Looking for Beer in God's Refrigerator

My favorite kind of people are authentic. They shoot straight. They don't pretend to be someone they are not. They don't hide what they really think. They are comfortable in their own skin. But it's more than just "being yourself."

My favorite kind of people live so fully from their true hearts, that they invite other people around them to do the same thing. Do you know someone like that? The kind of person who invites you over for dinner and says "Make yourself at home"-- except they really mean it. And so you start opening cabinets in the kitchen to find the glasses and on your third try, there they are. And this person is cooking or setting the table and you start fishing around in the fridge for a beer, and then once you find it, you're opening drawers to get the bottle opener. And all the while your friend is just chatting away, asking about your day or keeping the conversation up with others and you're just feeling completely natural there, rooting around in drawers of a kitchen you've never been in before. You're comfortable and you don't even realize it. It's that person. They've made you feel at home so well that you hadn't even noticed until you started reading this silly little story.

I've been thinking about a lot of spiritual things lately-- about who I am and who God has made me to be. I think about what it would be like if I really could understand how much God loves me and if I could live there, in that understanding.

My church is unique. We meet in a bar right now. Usually it smells like hops and about 3/4 of the way through the service, a bar employee with dreadlocks and no bra on walks through the room and goes into the private dining room we use as a nursery to grab some towels from the cupboard. It's also unique because the part I get the most out of has only a little bit to do with Sundays. Monday nights my Community Group comes together in a house where I once opened three cabinets to find the glasses without even thinking about it. We call them Community Groups because they're based on geographic location, not age or marital status or race or anything so silly. So in my CG, we have people from ages 23 to maybe "47" (you're welcome, Marc) and some of us are teachers and some of us work in restaurants and some of us are moms or bankers or pharmacists. But I'll tell you what, we all ask questions and we all struggle through spiritual things together. And it's really rather wonderful.

This Monday we were wondering how it is you go about abiding in God. I think it's safe to say we're still wondering, but we did conclude that it looks different for everyone. We were reading John 15 and when I went back to it last night in The Message I was struck by something new.

I've loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. (v.9)

What would it be like, I wonder, to open the cabinets and rummage through the drawers and look for a beer in the refrigerator of God's love? And by that I mean, who would you be, if in the core of your being you understood that you are radically, wholly, undeniably loved by an all-powerful, dangerous, infinite and good God? What would it be like to have a conversation knowing that the Creator of the Cosmos is fascinated by every word you say? To know that he values your questions, that he loves you for asking them?

What would it be like to not feel the need to prove yourself?

What would it be like to make yourself at home in the love of Christ?