by Kyle Cox, Future Leader for The Rock @ MBC Loudoun

Know that feeling when you’re driving and arrive at your destination, then all of sudden you think to yourself…hold the phone, I don’t remember any part of that drive. Did you know there’s actually a technical term for this? “Highway hypnosis” is a mental state in which the person can drive an automobile great distances, responding to external events in the expected manner with no recollection of having consciously done so. I think it especially happens when you take a route that you constantly drive over and over. (Such as your morning commute to work.)
I think a lot of times Christians suffer from this condition when they are studying God’s word, at least I struggle with this sometimes. We crack open our Bible, start reading a passage we’ve heard or read tons of times already and our minds just take over; we shut off and don’t respond to the depth of Scripture. We ask the Lord, “What is there left for me in this passage?” Truth is, Scripture is so deep that every time you come back to a verse it can reveal a new truth to you.
An example of this recently happened to me. During a junior high student bible study I told them we were going to study Luke 2. They responded, “Isn’t that the Christmas passage?” Oddly enough I said the same thing when I first sat and studied it. We all know the story of Christ’s birth; in fact we will probably read Luke’s account when we sit around with family on a certain December morning. However, God revealed some things in that passage that I never focused on before. At the end of the story, after experiencing the miraculous birth of Christ to a virgin mother, verses 18-19 say “All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished, but Mary quietly treasured these things in her heart and thought about them often.”
It’s an easy verse to breeze right over, but there’s a beautiful lesson to be learned. We see Mary treasuring the culmination of God fulfilling His promise to her and using her life for His ultimate goal of saving humanity from sin through Christ. Made me think, how often do we take a timeout to relish the transformative work Christ has done in our lives? Do we treasure it? If we do, how often do we think about it?
Keeping our thoughts centered on what Christ has done for us can only lead to loving God more, loving his people more, and loving to serve Him more. More than anything it’ll bring more joy in your day to day life.
“Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.” Luke 12:34

by High School ROCK student, Nathan Man

Ok, so you say, how does church have anything to do with the dentist? Let me explain as best as I can and hopefully by the end of this article, my prayer is that everyone that reads my articles is challenged to do something after reading them. That’s my goal in writing these. So anyways, back to church and the dentist. Going to the dentist reminds me of going to church so much because, what do we do before going to the dentist? We brush our teeth! Haha! It’s pretty silly. We think that by doing that, we’ll somehow deceive them into thinking our teeth are cleaner than they really are. Well, isn’t it just like what we do far too often before we go into church? We like to kind of put on that mask for church, we walk in thinking that we can deceive everyone into thinking that our lives are better than they really are. And we’re right to a point. We can deceive everyone there and get away with it, absolutely. There’s just one slight problem… God’s not fooled, Just like the dentist when they swab your teeth with the pink stuff and all the spots you missed when you brush show up, God sees right through your mask. God sees the pain, the lies, the anger, the sorrow, the stress and just all the things in your life. “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked.” – Galatians 6:7.

The challenge I want us to take from this is, just be genuine, just be open and honest. Something I find really convicting for me is that in church I seem to have default answers to everything, like when people ask me “How are you doing?” , the immediate response is “good.” I could be having the worst week in my life, but I’m just too scared to really tell that person. It’s like at the dentist, “have you been flossing twice a day?” What’s our response? “Oh yea of course”…yea right. But you see, if all we do is go into church and come back out, with that mask all the time, then the church as a body, as a community, fails. You see, the church is literally meant to be a body, made up and supported by its members, the church is meant to be the physical representation of Christ on earth until His return. That means we need to take care of each other and support each other. We as a body NEED each other.

“The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.” – 1 Corinthians 12:12

“So that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” – 1 Corinthians 12:25-27.

God wants us, as a church, as Christians, as the body of Christ, to genuinely care for each other. He wants us to throw aside the masks and the fake personalities we bring into church and truly be honest with each other, because it brings glory to Him. The ultimate goal of the church is to glorify God. When people look and see the Christian community, they should see a group of people, unified by Christ, taking care of each other, looking out for each other, in prayer for each other and loving each other, not a bunch of people who act like their lives are perfect all the time and just play church. I dare us, to live church, and not play church.