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‘You know you’re going to breathe again’

Bishop Holston wraps SEJ with worship focusing on ‘What Matters Most’

By Jessica Brodie (Photo by Derek Leek)

LAKE JUNALUSKA, N.C.—Inviting God’s people to remember what matters most, trusting in the mighty knowledge that God is preparing something greater than we’ve ever dreamed of, Bishop L. Jonathan Holston of the South Carolina Conference brought a powerful message during closing worship to wrap up the three-day 2024 Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference.

Drawing from Micah 6:6-8, where the prophet tells us God requires not bold, extravagant sacrifices but rather that we focus on three important things—to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God—Holston brought a word about clinging to the crux of the gospel amid difficult times. 

Holston compared what The United Methodist Church has been through recently to getting the wind knocked out of us, an uncomfortable, anxious feeling that can evoke panic and fear. 

“Will you ever get that breath again, that opportunity to stand up again? Will you ever get the opportunity to breathe again?” Holston said, describing the dread that a temporarily paralyzed diaphragm brings. 

Thankfully, it’s not long before our respiratory system does what it’s supposed to do, and a sense of relief washes over us. We can breathe again. We are going to be OK.

“Maybe that’s how we’ve been feeling the last couple of years—literally having the wind knocked out of us, losing who we thought we were and having to start all over again,” Holston said, ticking off a list of challenges we have faced, from natural disasters and illness to the wave of church separations and disaffiliations. “It feels like you’re on your back and the wind has literally been taken out of your soul, and yet you know that you’re going to breathe again, because even in these anxious times … you serve a God who says failure is not an option.”

As he said, we pick ourselves up again, regain our bearings, calculate our path and get right back to the work ahead. 

“It feels strange, but now we can refocus and re-create what God is calling us to do.”

For as God’s people, Holston said, we have a certain understanding that God is with us every step of the way.

“Even in the midst of uncertain times, we trust a God who is the same in every situation.”

That’s why it’s so important to remember that rather than the entirely burned offerings and year-old calves, the thousands of rams and torrents of oil, we must embrace what God really asks us to focus upon. 

“Don’t get stuck in a story that is not helping us,” he preached to a chorus of amens. “We have an opportunity to try a new way if we’re willing.” 

He said sometimes we live our lives in the rearview mirror instead of looking toward God’s word. Instead, Holston invites us to look ahead—to the windshield of grace, hope, love, power and strength, and to know God is preparing something awesome.

We often think we’re exempt from difficulty, he said, so we settle for credentials over Christ, title over testimony, status over salvation and privilege over prayer. Our egos get in the way.

But God tells us what is required: Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly. And that’s what matters most.

After the sermon, Bishop Sharma D. Lewis and Bishop David Graves led the body in a Service of Reaffirmation of the Baptismal Covenant. All who are baptized and have renewed their vows were invited to come to a station at the front, where their conference’s newly appointed bishop offered a small shell as a reminder of the baptismal renewal while speaking these words of love: “Remember that you are baptized and rejoice.”

After a closing charge from the Rev. Stephanie Hand and the reading of Luke 24:28-35, Bishop Holston sent the body off into the world to do God’s work.

As Holston urged, “May God the Father turn our mourning into dancing. May Jesus Christ turn all our dead ends into lively beginnings.

“May the Holy Spirit turn our addiction to the trivial into an obsession with what really matters.”

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