To hear my most recent message, click last week’s sermon.

Everyone I know is trying to live life to its fullest potential, yet are left yearning for something real, something relevant. We add activities, stretch payments, join clubs, and meet people and yet there is still a vast emptiness inside. It’s a void only Christ can fill.

I want to welcome you to the Grace UMC web page. I hope that you will consider coming to ‘find grace at Grace’ as many others have.

I was honored with the opportunity to write a column recently for the religion section of the Huntsville Times. I would like to share it with you below.

Pastor Steve West

Hunger for Mystery in a Culture of Certainty
By Pastor Steve West

I remember meeting Jeff, who leads the praise band for one of our services, after I came back to Huntsville to serve. “I heard you are a rocket scientist,” I said. “Yes,” he replied, “but I don’t do that here!” He smiled with a width I’ve grown to love and went back to his guitar.

We live in a culture of engineering, mastering information, and exacting personalities. Yet we hunger for mystery.

In Ephesians 3, Paul describes his call to preach the “unsearchable riches of Christ” and “make plain the mystery.” Do we dare claim a faith that is about something bigger than what we can explain?

I come from a long line of pastors (15 that I’m aware of). They go back to the days of riding horseback. At my great, great, great uncle’s grave these words are chiseled: “For 50 years preached the unsearchable riches of Christ until his decease.” They echo Paul’s words. 

Years ago, young in ministry and dealing with my first disappointments, I went to that grave and knelt. My heart melted in realization that my struggles were not just about me. It’s about the unsearchable riches of Christ. Fathoming a bigger mystery gave me a great deal of hope.

When I moved back to Madison County, I was led to write my own mission statement. I keep it by my desk. It reads: “I have been placed here in the Huntsville culture to help people who are conditioned to think they can fix any problem, explore any place in the galaxy, or settle any conflict by force to live a life that encounters mystery and embraces uncertainty.” 

This month, many Christians celebrate a season called Epiphany. We remember the wise men who saw a bigger picture and followed a star. The King had been born right under the noses of the people of bustling Bethlehem, and it took some stargazing Persian astrologers to see it.

Sometimes we are so concerned with what’s under our noses that we miss the mystery. We water down the gospel to acquiesce to a culture of work and rewards. We reduce the message to a few principles to follow in order to make our lives a little better. The problem is that we’re still in charge that way. 

Face it, we’re control freaks. But the news of the gospel is that certainty is an illusion. It’s mystery that’s real. Christ makes plain the unrevealable and reveals the unsearchable. Christ makes God touchable, lovable, knowable, even feelable.

This mystery can’t be capsulated by a few bullets on a brochure or a power point slide. It can only be absorbed throughout a lifetime.