This Sunday – April 15

This Sunday – April 15

It was the most amazing feeling.

I don’t think that any of us ever forgets it.

The first time we ride a bike without training wheels.

Maybe it was the combination of mild terror and desperate pedaling.

For me it was the transformation.

No one running behind me, holding onto the seat. No rattling training wheels slowing me down.

To this day when I ride a bike the first minutes are like magic again and I can’t believe I’m getting to do it.

The new ease and freedom of something previously unknown becoming absolutely familiar. It’s great.

This Sunday I begin a new message series at the Gathering Church: Included: Participating in God’s Life. 1 John is going to be the guide.

As I prepare I have realized that in many ways I’m still using training wheels when it comes to God. That realization comes from a hint that there is a bike-riding potential with God that is greater than we imagine.

John, in this letter, makes it clear that Christ coming to this world was so that people might be included in God’s life, that people might experience the life and joy that God has, that God enjoys with His Son, that the first followers experienced and now want to share.

It’s easy to reduce the Christian life to believing the right things and behaving the right way, having the right social views. Those things are training wheels. They don’t represent bike-riding at all. No wonder the Christian life sometimes looks so irrelevant or unattractive. It’s way too narrow and controlling.

Not enough bike-riders having a blast experiencing God’s life.

This Sunday begins with 1 John 1:1-4.