More Spiritual Conversations?

My pastor says that God is concerned with your "life-life" as much--or more--than your "church-life."

My observation is that we have most of our spiritual conversations at church, whereas the testimony of scripture may be that we should spend more time having spiritual conversations at home than we do at church. I suppose this only makes sense... most of us are at the church building 3-10 hours a month. We are at home a whole lot more than that!

Last night some friends came over for dinner. They are moving out of the country in a couple of weeks and we wanted to squeeze every moment in we could before they left. We had a very normal dinner, followed by making s'mores around the fire when the conversation turned to the future... what they were looking forward to and what they were sad to leave behind.

After an hour or so it got cold enough that we were glad to go back inside. The conversation got a bit more serious and then one of our friends said their family wanted to pray over us before leaving. The next 45 minutes or so is, I hope, indelibly stamped on my soul.

She sat at the piano and sang a song over my sweet wife, then read scripture and prayed. The weight of God's word has seldom felt so profound or so personal. And it wasn't even being spoken about me! 

And then words of blessing were given to our younger daughter, and finally to me. The adults spoke words of blessing, and so did their children (all under 13 years of age). For me, the words of one of the kids was what I think God knew I most needed to hear. Amazing.

These are not conversations I'm accustomed to in my Baptist upbringing, so I responded the only way I knew how, with words of affirmation and encouragement. We prayed again.

It was stunning.

I've known this family for years... but we'd never done this. Why not? What would happen if you and I took Paul's common phrase, "Encourage one another with these words" as instructive for our "life-life" not just our "church-life"?

If you have examples of how this is a regular part of life for you and those you love, I'd love to read about it. Leave a long comment and share a story. Let's encourage one another to encourage one another!