Here’s the good news of an incarnated God. He is with you in the midst of all of it. In school runs, board meetings, meet the teacher nights, football schedules, takeout drive throughs, morning coffee runs, stressful budget meetings, mounting laundry, stacking homework, complex schedules … all of it. There isn’t an element of your life that is somehow too earthy, too human, too flesh and bone for the God who showed the world who He is by manifesting in the midst of very real lives.

These are my prayers for us as a church in the years ahead, however many of them the Lord allows. I pray that you would be filled with the knowledge of His will. I pray that you would walk in grace in a manner worthy of the Lord, pleasing Him and bearing fruit in good works! I pray that you would be strengthened with all power from God, and that His power would sustain you for endurance and patience and supernatural joy which overflows in hearts full of thanksgiving. I pray that you would remember, and believe, and be certain that He has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints, and I pray that this would liberate and motivate you to live for Him!

You know what’s more difficult and more significant than ruling over a city? Ruling over your own spirit and the emotions that it would love for you leave unchecked. Being slow to anger when you feel outraged, and being patient when you feel anxiously rushed, and being loving when you feel a desire for vengeance, these things are all more complex and more meaningful and more powerful than the complexities of leading a city that needs to expand a loop that actually doesn’t loop.

We now live, by God’s good design and mercy, in the midst of a booming city. All endeavors to “Keep Austin Weird” seem long forgotten as globe leading corporations make their home here, and it isn’t good news for everyone. The city is becoming more expensive (we have one of the worst annual cost of living increases in the nation), housing is scarce (especially in the affordable housing sector), and many feel like the tone and the tenor of the place is changing in a way that they don’t like. People used to be quick to tell me how much they loved Austin and how proud they were to live here. Now it feels like many people I talk to are disillusioned by the city and its transformation and wondering aloud what sort of role they can and should play in it.