and...

Since Lea and I have moved to Signal Mountain, we have driven through Dayton, TN several times. Dayton is just up highway 27 about 45 minutes from here. It was our college town 30 years ago. Dayton is home of Bryan College. William Jennings Bryan College. As I wrote a month or so ago, Lea and I were both certain of the places that we would attend college and Bryan wasn't the place. God demonstratively moved in the lives of those two individuals and led us to Bryan a year apart. Lea arrived in 1989 and I followed in 1990. Bryan was and continues to be hallowed ground for us. It was the birthing place of our friendship, the most prominent, relational, shaping tool of my earthly life. Several weeks ago we sat on the sidelines of the Bryan soccer field where we watched many of our friends play for the Lions decades ago. We watched our son Trey and his Covenant soccer team play Bryan. As we watched Trey play, we spoke of the wonder of all that God was birthing in us in our college days at Bryan and all that we couldn't even dare to imagine would come as abundant fruit to our lives, like Trey himself.

Just yesterday I was driving around Chattanooga talking to my Bryan roommate Jimmy, of 30 years ago. Part of that "daring to imagine" that is hard to fathom at the time is that Jimmy and his wife Christine and Lea and me all live on Signal Mountain now. These long, stretching relationship paths are His handiwork emanating from days at Bryan in Dayton. Dayton has had some infrastructure change over the last thirty years. Back in the day, our Sonic, WalMart and Red Food were the talk of the town. Today when you drive through and see the Lowes, Home Depot and SteaknShake, you do a double take wondering if it's actually the same place.

Just across the street from the current SteaknShake was a quiet, humble little nook called Country Place. I remember this place fondly and powerfully. When I think of the Country Place restaurant, two things immediately enter my mind. Actually, they don't really enter my mind. The two things just linger there. Relationships and The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer. Dr. Bill Brown, our Bible prof at the time who later became president at Bryan, invited Jimmy and me and several others to have breakfast with him one morning a week at the Country Place. His invitation was to enjoy a country breakfast, invest in friendship and to talk about the words of Tozer in Pursuit of God. Dr. Brown was intentionally investing in my life. I am deeply grateful. As I write and remember thirty plus years later, I can still touch the page where I underlined, starred and stared at the following words for the first time by A.W. Tozer.

"If we would find God amid all the religious externals, we must first determine to find Him, and then proceed in the way of simplicity. Now, as always, God discovers Himself to "babes" and hides Himself in thick darkness from the wise and the prudent. We must simplify our approach to Him. We must strip down to essentials (and they will be found to be blessedly few). We must put away all effort to impress, and come with the guileless candor of childhood. If we do this, without doubt God will quickly respond. When religion has said its last word, there is little that we need other than God Himself. The evil habit of seeking "God-and" effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation. In the "and" lies our great woe. If we omit the "and" we shall soon find God, and in Him we shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing."

Water for a thirsty college boy then.

Water for a thirsty older man today.

The pursuit of "God and", whatever the "and" has been or will ever be, is tiring, unfulfilling and deadly. It has left me tired, unfulfilled and dead. In the midst of this tired, unfulfilled, dead life.....what might be? Bible book of Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 13. "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ."

No "and" necessary.

No "and" ever enough.

Through the blood, you are already bought and brought near to Jesus. Now we live out of that relational closeness that is already ours.

Those Country Place mornings are still echoing.

There's more.