We Follow What We are Looking At
If you were raised in a Pentecostal environment like me, you've probably seen some totally weird spiritual stuff - some real, some unreal. Truth is we learn our faith by watching, observing, by looking at others do faith, do life, do church. I think that is why we are to be light in darkness and a living witness to the world of the grace and love of God; God anticipates others to be watching. God anticipates children to watch parents, then their children watch them, and so on and the faith is to be transmitted first through observation, then a personal experience. We follow what we are looking at. Wherever our eyes go, so goes the rest of us - it is biology. I wonder what kind of "faith" my kids are seeing? To be honest, I know what I saw, didn't like a lot of it, and so I wonder all the time if I probably didn't let the real come along for the ride? I want my kids to see a faith with demonstration and power, but I also want them to be intelligent about their faith, and I want their faith fully integrated into the whole of their lives. I wonder if some of us emerging leaders who have seen some crazy stuff when we were kids have put too much of a halt on the power of God out of fear of entering what we wanted to come out of? I wonder what our kids faith will look like if they never see the Spirit genuinely move beyond our own controls?

