This past Thursday and Friday I went to the Global Leadership Summit put on by the Willow Creek Association. I went to this about 3 or 4 years ago and I’m not sure if I changed or the Summit has changed, but I loved it!! The messages and the speakers were excellent and I stayed up late both nights debriefing the messages and working to apply them in my life.

Now, I can’t possibly sum up all the messages in one sentence but there is one quote from Craig Groeschel–the founder and senior pastor of LifeChurch.tv–that seemed to summarize the main message I heard over the two days. He said that we need to be thankful when God gives us the “gift of disorientation”.

What?! Nobody likes to be disoriented! But, the message is that God sometimes has to disorient us to shake our thinking away from the comfort of what we know and routinely do and back towards Him and His ways.

There is a lot of sense there when you think about it. We tend to form routines for ourselves to help us deal with the busyness and noise in our lives. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with routines and over time a lot of positives can come from healthy routines.

But, sometimes when we hit a mental or spiritual “growth spurt” it is after something or someone has really done something to us to disorient our routines. I know when I went to a Walk to Emmaus weekend about 10 years ago, I was questioning some of the practices that are implemented that clearly took me out of my routines. But, as the weekend progressed, I found my disorientation turning me to Christ in a way that deeply grew my faith.

I know we usually try to avoid being disoriented–and I don’t think we are ever meant to stay disoriented long-term–but sometimes maybe we need to put ourselves in positions that are disorienting. Then, let God do the work He needs to do in us.

More to come…
Jeremy