Post-festival blues: keeping the adventure aliveHannah Heather - 24 Aug 2016

"yesterday’s encounter with God will not sustain us for today -it was never meant to..." 

The wellies are stowed in the car; caked in mud, the tent is finally packed up after a huge wrestle to fit it back into its little bag, and the thought of a hot shower and non-camping food takes over the journey home. 

I love the feeling of returning home from a Christian festival, and swapping my damp clothes and sleeping bag for the comforts and warmth of home. But after enjoying the contents of a full fridge and the first night’s sleep in a real bed - what happens when we wake up and life is ‘back to normal?’ 

What if normal isn’t really what we want? 

At festivals we taste something of the wildness of God - the adventure of faith, and the depth of encounter we can have in His presence - and we really don’t want things to go back to the way they were before.

Festivals are significant features of religious life - time that is marked out intentionally for pursuing, worshipping and learning more about God.  They are also profound times of community: coming together around bonfires, BBQs and under starry skies.

For centuries, feasts and festivals have been a core part of Judeo-Christian identity. In the Bible, Hannah had a profound, life-changing encounter during a festival as she spent time in prayer, and was promised the miracle of a son called Samuel. 

Perhaps you, like Hannah, experienced a dramatic encounter with God this summer.  But how does it change the way that you live when everything is back to ‘normal’? 

Although significant, we must remember that encounter with God does not only happen at festivals.

There’s this great moment in the New Testament while Jesus is at an event called ‘The festival of Tabernacles.’  In front of all the crowds, Jesus stood and made this radical announcement:

“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink”

John 7:37

The main feature of the Festival of Tabernacles was a water-pouring ceremony, where large urns of water were poured onto the altar in an act of worship.  As the whole city gathered to worship in this ancient water ritual, Jesus’ announcement fell like a bombshell.

What Jesus was doing in this moment was changing our paradigms of worship and experience of God, forever.

Jesus was making a promise to all who believe in him that they would have access - free and abundant access – to the person and the power of the Holy Spirit.  In other words, the time of water-pouring ceremonies was coming to an end.  A new era of streams of living water was beginning.

Yet today, even though we’ve moved on from those water-pouring ceremonies and festivals, our relationships with God can sometimes be a bit more like bottled water than abundant streams.

We go to church or to summer conferences, and we fill up our little bottle of encounter with God. Then we survive on that bottled supply until the next conference, rather than accessing the streams that could be ours every day. 

But, yesterday’s encounter with God will not sustain us for today - it was never meant to.

Jesus’ plan is that we would daily drink of the streams of living water - to carve out time to be with him and to pursue him, every day. It’s only with this constant refreshment that we can really run this race and live in the adventure of the kingdom. 

Festivals are profound times of intimacy with God and we can look back on them to sustain and strengthen us. But there is an opportunity right now, when we’re ‘back to normal’ and home from the campsite, to have a fresh encounter with Jesus and hear what he has to say to us today. 

We are called to the radical, risky, all-consuming adventure of following Jesus.  If we’re going to go on an adventure, we need to make sure we have adequate water supplies. So don’t settle for bottled water – there is so much more available!

This blog is part of our summer series, A Call to the Wild, exploring real adventures. You can keep up to date with the whole lot on the blog or by following us on instagram. 

#Edgy #Culture #CallToTheWild