What Would the Church Look Like if...?

I have had a considerable perspective on the matter, given my vantage point in the lives of people, from stage, and as a Christian in a my own regard.  By no means have I arrived.  Not at all.  Endless are the areas in my own life that need continuous tweaking, deepening, and sanctifying in order for me to be more obedient and more Christlike.  

Still, from my vantage point I watch people in a place where their participation in the gospel and applying biblical truth, is just like me because I see "opportunity for growth."  It has all made me wonder lately.  The very health of the church, both local church and universal church, is a curious thing.  On both the local and universal levels the church is made up of individuals.  And if the health of the church is based on the health of these individuals, I should probably consider how the church might be more healthy and a better reflection of Christ Himself.  And by taking some inventory of my own life, and you your own life, I think we will find what we might do personally to better represent Christ. 

And as I have watched both myself and my fellow Christians in our various seasons, in our various struggles, in these many opportunities for growth, I have had to begin asking: What would the church look like if...

Everyone read/studied the bible as I do?

Everyone prayed as I do?

Everyone did the work of evangelism as I do?

Everyone showed up on Sunday to church gatherings as often as I do?

Everyone loved their neighbors as I do?

Everyone loved one another (in the church) as I do?

Everyone lived a life of worship like I do?

Everyone gave as much financially to the local church as I do?

Everyone walked in holiness as I do?

Everyone made disciples as I do?

Everyone sacrificed of time as to the Lord as I do?

Everyone expressed joy in the Lord as I do?

Everyone desired the return of Christ as I do?

Everyone engaged in a sermon as I do?

Everyone showed up ready to praise God in corporate worship as I do?

Now my aim in asking such questions is not to put anyone down, neither to exalt myself.  It is to make it a personal introspection for you and me alike (ask yourself these very questions and answer them honestly).  It is also to celebrate certain areas of both your life and my life where we respectively have matured in some of these areas.  But overall it is a challenge to you and I to think.  Would the church really be healthy if everyone did as I do?  

The aim is not simply to say we have to master these (and by no means is this list exhaustive).  I don't think anyone ever will, though I think we should be growing in these and be able to measure the maturity in our lives over time even by putting our lives in front of one another to assess.  

My hope is that you and I begin regularly asking these questions of ourselves and of one another.  I think we have every obligation to one another this way, and to the Lord Jesus Christ.  In doing so we will find more areas that God wants us to grow in, and then we will also find Him to be our source of strength even to do all these things as He calls.  The goal is to see God glorified in us, even as He enables us to do so.  So let us grow, by the strength He supplies, and let us see the church both local and universal become a better reflection of Christ. 

What the CT Scan Revealed

So there I was, laying on my back, looking up at the ceiling, when again I felt it.  The very fallen state of this body, this life, this very world in which I live.  All of it, gripped by a curse.  All of it, including me, affected by a great grip of its power.  Sin is real.  Again yesterday I was reminded of it.

I was laying down having a CT scan of my abdomen performed after experiencing pain that has been going on for some considerable time.  The very machine about to perform something to analyze what is going on inside me, a genius engineering marvel, but one that was entirely unnecessary if not for the curse I am under, we are under, all of this world is under.  And as wonderful as it is to find out that I do not have a mass growing inside me, nor infection in my intestine, or pancreas or otherwise, still I could not help but feel the woeful state in which I am existing.  I am ever in, under this cursed reality all the result of SIN. 

And no matter where I turn I see it.  Every morning I pick up my glasses, because my eyes are unable to focus as they were designed to do.  I feel a certain discomfort in my back (even following surgery two years ago) and a related numbness in my right foot.  I continue to bear the marks of a brain surgery performed on me when I was sixteen years old.  My home has been chewed up by termites as of late and while I am glad money paid to the exterminator can help he and his family, I cannot help but feel even termites doing damage to my abode is nothing more than the affects of this fallen world.  And I am sure there is a story today (many in fact) of murder, divorce, homelessness, cancer, terrorism, theft, and the unforeseen car-accident that resulted in death.  Sad world in which we live.  And it all finds its root in this cursed reality in which we live.

Interesting the way in which we place so much value in all this world has to offer.  We long for better jobs, better education, a better house.  And not that any of this is wrong in itself.  Without realizing it, maybe it is nothing more than our own realization that this world isn't restful, so we will take any small breaks we can get, which we suppose these will supply.  And yet, I fear it goes beyond that for most.  We seek to eliminate the yellow on our teeth, the wrinkles on our faces, the baldness on our heads, all because we think there is something permanent about this life. 

But that is the very point all these many signs around us, painful or not, are telling us.  This is not ultimate.  But the solution to our ongoing demise in this cursed world is not simply to give in and embrace the ongoing fade.  And neither is it in trying to fix it.  That has been the problem all along.  The cure is in One.  Christ is the remedy.  He became the curse for us.  He became sin.  He Himself took all upon Him, even as He was on the cross, suffering for no wrong He committed. 

And this is our blessed assurance.  For all who surrender to Him, for all who with their lives will believe in Him, He promises that the pains of this life, the cursed nature of this life, will only prove to enhance the glories and joys of the life to come.  So see this world for what it is, and embrace Him.  See this world for all it isn't, and embrace Him.  And in the process SEE CHRIST for ALL HE IS, and ALL HE'S DONE, and ALL HE PROMISES YET TO DO.  It will be transformational no matter what comes in the meantime. 

A Loving Dad and a Loving Pastor

Just try to be a father.  It is both so joyful, but also possibly the most frustrating matter.   Kids don't appreciate all the sacrifice and selflessness of a father.  They don't realize the cost of things.  They don't realize what is best for them, but only know they like sweet treats, TV shows, and more toys than any kid knows what to do with.  But a father truly knows best.  Well, a father who loves knows best.

Sometimes God works THROUGH us, but He is Always Working IN us

Any ministry any of us ever does is always being compared against what others do.  We compare numbers constantly.  It is what somewhere in our Western world we have determined is the gauge to call someone “successful” or “fruitful.”
     In 1 Kings 17 we are introduced to Elijah.  Now I get excited when I think of Elijah.  I have over and over again read the stories of all the great things God did through him.  What a successful, fruitful prophet he was.  And again my mind imposes on it all the same standard for gauging his ministry (and mine).  But recently God pointed out something I never saw.

Between Two Worlds - (Suffering and Joy)

I'm stuck in it.  You are stuck in it.  And for the time being, there is no way out of it.  We are ever in this grave reality that at times lessens, though at other times increases.  And it is not about to go anywhere, anytime soon.  That is because time is the great obstacle to this entire conundrum in which we find ourselves caught.  

Thank You ISIS

For those of us who claim to "know the Bible" to be regularly reading the Bible, we are in a very difficult reality.  We read a book written by men, under the inspiration of God's Spirit, which then through the human personalities contains the very Word(s) of God.  We place our lives, the current living out of these realities, and our eternal destinies in this Word of God.  And yet at times there is a massive breakdown in understanding just what some of these authors, even whose experiences were what God chose to report to us, are still today (some 3500-2000 years later) applicable to us.  It is to this I say: Thank you ISIS.

The Glory of Christ in a World of Lesser glories

Rarely do we anticipate the profound.  Rarely do we know where to find it, rather it finds us.  Indeed, if we knew where it was to look we wouldn't be so consumed by matters so small, which is really what we continually find ourselves preoccupied with.  But there is a grander purpose for which we have been designed, of which we above all creation have the bandwidth and capacity for, namely the GLORY OF CHRIST.  I wasn't anticipating this years ago, but I was awakened to something profound and life-changing.  Let me explain.