Every Friday at 8:30, I step on to the familiar smooth, black surface that makes up my Church’s parking lot, and I feel the building welcome me. I am home.

The building, two floors in size, is a beigish yellow color, with smoothly-textured walls and forest green awnings that reflect the light of our artificial night lights back to the dark and square brick design on the floor. It has two sets of stairs – one on either side – that are too small for most people’s feet and are a slippery slope of death when it rains. Palm trees and a vast variation of green shrubbery and flora surrounds most of our building, from the large green field used for parking to the left of the building with stray trees, to the trees that block the sun on the big wooden seating area which we call the deck, to the smaller plants that are planted right behind a bench-like surface facing the building directly which most of us use to sit when we are waiting for a service to start. There are seven doors for the first floor – six of them are made of silky, brown-tinted glass, like the building’s windows, which are good to check your outfit or something right before you go into the meeting. Two of them lead to the main seating area, one leads to the bathroom and the last one leads to the book store.  The other, painted a basic white shade, is the side door, located on the left of the building, which leads to this big patio area used mostly for hanging out after services, except on Sundays, when they set up a big coffee table where some women of the church run around hectically for a good half an hour taking our orders and making us refreshments while warning us to leave some snacks for the rest of the members, keeping their children in check and smiling at us, all at the same time.

On Sunday nights, I come here to be edified along with the rest of the body of Christ that decides to meet at this building at 7:00 sharp. We worship together, tithe together, and then proceed to sit down and listen to our short, white-haired pastor as he preaches to us and we try not to stare at the surface of his comically shiny bald head. That urge is usually forgotten after about three sentences. As he begins to utter God’s message and guide us through the word, dressed in his Sunday night ‘casual’ slacks and button up shirt, you can’t help but listen to him. He makes jokes and says statements that are hard to follow sometimes, but his heart shines through the entire time. You listen to him and think to yourself, “Now this is a man who is constantly captivated by everything God is,” and that is way more than I could ever ask for. Most of us take notes. Some of us fidget. A lot of laugh at his jokes and then make jokes at each other. On Sunday nights, it is one of the best places in the world.

Fridays, however, as I climb the too-small steps to the second floor of this building, I enter the building in order to meet my family.

The RIOT – Revival in Our Times – is probably where I feel the most comfortable. This place (the second door to your right, once you reach the top of the stairs) is nothing but a large room surrounded by doors that lead to other rooms. The first two doors, which you come across in the small hallway as soon as you come in, are the girl’s and boy’s bathrooms, separated by this one water fountain which is way too small for any teenager. The other four doors lead to the pastors’ offices, a room that, to the extent of my knowledge, serves no purpose but to house this big desk and a lot of rolling chairs, and the last door leads to the hallway with the children’s classrooms, the supply closet, the singing room and the kitchen. The rest of our large, also beige room is filled up with a series of wooden cabinets lining our left wall from top to bottom, two white tables which we usually use to put our purses on, the acoustic set-up of our worship band (three or four guitar cases, bongo drums, a clarinet case, a keyboard and four music stands with a couple of crisply organized pages that house all of the chords and lyrics), a stool and a podium where the person in front of tech puts his laptop, a trolley with a bunch of light-brown foldable chairs, a projector, and about thirty bodies that belong to eager teenagers and leaders, ages 13 through 27.

By the time I walk in the room, the boys have already set up the chairs in this formation that kind of looks like a square that’s missing a side. The lights are dim, as some of the small groups are still praying (I miss out on those, because I’m always at work), and there is some kind of music filling up the room along with idle chatter, while an image that says RIOT and assigns us all to a small group rests on the big white projector screen. The temperature and atmosphere in the room is a warm one. There are smiles on the faces of my brothers and sisters and I go over to greet them, each of them making some kind of remark about something someone just said, or the song that’s playing, or the fact that they like someone’s shoes, or how tiring and fast this past week, like all weeks, seems to have been. Slowly but surely, the room begins to fill up, and more and more hi’s are exchanged as we all settle down in whatever seat we are going to take. Before we know it, announcements have started, and the usual eight or twelve kids that sit in the middle of the room, facing the front, take their spot. We all yell, everyone is happy, and then Muppet takes the stage.

Muppet is, simply put, one of the best people I know.

This man, short and Starbucks-loving and always messing with his thick, coarse and black beard, has one of the biggest hearts for the Lord I have ever known. His smile is sheepish, and he tends to mispronounce a lot of words and screw up a lot of sentence structures, but when he opens his mouth and begins to talk about his creator, everyone has to pay attention because it is just so epically genuine. He doesn’t pretend with us. He doesn’t use generic sentences, or watered-down statements about God and God’s word and God’s character. Rather, this man approaches us as equals and as individuals, and the way he speaks, it sounds like he just wants to talk. In his own words, he just wants to get real with us. So as he sits there, twisting his scruffy face-mane, we each begin to feel edified and educated. We feel both convicted and joyous at the same time, as we learn about the things that God wants for us, and as we take in, Friday after Friday, the kind of love Jesus has for us. Most of the time, Muppet ends up breaking up into tears or something, and at that point, you know that the meeting is almost over and it’s time for the worship.

Ah, the worship.

It’s usually about eight kids, and the music is always acoustic, which I think really adds to the authenticity of the ordeal. It isn’t about how well the singers sing, or about how good anyone is on their instrument. It isn’t about the song lyrics, or whether or not you have to look at the screen because you don’t know the lyrics. This half an hour is the time where each of us gets to approach God together, and then individually experience whatever lesson He Himself has for us. The guitars are strummed and the singers sing. The drums are softly struck, and piano keys are stroked, and sometimes the clarinet squeaks as it makes a slow, chromatic run up whatever scale the song is in. At times, the singers are off-key, or the rest of us outside of the worship band insist on singing even though the song is clearly over. A lot of us like to sing early, before the song verse has actually started. We tend to occasionally yell the lyrics. We go over the time we are supposed to. The songs are sometimes quick and excited, and sometimes they are slow and deliberate, but they are always heartfelt. We pray in between. And though this place is nothing but a large room, and it is filled with thirty people that are equally lost and confused and broken and imperfect, what makes the Riot special, and what makes that building my second home, is the fact that Monday through Sunday, that building is dedicated to the glory of God.

And so every person that walks within those doors is family, and every day that I get to spend with one of them is my favorite, and there is nothing that can compare to knowing that every single one of the people who I meet with on Fridays, Wednesdays and Sundays are on this never-ending endeavor to love God with everything they have.

Without Him, we are nothing, and that is what makes us free.

That is what makes Church home.

We Are not From This World.

Romans 12:2

  Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

John 18:36

  Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

John 15:19

  If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

Just a reminder for you. Live as if you weren’t from this world, with a mission that’s out of this world, from a king that’s out of this world, with an agenda that’s out of this world.

Why?

Because you, your purpose, and your boss is out of this world.

You know how the Bible says: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” in Proverbs 4:23? Well needless to say but unfortunately necessary to remind, guarding your heart does not mean guarding your body, or guarding your words, or perhaps even guarding your thoughts. Yes, these are ALL included in this verse but don’t forget that your heart includes your emotions and your deepest fears and secrets. These parts of your life are private. They are only meant for God and that special person He has planned to share life with you. I know, easier said than done but with God we all know all things are possible and the rewards at the end are beautiful and so worth it.

And you know how it also says: “[A wife] brings [her husband] good, not harm, all the days of he life” Proverbs 31:12? Well if you girls haven’t noticed, it says all the days of her life. Not when marriage comes, not when husband and wife meet each other, not for a few years, but ALL the days of her life. Honor him, Honor the Lord, and you will reap what you sow starting… now.

- Debbie