The culture of G Squad is one that is very different from any church or parachurch culture that I've ever been involved in. It is a culture that centers around the Holy Spirit and places a special emphasis on the attainment of and expression of its gifts, mainly tongues and prophecy. I'm not discrediting the importance of or existence of any of these things because I've seen all of them happen over the course of the last several months with men and women who are firmly grounded in the truth of Scripture. My concern is that sometimes we (not just we G Squad but, more importantly, we the church) place too much importance on them. Over the course of history denominations have come into existence and faded into the background based solely on the premise that these gifts do or do not exist. Essentially we have placed the gift itself, whether we believe it exists or not, above the gift giver, sometimes even causing us, albeit usually unintentionally, to completely forget that there are 2 other persons of the Trinity at work in the world and in our lives. While I must confess that there have been various points over the course of the race where I've found myself wanting to experience these gifts and other actions of the Holy Spirit, I'm slowly coming to a point where this is not a priority anymore. In fact, I've come to a point where I'm questioning many of the things, and not just things from the church, that I want in and for my life. I'm beginning to see that God is bringing me to a place where all I want is Jesus. I want him to overflow and pour out of every single part of my life, both hidden and visible. My spirit. My soul. My body. My sleep. My work. My worship. My studies. I want him to fill every single little nook, cranny and crack in my life. He is, after all, the whole reason that we, and our faith, exist in the first place. Scripture tells us that he is the image of God (2 Corinthians 4:4, Colossians 1:15) and that he carries all of the attributes of God (Colossians 1:19 & 2:9), including his Spirit and, with that, its gifts. You see, as we walk through every victory that we achieve in our lives through his strength (and sometimes even the defeats, which we only could have made it through by his grace) we gain keys that can potentially unlock doors for others. Not only do we step into the greatness of who we were intended to be but we propel others into the greatness that they were intended to achieve as well. That's the true heart, purpose and meaning of Christianity. I know it sounds incredibly simple but it was never intended to be complicated in the first place. It's just Jesus. It's giving all that we are to him and letting him carry us through life like the little children that we are. Somewhere along the way we forgot that.
