My wife and I have decided to attempt to cook. We have done this in efforts to save money with a baby on the way. We have been terrible at wasting money in one area, food. I am a huge fan of sit down meals so we can talk and catch up with each other. I don’t like the “eat and run” of fast food, however, I despise going to the grocery store. I really don’t know why but there isn’t an instance that her and I go to the store that I don’t say, “Let’s make this a quick trip.” I am a guy that prefers the basket over the cart. I am a guy that prefers getting tonight’s meal instead of getting all month’s groceries. I am the reason that gas stations carry groceries, it’s more convenient. My wife is different. She doesn’t like going to the grocery store either, but when she does like to get everything that she may ever need. She gets cream cheese, I have never knowingly ate cream cheese. She gets cloves, seasoning, who knows, and whatever else. About an hour into the maze of the grocery store, I become a restless 4 year old. I start squirming, kicking my feet, and complaining. I wish I was joking right now but I’m not. I truly love gas station groceries. Our last trip, I tried to stay open to my wife’s “far-fetched” philosophy of getting everything that we may need that week because it may save time, money, and other things that I don’t even think about.

Then I began to think about this, how does this apply to my relationship with God? I look at a lot of things differently with this specific question. This is what most people, including myself, do when it comes to church. It is no surprise that my generation hates going to church. It is not that they hate God or religion but just “church”. In Essential Church by Thom Rainer & Sam Rainer, it discusses this exact phenomenon. People in our generation view “church” as our parents’ social network and honestly we don’t need them. We have our networks, with myspace, facebook, text messages, and so forth. We can contact seemingly hundreds of people a day and have hundreds of conversations and never leave our couch. If we do, then our network only grows exponentially. So our view of “church” is very different than our parents. I believe it is vital to our spiritual growth but we need to redefine our definition of church.

Back to the grocery store. Many of us (Christians you are in this too) approach church like I do when it comes to the grocery store. Get in, get what you need, and get to the house. Simple, right? But here is the thing and where I hope we all get to. I hope we begin to approach “church” in an entirety that we need to go and shop like my wife does. There may be things at the store that you don’t remember that you need and seeing it, it reminds you. Oh, I am almost out of milk, so you grab another gallon. It’s the same way at church. You are going to God’s House and you may not know what you need exactly but He does. So I encourage you to find a church that you enjoy going to, that you enjoy getting out of bed on Sunday Morning so you can shop every Sunday and let God work in your life ways that you didn’t know.

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