Finding Belonging in the Unseen

August 2024 Devotional
Navigating the Post-Conference Blues

It’s the beginning of August. The next school year is around the corner. For those who attended Revoice24, the excitement and energy of the conference have worn off.  We’re back to normal. Sometimes, normal is hard, especially for sexual and gender minorities navigating their place in the Church. The place we’re supposed to come home to, to be known in, doesn’t know how and sometimes doesn’t care how to treat us with the dignity we deserve.

Where do we go to be seen? To be understood? To be known? To be loved? What if we don’t need to go anywhere? “Where can I go from your Spirit?” David says in Psalm 139, “Where can I flee from your presence?”  God is with you always, a constant source of security and comfort. Psalm 46:1 says, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.”  As the world goes back to normal, as the feeling of belonging seems distant, I encourage you to reach for the living God, our rock of refuge. Reach for Him through the Psalms, through the Gospels, through music, and art, and nature, and everywhere you can find Him. He’s always waiting and never far away.

And for those who feel like they’ve been left out in the cold, for those who’ve been told that they don’t belong, I want to remind you of this. Christ and Christ alone determines who belongs in His Body. If you are running towards Him, you have a place in Him. Anyone who tries to cut you off from the body of Christ for some perceived imperfection is really cutting themselves off from the complete Body of Christ. How could the body be complete without you?

Many people focus on the very end of Romans 8, but I love 8:31-34 too. “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who, then, is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.”

The God who has made us more than conquerors has justified you. He loves you. I encourage you to make it part of your normal, your day to day routine, to remember that.

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