Home: Move Into It
We invite you to explore what home means to you
At Lakeview Church, it's our desire to create an environment that offers comfort, security and warmth - an environment that feels like home. Over the next year, we will be providing teaching and opportunities for you to experience community life more fully, as we explore the theme of 'Home' and what it means to each of us. We invite you to join us as we move into this journey.
Life has only one direction – FORWARD. It’s what you do with it and how aware you are of your reality that often makes the difference. When we begin to become aware of the desperate and hopeless shape of our world, and live each day with inexpressible gratitude towards the God who made a way for us to find a relationship with Him in the midst of that hopelessness, I believe that is when stuff can really start to happen.
The Old Testament starts out with God promising His people freedom in their new homeland. But to the ‘home’ as God sees it. A ‘home’ you will have to TAKE, a home you will have to CARVE out of enemy territory. A home that is both magical and dangerous, internal and external, and is both now and ‘not yet’.
Throughout the Biblical narrative, God is calling his people home. In the Old Testament home was described as the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey a land of safety, security, justice, peace and prosperity.
In the New Testament the story continues except Jesus used the word ‘Kingdom of God’. ‘Home’ - same thing. He said it is relational, safe, secure and just. It is prosperous and it is nothing like anything you have experienced here before.
Jesus said those who know me will know home as they live in me, and they will know home NOW in this life and later when we are all ‘home’ for good.
In the meantime we live in exile and we long for home….this world is not our home and yet we are called to make a home in the middle of this hostile environment.
An under pinning theme of the Biblical narrative, is that we are on a journey home while moving into and living out God’s home here in exile at the same time.
How do we do that? By fixing our eyes on Christ the originator, and the only one who has ever both fully experienced being home, and lived out being home among us
Our opportunity, our privilege as servant leaders of His Church is to prepare an environment where God’s people can find the safety, security, peace, prosperity and justice (in short , ‘Home’) that will enable them to participate in the restorative and redemptive work of Christ in their relational circles.
As we move through the year we may see that this increased emphasis on “Home” results in an increase in weekend attendance - great! Or more people participating and volunteering - awesome! Or we might find our membership numbers go up. All signs of a growing family. But it also, and maybe more importantly, may be seen in less obvious ways.
Our hope in this is to create an increased sense of community, a community where there might be a bit more lingering after an event, more people sharing a meal or a coffee together, in a need for more people to join the Altar prayer team, or simply in that feeling you get when you have been away for a long time, and as you get closer and closer to home, your heart beats a bit faster, your anticipation level rises and you go through the next few moments with anticipation that home - security, safety, peace, justice and prosperity are just moments away. So we ask you to discover home with us as we move into it.
