“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.  Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”   Ephesians 4:11-16

For years you’ve probably thought that the Prayer Ministry Team that prays for us following Sunday morning worship services receives secret training that gives them direct access to God. Well, here is part of the secret: We ALL have direct access to God. There is nothing magical involved, but there is definitely something supernatural: God Himself.

And now, that training is secret no longer, but is available to all. Our first training will take place this April 28^th on Saturday from 9 to 1. The training is necessary to become part of the Ministry Team, but if you take the training, you are Not compelled to join that team. In fact, we would like everyone in the church to go through process.

What you’ll find when you take the training is that the “secret” does not involve particular phrases or formulas. The secret is opening yourself to the Spirit and accepting the authority and opportunity granted to us to communicate with God. This is probably the most direct and immediate way to experience the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in your life.

I spent too many years praying like this: “Oh Lord, if you have time and feel like it and it won’t be presuming too much and … Oh I just can’t ask, OK Lord?” This training will help you understand how to approach God and how to ask and petition him in accordance with his will. It will help you be still and listen to the Spirit as he teaches you how to pray and how to pray for one another.

What you have to bring is a willingness to be open to God and to be used by him. You have to be in the Word of God and willing to pray for yourself as well as for others. Come and find out what it’s about! If you miss the training this April, don’t despair: training will be repeated in a few months.

I grew up the only child of a very adventurous father. Because of his job we lived in interesting places, so by mid-western standards, I did risky things. My dad took me hunting for arrowheads in rattlesnake-infested areas; I crossed a fast moving river on a few planks connected to a rope and a pulley. I’ve gone camping with bears across the road from our campsite, and have climbed glaciers. I loved doing all these things. I am not a person opposed to physical risk, but emotional risk is an entirely different matter.

God has stretched me more than any other way by encouraging me to take emotional, relational risks. For me, trusting God for physical safety is so much easier than trusting Him in relationships. The two riskiest things I have ever done, by my standards, were to get married and to adopt a child. In both cases I was uniting myself for life with a stranger. This in my mind is a serious risk but has potential for great blessing! In Timothy Keller’s book, The Meaning of Marriage, he quotes Stanley Hauerwas:

“We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being (the enormous thing it is) means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary problem is ..learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.”

I thought I knew my husband well (marriage tests indicated we did) when we married but must admit I was surprised. I went through various stages in our marriage of feeling rejected, angry and finally emotionally distant and indifferent. I definitely had a problem “learning how to love and care for the stranger.” God in His mercy finally and dramatically transformed our marriage for His glory.

When you marry, you at least have some knowledge of the person you marry but when you adopt, you are truly uniting with a stranger. Everything is an unknown in a closed adoption. We adopted our son when he was 10 days old. At the age of two he asked if he had come out of my tummy like our daughter. Just the fact that he asked that question at that age to me says he knew something was different for him. As he grew older he wanted to know why his birth mother rejected him. He was an angry and strong-willed child. In order to avoid responding to him in anger, my means of coping was to distance myself from him. God has dramatically used my relationship with my son to learn to love someone yet experience great pain in the relationship. That is the risk I fought against.

Loving those closest to me day in and day out conflicts with my self-centeredness. I want them to meet my needs, not the other way around. I have spent a lot of time distancing myself emotionally rather than staying engaged when I am hurt in relationships, but I am challenged by 1 Corinthians 13 to risk loving:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

At this stage of my life my heart’s desire is to love God and those people He has put in my life. This is what truly gives meaning and purpose to life on this earth and beyond. I am learning to appreciate the risk of wanting to love well. The challenge before me is to be like Sarah and “do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.” (1Peter 3b, ESV)

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.
- Matthew 13:44-46 (NIV)

This pair of parables highlight the same truth from two different angles: A dedicated seeker will give everything he owns to possess the ultimate treasure.

You can almost imagine the stunned surprise of someone who has stumbled across buried treasure in a vacant plot of land. The treasure is perhaps worth more than he could earn in a lifetime. He quickly re-buries the loot and rushes to sell his stuff in order to buy the land so he will become the rightful owner of the hidden cache.

The second parable offers a different look at the same spiritual reality. In this story, a veteran jewel buyer barely able to contain his awe at the find of a single oversized, flawless pearl. The arc of this story is a carbon copy of the treasure-finder’s story. The jeweler sells his entire inventory in order to possess his once-in-a-lifetime discovery.

Jesus told these stories at the peak of his ministry, to crowds who were for the most part receptive to his words. They were ready to listen to whatever he had to say.

Or were they?

Jesus was telling them that they would need to trade everything they held dear in order to find their true treasure in his invisible kingdom. It’s as difficult for us today to comprehend as it was for Jesus’ first-century audience. In our culture of shattered promises and litigious hair-splitting, committing everything to possess the One Thing that matters more than anything else in the whole world seems impossible. Most of us naturally want to insure that a risk like that will pay off in the end.

One of our young adult sons recently visited Israel. He was surprised by the spiritual intensity he sensed as he traveled the land. The longings of pilgrims who’ve traveled there from around the world mix with the faith practices of those living in Israel. Even committed secularists in Israel can’t ignore the fact that they live in a place like no other on earth, where the hopes and prayers of three major religions converge.

Jesus well understood both our spiritual longings and our inability to commit to do what he was asking us to do in these parables – to fully pursue God.

So he did for us what we could not do for ourselves. He was born into the place and of the people who were chosen by God to proclaim his goodness to every tongue, tribe and nation. In Bethlehem, Israel 2,000 years ago, God himself came to find each one of us.

We are his treasure, his perfect pearl. He gave everything to possess us.

These parables, then, are a holy invitation to respond to what he has already done for us. As we join him in his mission, he empowers us by his Spirit to live as spiritual treasure hunters.

Who, then, are the buried treasures, the perfect pearls in your life?