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christian counseling today
VOL. 22 NO. 1
63
you about God and His Kingdom?” I
asked.
“Just how grace filled it has been.
I had felt like I was on the outskirts of
the organized church I’m a part of, but
I prayed and God provided some pretty
significant ministry from right where I
am. His presence and kingdom are all
around us if you are looking for them.”
“And the most important lesson
you’ve learned about people?” I asked.
“That beneath the surface of a
person there seems to be a universal
longing for meaning and having your
story heard. People are looking to find
someone to listen to their stories. I
think it must be becoming so rare that
when they find a place and a person to
listen, they don’t want to stop. Some-
times I just have to turn off the meter
and listen.”
So, why am I telling you a story about
a car becoming a sanctuary, espe-
cially in this issue of
CCT
that is built
around the theme of pornography and
addiction?
Two reasons. The first is that it can
be helpful to be reminded, as one writer
put it, that church can leave the build-
ing anytime a person is open to creating
a sanctuary wherever he or she is at
the moment—in a car, office, home or
neighborhood.
The second reason is because of
what I heard from John Ortberg about
awareness of God’s presence. “… if a
person wants to commit a sexual sin,
he or she first needs to find a place
where his or her mother is not.” And
since there is not a place where God is
not, the person will need to block from
awareness the presence of God.
However, what if a person strug-
gling with, let’s say, an addiction to
online pornography would simply sur-
round his or her computer with images
and icons of the Trinity and keep an
empty chair right next to him or her as
a symbol of Christ’s constant and lov-
ing presence? What if he or she made
that workspace a sanctuary? Well, that
might be a pretty effective deterrent
to the addiction, could it not? It could
also be a pretty powerful reminder that
from the time of the Garden of Eden,
we leave God’s presence… not the other
way around. God’s response to that ini-
tial fall and each of our daily tumbles is
the same question: “Where are you?”—
with the implication, “I’m still right
here. Let’s talk. What’s going on inside?
This place can still be a sanctuary.”
But isn’t all of this quite odd?
Yes it is; but why not be odd? As
A.W. Tozer reminds us, “A real Chris-
tian is an odd number anyway.”
✠
GARY W. MOON, M.DIV.,
PH.D.,
is the Executive
Director of the Martin Family
Institute for Christianity
and Culture and the Dallas
Willard Center for Christian
Spiritual Formation at Westmont College. He
founded, with David G. Benner and Larry Crabb,
Conversations Journal
; directs the Renovaré
Institute for Christian Spiritual Formation; and has
authored several books. Gary still teaches at
Richmont Graduate University when they let him.
A real Christian is an odd number anyway.
He feels supreme love One whom he has never seen;
talks familiarly every day to someone he cannot see;
expects to go to heaven on the virtue of another;
empties himself in order to be full;
admits he is wrong so he can be declared right;
goes down in order to get up;
is strongest when he is weakest;
richest when he is poorest;
happiest when he feels the worst.
He dies so he can live;
forsakes in order to have;
gives away so he can keep;
sees the invisible;
hears the inaudible;
and knows that which passeth knowledge.
— A.W. Tozer (
The Root of the Righteous
, First Christian Publications, 1955)