Experiencing the Fullness of God

My 10-year-old niece is a lot like my wife. My niece plays games like “organize the closet” and “make a grocery list.” She loves when everything is in place and organized.

One day she overheard us talking about our weekly menu. On our refrigerator we list out every meal for every day that week. Each meal type has its own color: green for breakfast, red for lunch, blue for dinner. Sometimes we even write what snack we can have that day. When our niece heard this her eyes widened, and she looked over at her mom and said, “Oh, please, can we get one of those? Then I will finally know what we are eating after school!”

Personally, I am not a very organized person. Even so, I have a tendency to compartmentalize my life. In the past, I’ve separated my life into several compartments: my work life with my work persona, my home life, my friend life, and my God life. In certain situations I tried to integrate segments of my God life into my other compartments. I was subconsciously exhibiting a “me + Jesus” mentality. This compartmentalized mentality ended up getting me in trouble. I had to actively add Jesus into my various segments of life, which meant I could purposefully leave Jesus out as well. In my own blindness I did not realize that I was using my efforts to create my version of Jesus living.

I recently made dinner for my family. It was a Hawaiian pork bowl consisting of marinated and grilled pork tenderloin, avocado, grilled onions, grilled pineapple, jalapenos, bacon, and rice. As my family ate this meal, we all commented on how great the flavors worked with each other. The problem was that it took so much effort to get a bit of food that had all of the flavor combinations. The pieces were too big, and cutting bits off each ingredient was time-consuming. The solution for me was to chop each ingredient before assembling them in the bowl. This way the maximum flavor combination could be experienced in each fork-full.

Will you join me this Sunday as I try to de-compartmentalize Jesus? Can we blend all the good attributes of His nature together and experience the fullness of God in the way that He intended it to be?

Sincerely,

Herb Zabel

Weekly Giving| 8/27/2017 $56,758
Weekly Need| $41,300