It's Ok To Not Be Ok..

On my morning commute to work I was listening to Matt Chandler and he was talking about Blessings and Woes (blessings and curses basically). He went through and detailed out why it would say in Luke "blessed are the poor" and later "woe is the rich"... he pointed out that it has nothing to do with the fact that you are a starving college student, or arrived to church in a multi million dollar car.. He went to Matthew where it explains it's "blessed are the poor in spirit"...

Anyway, he went on to explain how important it is for us to realize that either we are totally incapable of doing life on our own, or in some cases we realize we DON'T feel like we need God.. and in the process it hits us that we SHOULD realize how much we need Jesus...

He points out that one of his favorite sayings about his church is "it's ok to not be ok... but it's not ok to stay there." He continues by explaining that he grew up in churches where everyone was perfect, no problems etc..etc.. and in a previous podcast he talked about how when people pretend to be ok, but aren't.. when they fake the smile for long enough suddenly something explodes and they're having an affair, getting divorced, killing someone.. and it all seems out of the blue.

At church, in community, it's ok to not be ok... to not have it all together. But, it's not ok to stay there, it's important to grow.. even if you are struggling and don't see the growth, it's important to be putting forth the effort to allow God to move you and your heart. He also pointed out that so often we focus on someone's conversion "THEY ARE SAVED!!... the end" when really their story begins with "And they got SAVED... and then..." We forget that saved doesn't mean absolved of every temptation and issue, that sometimes it takes 1, 2, 10, 20 years to get past an issue... That the progress can be so painstakingly slow that we don't even realize we've accomplished a huge task or over come something, until after we've passed it then it's like it suddenly clicks and we realize God moved us!..

So, it's ok to not be ok... but it's not ok to stay there. Or, it's ok to be broken and hurting, it's not ok to wallow in it.