Welcome to us!

“That’s just the way I am.”

“What you see is what you get.”

“It is what it is.”

We use these phrases a lot of times as an excuse. Don’t control me. Don’t change me. I’m going to be loud and obnoxious so just deal with it.

But if you look past the excuses, these phrases hold a lot of truth. Another way to say those things is “This is us.” And that’s what we talked about this week. We are Northbrook.

We are you! We are every single one of you, in every single thing that you do. We are you on your good days and your bad days. We are you when you’re generous and when you’re stingy. When you talk about someone and when you pray for someone. When you’re mad and when you’re full of joy.

That’s just the way it is. Because this is us.

Every time we walk into the church building that Northbrook calls home, we experience each other. We take in each other in relationship. And life flows from our relationships with each other. We are kind, loving, moody, irritable, annoying, compassionate, tolerant…all of those things. We take the good with the bad because that’s what relationship is all about.

Then we go out of the building that Northbrook calls home…and we ARE Northbrook. In the community, at work, in a restaurant, even in our homes. But we take a part of that relationship with us.

Now, it may be a nice strategy to be on our best behavior everywhere we go. So let’s just focus on the good parts while we are in relationship. Plaster over the bad, correct the mistakes, and ignore the problems. But that wouldn’t be real, would it? That wouldn’t be honest.

Here at Northbrook we have a set of values we try to live by. We have them written down as statements:

• Real People, Real Problems, Real Questions
• Love Intentionally
• Generations Need Each Other
• Families Matter
• Everything Speaks
• Taking Next Steps Toward God

Let’s be honest. We put those in an order for a reason. If we can’t be real people, then it’s going to be infinitely harder to love intentionally. We won’t understand the importance of generations and families. We’ll find it very difficult to take next steps toward God.

But when we are real, well…we have some problems. Real problems. We went ahead and just added that in to make sure everyone gets it. We aren’t going to be real by being real squeaky clean. We’re going to be ourselves. This is us. And we’ll have real questions. But that’s okay, because once we get there we’ll love each other intentionally, through each generation and in each family, as we take next steps toward God. I think you’re starting to get it.

We’re going to have good days and bad days. We’ll have issues. And that’s fine. Churches have had issues since the beginning of the writing of the Bible. It didn’t stop them. It won’t stop us. That was them. This is us. Here we are.

At the heart of being real people is having real stories and histories that shaped us that way. Someone doesn’t wake up and decide to be a jerk or have an addiction or bear a wound from a past relationship. Those things result from life events. And when we are compelled by love for each other, we dig below the surface to hear those stories and discover those histories so we understand better.

We’re going to get on each other’s nerves sometimes. We’re going to hurt each other. This is us. We’re also going to love each other. We’re going to go out and show the world what it means to be real people with real problems who really love each other. And that’s going to make all the difference.