Remember What’s Really Real
A couple months ago, my work with Desiring God put me in a room with dozens of college ministry leaders from all over the country, we were having a discussion about the needs of this generation. What were these leaders seeing on campus? What kinds of issues come up again and again? One of the leaders said something that’s stuck with me for weeks.
He said something like,
I don’t know if this is new or not, but we have a lot of students who love what they experience in the bubble of Christian fellowship during our meetings — discipleship, Bible study, prayer, singing — but they don’t see how any of that’s going to translate when they go out into “the real world.”
This leader said,
“We want to help them with that transition, for sure, but I’m trying to help our students see that what they experience in Christian community is the real world — that’s reality — not everything else out there.”
And I want you to see that, too. Cities Church, what happens here on Sunday mornings (and every time we gather as a church family) — the greeting, the serving, the singing, the praying, the preaching — reminds us of what’s really real. Week after week, everything we can see out there feels so real and pressing and important and satisfying. But we know that what’s really real can’t be seen.
2 Corinthians 4:
“We do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
Of course our job is real, our home is real, our elections are real, our news is (sometimes) real, our sickness is real, our relational conflict, it’s real. It’s all real, but it’s transient. It’s passing away. It’s not real like Jesus — like his word, like his throne, like this fellowship, like your soul. These things are eternal.
My exhortation for us, Cities Church, is that we not look to and live for things that are seen and passing, but that we remind one another to live for the precious things that last forever.
Let’s pray.
