A journey has begun.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” ~Confucius

And so a journey began on Sunday. It began with a single step. Where this journey will take us is anyone’s guess. Like Abraham of old who packed up his entire household and headed off across the Fertile Crescent not knowing where he would end up, only that God had told him to go. So, now a small membership church and I are heading off on a journey … a journey ordained by God for it was God who brought us together.

The largest part of any such journey is trust. The membership has to trust me and I have to trust them … and both of us have to trust God. Along the way we will experience some challenges, which will require each of us to make some changes. Change is good as long as it isn’t just change for change sake.

Along this journey we will discover that we are carrying some things that simply needs to be discarded. Oh, they were important at one point in our history, but are simply weighing us down now. Making the difficult decision to let them go will be hard and often emotional, but the real question is, Are they important to God? Holding on to traditions has meaning at times, but letting them go is freeing. Again, the challenge here is trust.

Along this journey we will discover that we need to add to our load some new ideas and new concepts. This often challenges our comfort zones, makes us stretch where we might not particularly like to be stretched and confronted where we least like to be confronted. Growth is difficult and sometimes is painful, but growth is always better then the alternative.

Along this journey we will make some interesting discovers. There will be many surprises and we will exclaim, “Wow, we didn’t know we could do that!” We will discover a spiritual depth that we didn’t know we were capable of reaching, as well as view the vistas of the grand landscape of the spiritual world that we only dreamed of.

Spiritual journeys are dynamic and fantastic, but we have to leave the comfort zone of the familiar, the traditional, the predictable and venture forth into the unknown trusting God to lead us.