Things have been crazy the past few weeks at my work and the past couple months for my wife at her work. (She’s a teacher, so the beginning of the school year is always hectic.) And we bought a house this summer, and before that we were looking for a house, and before that I was blogging consistently. But that was all the way back in February and March. After churning out over 100 posts in a year, I’ve been trying to re-motivate myself to jump back into the blogosphere with more regularity. Maybe this Theological Thursday will help “kick things off”, but probs not, but maybs yes. Anyway…

We’ve been having a tremendous season of transparency and growth recently in our church small group. I’m confident the later is a direct result of the former, and while I don’t always model this perfectly as the group leader, I appreciate the other men who have stepped up to the challenge.

Many of our guys are taking advantage of our break-out sessions, when the men and women split up at the end of our meetings, as a time for confession, prayer, and forgiveness. We had some great dialogue this past weekend about repentance… what it means and what it looks like. We often hear that repentance is changing our actions after admitting we are going the wrong way. We are called to confess and repent, to turn away and even run from the sin or temptations leading to sin. But where are we turning to? Where are we running to? Are we running to distractions? Are we running to other temptations? Or are we running to Christ?

We concluded Sunday night that it is much less important what you are running from than what you are running to. In a concerted effort to strive for purity and holiness, many of us in the group are working to memorize scripture (one or two bible verses each week). This is not an attempt to somehow earn our salvation or right-standing with God but a grace-driven effort and understanding that keeping God’s Word in our heart and mind through the week, is a proactive way to combat the sin and selfishness that we often fall in to. There is no magic bullet to quit pride, selfishness, fear, or anxiousness cold turkey, but we’ve been give tools for the long process of sanctification and a promise that He will be faithful to complete what He began.

So if we are not running directly to God, we are running to something else. What are you running to?

P.S. We are using the Navigators’ Topical Memory System. Check it out here.