Living The Dream

I stopped by the 58 commons today and spent a couple of hours there.  58 Commons is the place where RiverChurch is currently meeting.  This location has been an absolute Godsend to us.  Its actually rented by another congregation that has been there for the last year.   They meet on Sunday’s at noon.  They’ve been so gracious to allow us to come in and set up and use whatever they have in this particular suite in this rather sparsely populated office complex.

A couple months when we started meeting there, we set the room up with about 32 chairs, to accommodate our group of people that gather together each Saturday night.  We’ve yet to fill the seats up that we have set out, but tonight I had a very sobering experience.

As I sat in one of the 32 chairs we have set out, I felt as if God wanted to have a conversation with me.  I can’t really say it was audible, but I am pretty sure He was trying to talk to me.  I had been studying for this weekends sermon, praying for the service for the worship, actually walking through the room praying for the people who would sit  on of the 32 chairs we had sitting out.  When suddenly this question came through my mind, “What if God wanted to bring more people?”

I have to be honest, it was almost like a field of dreams moment, that question had the same haunting sound as “If you build it, they will come.”  I was almost driven to tears.  You see I’ve been praying that God will grow RiverChurch, but in that moment I was hugely convicted by the thought that maybe I had not really be expecting him to answer my prayer.  I began to feel like that those 32 chairs symbolized a lack of faith for me.  You see there were another 28 chairs sitting in the closet.

I say “there were” because conviction overwhelmed me and one by one I went to the closet and pulled out the other 28 chairs and prayed for the people that would sit in them too.  Tonight we have 60 chairs setup and ready for whoever God wants to bring to RiverChurch.  Yeah, its a little crowded, but we’re ready.

Is it possible that by only putting half of the chairs out in the room I wasn’t really trusting God to do “exceedingly abundantly above all I can think or ask?”  It is.  Is it possible that those seats will miraculously be filled this week, or the next or the next.  Sure it is.  Only time will tell.  I certainly don’t want my lack of faith or expectancy to be the thing that keeps it from happening?

So can I ask you, what prayers have you prayed that you really haven’t expected God to answer?  Are you hoping for the 60 but really only expecting 32?

⁶But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; ⁸he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does. – James 1:6-8