The Upper Room

For all of the things that I do joke about and mock--one thing that I never ridicule is my personal need and personal longing for intimate worship. Since moving to Washington, I have found it in bits and spurts and so-and-so's church here and so-and-so's group there...but it's never been anything that I've found consistently fulfilling. This leaves me feeling isolated away from God a lot of the time, because it's so difficult to reach Him through the means I have available in Arlington.

About a month ago, I received a letter from one of the Associate Pastors at my church saying that the church was beginning a Young Adults' service on Sunday nights for 18-35 year olds. I was thrilled--because I have been craving this kind of service so badly that I was preparing myself to make weekly commutes to Seattle to find it. I've been wanting to be a part of a vibrant, young community, and I've also been wanting to be a part of a service that offers solid teaching and reflective worship, both of which I do not find at my church on Sunday mornings.

I thought that this service would be different. So I went in anticipation, climbing the stairs up to the newly painted and lit "Upper Room" and spent two hours talking, drinking coffee, listening, praying and worshipping with about twenty other 20-somethings from my church community.

And I was filled...and I began brimming...and suddenly I was overflowing...

At our Youth Pastors' Networking Meeting next week, I'm going to share with our group about the first Covenant Bond of "The National Network of Youth Ministries," which is Personal Holiness. The covenant bond says that I claim that in accountability to God and my co-laborers, by faith my life will be characterized by "Personal Holiness before God and others, which is established in Christ and expressed in daily life through prayer and commitment to the Word of God."

A week ago, I might have expressed to my fellow youth pastors despair over my own ability to live out Personal Holiness on a daily basis...I mean...I have such ebbs and flows in my spiritual life where there are weeks that go by and I'm seeking God out everyday...and there are weeks that go by where I don't do it at all--but today, things are different.

According to Gary Thomas's Sacred Pathways, I seek God best through sensory input--that I want to see/feel/smell/taste/touch the presence of God...and for some reason, ingesting traditional prayers while taking communion, smelling the flames of new candles, while sitting in a room so beautiful and intimate that I want to bring in my sleeping bag and curl up on the floor and never leave rejuvinates me spiritually in a way that it can feel like I wake up and see my world through clear eyes for the first time in months. Is this what personal holiness is characterized by? Seeing our lives through the eyes of God?

I do know that for all of my mentoring and discipling, I have at last found a spiritual home in a place where there is a pastor and a community who want to pour into me--challenge me, prod me, teach me. And I am thrilled. Last night, when Pastor Greg started talking about the Gnostic heresy that led to the church at Ephesus's request to John to write a gospel account, I thought the extra wrinkle in my brain was going to release a flood of endorphins to my body and overwhelm me with a joy I have not felt since days gone by when I'd take notes during the sermons of Richard Allen Farmer and Jay Kesler at TU Chapel.

In two weeks, when I return to the service, I will pull out my Taylor guitar and lead my group of fellow pilgrims in worship through song...and for the first time in months and maybe years, I will look at my life and say that it has balance.