A few years back I got a letter in the mail from American Airlines informing me that my miles were expiring. (Don’t travel much now, but when I was in the corporate world, I did a lot of flying.) When I looked at how many miles were expiring, I was surprised to find that there were enough for two round trip tickets and a rental car for six days! I couldn’t believe I’d left that many miles–that much value–just sitting around and about to expire. Needless to say I surprised Debbie with a fun anniversary trip two months later.

     Now it’s one thing to forget I had redeemable miles, it would have been another if, after having been alerted to the miles, I simply ignored them and let them expire. Nobody in their right mind would do that. If we know we have rights to something of value, we go get it. We take possession of it.

     Sometimes we can get into a spiritual mode where we wind up trying to guard our tradition or our comfort zone of spiritual familiarity. We can inadvertently wind up drawing lines that put limits on what we’re willing to allow the Lord to do in our lives. (We let the proverbial miles expire.) I’m not saying, by any means, that we need to grab hold of every new spiritual trend that comes along, but we can’t ignore the reality that what Jesus offers is a relationship, and relationships are all about discovery and going deeper with the other person. To go deeper means we move or let go of where we are and transition to another place. This always requires faith, and faith is inherently uncomfortable because it involves giving control to someone else, in this case Jesus.

     Jesus is inviting each of us to go deeper with him. He has an infinite supply of awesome-ness for us! He wants to take what we know now of love, peace, power and joy, and he wants to show so much more such that looking back we’ll wonder if we really understood those things in the first place. Scriptures that we’ve known for years will take on deeper, more vibrant meaning. Prayer will become both a place of resting and a place of power. Remember, this always requires stretching and releasing the comfort of present familiarity for the sake of the more he has for us. It may even seem disconcerting at times, but we can wholeheartedly trust the Holy Spirit and his wielding of the Sword of his Word. The first step is to tell God, “I want more.”