8(AA) "Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old.
19(AB) Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
(AC) I will make a way in the wilderness
(AD) and rivers in the desert.
25"I, I am he
(AK) who blots out(AL) your transgressions for my own sake,
and I will not remember your sins.
26Put me in remembrance;(AM) let us argue together;
set forth your case, that you may be proved right.
Do we as the church honestly believe the above passage? "Behold, I am doing a new thing!" I am starting to get heart broken at the sound of followers saying, "No, God, I am too comfortable, you cannot do something new, even if that means people must parish in darkness for eternity." Do we often forget who Gods really is? (vs. 25) Things in our culture are rapidly changing around us, be it technology, the way we communicate, the way things move (very fast), how we are entertained, and the list can go on...
Yet it is one thing we as the church do not wish to do, is let God do something new (if it requires change), a new thing that will provide water in a dry place, that will bring forth wells in desert. For the church to do something new usually means one thing, one word we are scared of, "Change." In the book Christian Atheist by Craig Groeschel he says, "Before you can tap into God's changing power, you have to stop making excuses." He goes on to talk about John 5:6 and the story of the invalid where Jesus asks him, "Do you want to get well?" (my translation: Do you want to change?") If you were sick and asked if you wanted to be well, wouldn't you want to change? What you want to be made healthy? Wouldn't you want Jesus to do a great work so you can go to the next level? The invalid responds, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me."
I want to pull something from this that Groeschel touches on as well, so some of this is my thinking and some I have adapted from him. I see two issues here with the invalid. If you take time to read the whole story we see that he has been in this place of suffering for 30 years. Time after time people have passed him at this pool, ignoring the help that he needs to get out of the state he is in. So my tie in is this... how many people in the communities around our churches have passed us day in and day out, wondering what is was like to come into our building, yet no one took the time to reach out and help them in? Maybe we did not take the time to look at what needs to change around us to make us more relevant to the culture we are trying to reach. How many people in our community are offered the chance to see the saving nature of Christ and miss out because we are too busy focused on how comfortable we are, to reach those who are looking for change, who are looking to be made well, who are looking to break the life of sin, yet no one was there to help them into the "pool." Ephesians 2:10, "He has grand designs for you, great works that he planned in advance for you to do."
God has great plans for the Bride of Christ, yet to embrace those plans, sometimes we have to change. Remember we are not changing who we are, who we are about, and what we carry, the Gospel. We are just changing in how we are relevant to the culture around us, as we can reach those who have been crying out for help into the "pool."
The best part of the story of the Invalid in John 5 is that he never had to get in the pool, Jesus just looked at him and said, "get up, take up your bed, and walk." This opens another blog for another day, maybe we are trying to hard to get people into our "pool" where we just need to go to them, meet them where they are, lend out a hand and say, "get up and walk."
Grace and Peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment