Despite The Clouds

I have been in Omaha for three full days now. Honestly, it was a little strange at first. Over spring break, I was here in the city spending time with a bunch of fellow church regulars talking about the Gospel with Coram Deo and spending every waking minute together. Now, I am in the same city with the same church and the same leaders, but without everyone from Austin. That was a little strange getting used to that situation because I felt like I was walking into it all over again, but by myself. And in reality, that's what I am doing, but that feeling has long since vanished. So far it has been a neat experience and I can already tell that I am going to learn a lot and make many new friends along the way.

In talking with the leaders of Coram Deo, I am realizing that there will not be much schedule structure to my time here. Basically, their idea for getting me to grow as leader in living missionally is to simply immerse me in their lives and in the life of the church. I have been spending most of the days at the office doing sermon research and reading up on topics they have given me. And in the evenings I have joined a missional community on Tuesday nights and just returned from a weekly meeting for communal prayer on Wednesday evenings. The thing that I have come to appreciate most in the last few days is how deeply this church and its leaders strive for clarity and support for everything that they do in this church by the Gospel alone. They don't make a move without scriptural grounding. And I can really appreciate that because often doctrinal thought can become completely diverted and skewed because we choose to look for either what we want to feel and receive or we turn to someone else's opinion rather than the Gospel itself. They have asked me to read a book this week on covenant renewal worship, something that Coram Deo practices, and it has been interesting thus far.

In fact, I happened upon what I considered to be a neat insight on sin and humanity during my time reading today. The book is called The Lord's Service and it is written by Jeffrey Myers. In the Old Testament, people were cleansed of their sins through a ritual of animal sacrifice. Why? Because humanity is bound to sin from the moment of conception (Psalm 51:5) and God, being just, requires that we repent and be cleansed of it. In actuality, the punishment for sin is death (Romans 6:23) and we deserve to pay that price. But God is also a loving God and in the Old Testament times allowed humanity to embody the death it deserved through the sacrifice of animals. Leviticus talks about the smell from the burning of the animals offered up as acts of confession and repentance being a pleasing aroma to the Lord (1:13). Through this ritual, the followers of God died to their sins and were cleansed in order to follow the Lord in purity. The insight I found interesting is this: Meyers believes this has not ceased in its necessity. It has simply changed in method and custom in light of the death of Christ for all of our sins. When Jesus was crucified, he took upon himself the death that we all deserve as punishment for our sins. He died a horrific and terrifyingly brutal death so that we would not have to. Therefore, the sacrifice of animals was no longer necessary. However, much of the language used in the Old Testament in regards to animal sacrifice is used in the New Testament in regards to humanity. Jesus called his followers to "deny" themselves in order to follow him (Mark 8:34). In Romans, Paul calls christians to offer themselves as "living sacrifices" (Romans 12:1). And in his letter to the Corinthians, Paul describes christians as being an "aroma of Christ" (2 Corinthians 2:15-16). All of this imagery and terminology of death, sacrifice, and aroma point back to the Old Testament times in order to remind us that (using the words of Coram Deo's pastor), although the "cultural practice" of animal sacrifice is no longer necessary, the "timeless principle" of dying to your sins in order to live for the Lord still very much exists. Now we are the sacrifice. But rather than die a physical death, we are called to live a life of death to ourselves in order to glorify God.

I thought that was a cool thought. On another note, prayer tonight was awesome. It is an open invitation to anyone who attends the church to come together on Wednesday nights in order to pray together. Tonight, the focus was on listening to the prayers each of us have been lifting up individually and then praying for one another as a group. I remember experiencing this same prayer meeting over spring break and it left a big impression on me then. Setting aside at least an hour to simply sit and pray together is a really cool sacrifice in my mind.

All in all, these first few days have been challenging. I have a million thoughts running through my head and as they slowly surface I will be sure to post them. But for now, I think this is enough. I will say that the sun needs to freaking come out already during the days in Omaha. I had five and a half cups of coffee today and never felt like I woke up.

I will end on a lighter point. A lot of the people I am talking to up here are big fans of modern folk music. I have recently become a huge fan of two girls in Austin who play folk music together. They call themselves The Reliques and if you haven't heard of them yet, go here now. They have a ton of talent and deserve your time.

Thanks for the prayers. Please feel free to contact me anytime. You know where I'll be.

In His name alone,

- Collin