Up to this point, most of my blogs have been more devotional in nature.  Today, I am starting a series of post about a merger, and a new church start that Ottumwa’s three United Methodist Church exploring.  I am not going to post every day about the merger but I will from time to time blog about insights that I gained along the way.

We have been working on this process for about 9 months now.  I wished I would have started sooner but late is better than never.  Right?  The first question we had to answer is why?  Why are we even talking about the possibility of a merger?  The answer to this question for us was relatively simple.  Money.  All three churches are having financial issues.  Three churches coming together would drastically cut cost.  We are thinking somewhere to the tune of $150,000 a per year combined.

But is that a good reason to merge churches?  So that they can save money?  No there is a better reason to come together to start a new church, and that is people.  Money is not a good “why.”  People are the best “why.”

People are the reason that Jesus came to the earth.  He wanted to be in a relationship with us, but the only way that could happen is if the divide between humanity and God was fixed.  Could sin in the human heart be overcome?  Thankfully for you and me, it can, and Jesus did fix it.  It was not an easy fix.  I was not a cheap fix, and it was not an insignificant fix either.  It changed everything about how humanity and God interacts with each other.  The relationship went from creator/creation to one where God calls us friends.  It went from the uber-formal to the informal and intimate.  It went from humanity staying an arms link away to any one of us being able to crawl up in our Abba Father’s lap (our daddy’s lap) and just being with Him.

Today’s encouragement, get to know God as Jesus described Him. Get to know God as your Abba Father; your daddy God.  If your relationship with your earthly makes that difficult, I understand.  I would encourage you to go ahead and “try out” God as your heavenly daddy.  God will show you and treat you let a real daddy should have treated you.