moves and we were supposed to follow. But we didn't, and now, we find ourselves standing in a distant place, wondering what happened. Follow the cloud and fire, friends. 

But sometimes, we move and we expect God to follow. And we find ourselves standing in a distant place, wondering what happened. 

It's an easy trap to fall into. We pray, read the Bible, go to church, and have a faith that feels pretty solid. We ask God what He's up to, feel things out with our spiritual gut, dream big dreams with our sanctified imagination, and we know that God loves us. So when we go out on that limb, we expect God to come with us. 

I'm not talking about the times when we feel sent. When we feel that nudge from God that He's asking us to go, like when Jesus sent the disciples out and told them to go to all of the villages.

I'm talking about the times when we think things are gonna be just fine if we go wandering out a little bit on our own, when we're so full of faith that we believe we can do whatever we want and not lose God. 

But here's what we often forget: although God loves you, individually you, He's more a God of the people than He's ever been a God of the person. 

God's plan for us is that we would all be together. 

And so often, these plans that we have for ourselves, these things that we think sound good and that we're certain God approves of, are things that leave us standing on the outside all alone. We go, thinking God is going to build up a community around us if we just step out in "faith," but what we don't realize is that God has already given us a community and hasn't actually called us to step outside of it like we thought. 

The goodness of God is back where the others are. 

Think about the parable of the lost sheep. A shepherd has 100 sheep and loses one, so he leaves the 99 and goes off to find the one. 

We're not talking here about a sheep that simply didn't make the trip to the new pasture. We're not talking about a sheep that somehow fell behind and never caught up. We're not talking about a straggler. Many translations actually say the shepherd had 100 sheep and 1 wandered away. 

Saw a piece of green grass and went for it, never expecting to end up alone. But certain, as we all are, that the shepherd would definitely want him to have that nice, green grass. 

We are that sheep. We are the ones who have wandered away. We were so certain in who we thought we were, who we thought God thought us to be, that we wandered away, expecting God and the rest of the herd to follow, and then we looked up and discovered we were all alone. 

Suddenly, we are the one that the Shepherd has to come after. 

We thought for sure He'd come with us, but no...He's coming after us.

Because He's not willing to lose us. Especially not like this.