FROM PASTOR BEN:
The Weekly
I'm so glad you're here and look forward to connecting with you and sharing what God is teaching me each week. 

03

Epic Family, 

 

I love making plans. I’m future-oriented. This can be a good thing and I would even say it’s a requirement for my role. Being someone who loves thinking about the future has brought a number of challenges in this season for me. I can’t plan for exactly when we’ll gather again as a church. I don’t know what is going to happen to the commercial real estate market in San Francisco and what we should do about that. I don’t know when this season is going to end. If you like to make plans like I do, how should you approach the future in our current reality?

 

James 4:13-17 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

 

Our contentment cannot be tied to knowing the future. This has always been true, but it’s never felt as true to me as it does in this season. To be honest, I’ve experienced a new level of contentment over the past month. When I’ve lost my peace and contentment, it’s been because I’ve spent too much time trying to figure out specifics about the future. I have lived so much of my life dreaming about and planning for the future. But what do you do when the future seems more uncertain than it ever has? 

 

Pray for and focus on Daily Bread. In The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us to ask for daily bread (Matthew 6:11) and he also tells us to not worry about tomorrow (Matthew 6:34). I think it’s more than okay to spend a little time considering the future, but too much time focused on the unknowns of the future will cause us to miss out on what God has for us today. Shauna and I are learning in this season, more than ever before, to ask for daily bread. I want to encourage you to try it. Spend each day asking God for today’s bread, today’s joy, today’s peace, today’s provision, and today’s faith.

 

God still has a will for your life. We shouldn’t assume what will happen in the future, but we can have a deep faith that God has a glorious future in store for us. I kind of wish we could know the specifics of all that’s ahead for us, but then we would miss the adventure God wants to take us on. The Scriptures tell us that renewing our minds will help us to know the will of God for our lives. What daily practices could help you renew your mind?

 

Do the good you know God has for you today. We might not know what God has for us next year or even next week, but I bet all of us can think of something good we know God wants us to do today. In a time when we’re lacking so much clarity, let’s not neglect the things that God has made crystal clear to us. It could be calling a friend, serving a neighbor, reconciling a relationship, or a host of other things.

 

How is this season impacting your level of contentment and/or your level of discontentment?

What’s the daily bread that you need to ask God for today?

Are you confident that God still has a will for your life?

What’s one good thing you believe God wants you to do for someone today?

 

I don’t know our future, but I’m confident God does. 

 

You’ll love this song by Good Shepherd NY, written for our current reality: 

We Are Gonna Make It Through

 

Much Love,

Pastor Ben

f-facebook
f-instagram
f-twitter