It's difficult to put into words how much the addition of Gabby to our family has impacted my marriage. Leah and I spend more time together than ever, but now a portion of it revolves around our daughter. A lot of our prayers together revolve around Gabby. A lot of our conversations at dinner revolve around Gabby. Our life planning now includes Gabby.
These are great changes, and I'm so thankful for the bigger picture God has given us as a family. But I also realize that if we're not careful, Gabby can become a prop that holds up our marriage relationship.
This dynamic makes me think about the challenges of the empty nest season of life. If you have a few kids, and spend 25 years as husband and wife praying for them, teaching them, talking about them, disciplining them, and preparing them for life, it must be a tremendous adjustment when they leave home. Conversations change. Evenings spent hustling kids to activities are open again. And in some ways, a man and a woman have to get to know each other again.
Lately God has brought the picture of the empty nest to mind as a description of my relationship with Him A few weeks ago I left a church that I had the privilege to plant and pastor for over 8 years. In some ways it felt like my baby.
Now, with that baby gone, I'm realizing how much of my relationship to Jesus was propped up by my work in the church.
Can I be brutally honest?
Too much of my prayer life revolved around the church. Too large a percentage of my time in God's Word was tied to weekly sermon preparation. Too much of my intimacy with Jesus happened during corporate moments of worship.
Now that I'm an empty-nester, I feel like I'm getting to know Jesus again.
This current season of life is unique, because the church I'm leading now doesn't exist yet. I don't want to take this metaphor too far (for obvious reasons) but in a way I'm in the pregnancy stage right now.
When Leah was pregnant, we were very intentional about building our relationship with each other. We tried to do things that would be more difficult to do once the baby was born.
And that's my goal while being pregnant with this new church. I want to spend more time with Jesus simply for the joy of experiencing Him. I want to worship more without thinking about leading others into worship. I want to study and digest Scripture for the sole purpose of knowing my King.
If you're a pastor, or a church staff member, try asking yourself this question. If my ministry was taken away from me, and I no longer had the privilege of leading this church, would it affect my relationship with Jesus?
I've felt a bit disoriented during the past few weeks. But it's a good disorientation. It's the disorientation associated with working my way back to a solid understanding of my identity in Christ. And I'm grateful for it.
This is rich, Brad. I really dig how he is drawing you in closer, deeper. I was reading a prayer this morning called the "Prayer for Life", roughly based off of a daily prayer by John Eldridge, and there was a line in it that says, "Holy Spirit, I ask for you to be my circumstance, my distraction, my preoccupation, my reality and my love."
This morning I was overwhelmed with the beauty and simplicity of that line. Praying for unique and intimate distractions as you soak in his presence.
Posted by: matt | February 08, 2010 at 10:59 AM