Dirt roads and miracles

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I had a conversation recently about the seemingly mundane parts of life, and especially the life of a follower of Jesus. No matter how you live it, the majority of our lives is made up of the mundane and ordinary, and yet it’s in those very basic seasons that we often fall away because we “just don’t feel it like we used to.”

It reminded me of something that I’ve said many times over the years, and even shed some more nuanced light on the truth of the statement.

What I’ve often reminded myself and others is that the majority of the time that the disciples spent with Jesus was spent walking on dusty paths and dirt roads as they made their way from one miracle to the next.

But the nuance that came in the recent conversation was eye-opening. For those of us following Jesus today, too often we need the miracle to be so great and so awe-inspiring that it carries us through the mundane travel until we can get another boost of supernatural power at the next miracle.

Sounds a bit like the “I need Sunday to be over the top because I’m not going to make it through the week to the next service if the worship experience doesn’t energize me” church culture in which we find ourselves currently.

But what if it was intended to be the opposite? What if all the talks that took place on the walks from miracle to miracle were the foundation that prepared the disciples to steward the miracles? What if God actually uses the mundane to prepare us for the miracle?

Imagine the shift in the church today if we spent Monday through Saturday leaning into the words of Jesus, and spent Sundays (or whenever you gather as a corporate body to worship) simply celebrating all that we had seen and heard on the other six days?

This is how revival becomes more than just something we experience or attend. This is how revival becomes something we live and sustain. It’s fueled on dirt roads, and released in the miracles.

Let’s be that church. The church that lives every day – the really fun and the really mundane ones – with an awareness of and a response to the presence of Jesus.

Not only will that change our Sunday services; it’ll change our trips to Walmart, too.

Photo by Karsten Würth on Unsplash

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Written by Paul Jenkins
Paul Jenkins is lead pastor of The Gathering, a community church located in beautiful downtown Albemarle, North Carolina. He's the author of God is My Air Traffic Controller and My Name's Not Lou. Paul is passionate about his wife, his 3 children, running, reading, coaching, leading people who are following Jesus, Swedish Fish and the Carolina Panthers.