We had our first week of ministry this week with an organization called Covi. I’m not so great at updating the details of it, so if you’d like a more complete version of what we’re doing, feel free to click on my teammates blogs (just click their names on the left side of this page).
Every night when we get home from ministry, our team of seven does something the Race calls ‘Feedback’. It’s where we get any offenses out in the open, things get reconciled, and we’re encouraged to give positive and constructive feedback for things we observe in our teammates. Our goal is to look more like Jesus, so throughout the day, we try and be intentional about observing one another. (Not as creeperish as it sounds…really it just gets us out of ourselves to take notice of each other).
THIS can be hard. Our response to constructive feedback is: “thank-you.” Our response to positive feedback is: “thank-you.” Both can be difficult. Because both could be things that you’ve never noticed or struggle seeing in yourself.
Yesterday morning, I was reading in Ezekiel. He was prophesying to the false prophets of the area, and declares to them in Chapter 13 verse 5:
“You have not gone up into the gaps or breeches, nor built up the wall for the house of Israel that it might stand in the battle…”
He goes on to say in verse 10: “they have seduced My people, saying, Peace, when there is no peace, and because when one builds a flimsy wall, behold, these prophets daub it over with whitewash…Say to them who daub it that it will fall!”
Sometimes it takes a new set of eyes to see the gaps in our walls. Life will take its toll and leave wounds that we can glaze over and make them look like they’re healed. Sometimes we even forget that they’re there.
But the things of the world we’ve chosen to fill them with will not last. Our Father longs to restore us completely. It may take re-exposing those places so that something new can be built.
It not only takes guts and boldness to allow those gaps to be exposed, but it takes courage to call them out in someone else. But you love them. And you don’t want to see them fall. You want to see them stand.
You catch a glimpse of what the Father has for them, and it’s beautiful and it’s strong. So you choose to move past telling someone that that’s just how they are, to a place of loving them enough to say, “that might be what you’re used to, but there’s MORE for you…the Father has MORE for you.”
And then you just get to hug them and love them through it.
And when He’s done repairing and restoring us, just as in feedback, our response can only be:
“Thank-you.” 
