4. Spiritual goggles
Our summer retreat registration has closed last Sunday. Total of 48 people signed up, which is a great number to have fun and meaningful retreat. Since we are trying to instill new ministry vision and core values in our church culture through this retreat, this is a great start. What requires our attention is seven of them are VIPs. I’m very glad VIPs are coming but at the same time I feel a huge burden. VIPs are not Christians and they don’t belong to the Kingdom of God yet. That is the reason why we want to bring them into the Kingdom of light, where there is unconditional acceptance, radical forgiveness and abundant life. What is expected is eventual clash of two different “kingdoms”.
On the surface level, non Christians do not look much different from Christians. But if you go a little deeper, you will find a huge gap in values and perspectives. That is why we need to have a “spiritual” goggle on so that we are able to see their spiritual condition and recognize their spiritual need.
If we see things with mere physical eyes, we can easily think what they need is mere friendship so we just try to be nicer and friendly. This is a very important step in reaching out to them. But when we begin to see their spiritual need and condition, it should urge us to “pray” because what they really need is salvation from sin, which is a spiritual answer. This is not a trivial matter that requires human effort. It requires “spiritual” awareness and our hunger to see their lives transform. It demands us to be intentional about caring for them with compassion and praying for them with discernment.
That is why we are giving out “prayer cards” and recruiting prayer volunteers who would fast at least one meal to pray for the retreat for next 2 weeks. Prayer request is not just for everyone to have a good time but also there will be a spiritual change in all participants, especially VIPs. So please sign up to participate in this relay so we can have a true team work in bringing people to God and have a unifying experience for our group to rally around our church’s mission for a new start.
