Praying for God’s Good New Days

Last Sunday, we wrapped up our “Rise Up & Build” series with a bold message from the prophet Haggai. If you missed it, make sure to check it out! We heard about what can happen when the eyes of our hearts are focused on the wrong thing:

at best, we will miss what God is doing;
at worst, we’ll self-sabotage and find ourselves working against God.

We want to avoid that!  After all, God IS still with us, behind us, and empowering us – and he has promised to do even better things through us.

So we heard the challenging call to shift the eyes of our heart from the good old days, and instead, onto God’s good new days.  

But there was something critical that I forgot to directly say on Sunday, and here it is:

I wish someone preached this sermon to me when I had my eyes in the wrong place.

Honestly, I do. I hinted at this when I talked about how my poor focus sabotaged the youth work I could have been a part of in the past, but I want to make it clear again.

I wish someone would have preached this sermon to me years ago.

And that’s true, not just in regard to church ‘stuff’, but it’s true in regard to all of life – be it relationships, new jobs, transitions in life, and so on. Multiple times throughout my life, I’ve missed what God was doing – or trying to do – because I was stuck in “what was”…my heart was on the good old days.  “It’s not like it used to be” has been too much a part of my vocabulary at times, hurting myself, and my part in God’s Kingdom.  

The good old days ARE good, and the memories should be cherished, and the past is often stunningly beautiful, and we absolutely must learn from the it. But so long as we have the eyes of our heart – our hopes – focused on the good old days, we’ll miss what God is doing now, and what God promises to do in the future.

I think Jesus is getting at this when he lamented and wept as he entered Jerusalem: the people of God missed God’s own arrival because their eyes were in the wrong place (Luke 19)!

So I want to invite you to continue to pray along these lines. Pray for our future vision: that God would make it clear to us. Pray for a bit of brokenness around you: a friend, neighbor, or situation you know of.

And focusing on this week: pray for the eyes of your own heart to be turned towards and focused on what God will do next in us and through us at Central.

Because like I said, I believe that God is with us and has big things in store for us. I’m excited for it, and I hope you are too. But it all starts with prayer, so today, tomorrow, the next day, and so on: pray.

Thank you,
Matt