Lord here's what I want, now bless it.

“Commit your plans to the Lord and He will establish your work.”  Proverbs 16:3.  Oh, how often I have prayed through and spiritually mulled over my own plans, committing them to the Lord for his stamp of approval and eventual blessing.  And why not?  They make so much sense to me.  The problem is that my perspective is flawed.  The Bible says that “there is a way that seems right to man but in the end it leads to death.”  What seems so right, just, and reasonable to me pales in comparison to God’s plan.  For His ways are higher than mine.  Thankfully we don’t always get what we ask for.    I just finished reading from an insightful book that quoted the Proverbs passage from above.  The book states that the Hebrew word for commit actually translates “roll”.  So reread the passage “Roll your plans to the Lord and He will establish your work.”  You can’t hold onto or even keep touching something that you roll to someone else.  Our best hope is that God will honor our desires and giftings by presenting us with His plan, which is tailor-made to the destiny He has for us.  If there’s something that you have been really praying for and wanting to see happen- maybe you have even told God how He could accomplish it swiftly- why not roll it to Him and see how He can do more than you could even ask or imagine.

What's The Point

What’s the point?  All of us have asked this one time or another.  I have always been drawn naturally or supernaturally for that matter, to this basic yet ominous question.  I seem to always be looking for the bottom line with regard to why we do what we do.  Don't get me wrong and cast my views aside as the ongoing rants of some disillusioned soul who wasn't willing to tow the company line or commit to sacrificing for the "greater good".  On the contrary I have always been the one to defend the cause and buy into the program whole heartedly.  I actually tend to be overcommitted to the vision of another often at the expense of my own desires.  So hold on tight as I try to flesh out my ideas in a manner that I believe is both biblical and practical. 

A good friend of mine once asked me the question if we could change anything about our church, without worrying about the fallout what would it be.  I believe that my response was along the lines of "We should first figure out what it is that God wants the church to be and then set out to make that happen.  That way we can allow Him to deal with the fall out instead of shouldering that responsibility ourselves”. 

I first grasp this spiritual principle a decade ago when after months of praying, pleading, and begging God allowed my son to die at only 23 hours old.  His death was the result of a birth defect that decimated his kidney’s ability to function, but it was also as a result of God’s lack of intervention on his behalf.  I had thought “surely this innocent unborn child deserved God’s intervention as much as any of us do”.  But it was not to be.  Somewhere between his death and his funeral, I took captive a thought and penned the words that would soon start serving as a guideline for my relationship with God.  “It is better to accept God’s plan that to try and bring about you own, for if you pursue your own plan, you alone are responsible to bring it about, but if you submit yourself to God’s plan it is up to Him to fulfill it”. 

Since that conversation about changing our church with my friend years ago, it has been an ongoing goal of mine to challenge believers from all sects of Christianity to rediscover what God’s plan for being the church was all about.    Outside of the bible itself, the dictionary is one of the best places to start that journey of discovery.  It seems to me that the modem English language in specific, often loads up words so that they get used in a manner maybe never intended by their originators.  To quote a line from a popular movie from my childhood "I do not think that word means what you think it means".  Church as defined by the dictionary is a "a gathering of likeminded individuals committed to the cause of the founder”.  Jesus being our founder stated that He would build his church upon the foundation of His gospel or Good News that God wanted relationship with man so bad that He gave Christ as the sacrifice so that man's sins would no longer have to be counted against him, thus paving the way into heaven for even the most egregious of sinners so long as they turned away from the sins and turn to a relationship with Christ as their only inroad to salvation. 

The principles of the great commandment and the great commission seem to be the preeminent way that the God intends for the Good News to be lived out in our society.  But even these basic principles seem to be difficult for us to grasp hold of in the modern version of the Christian Church. 

The first of the two principles is (The Great Commandment) “‘you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. … equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” Matt. 22:36-39 NLT.  Being the son of a high school English teacher, I like to think of this principle in terms of the verbs and nouns.  Love, the action verb cannot take place without motion.  Love is not a feeling, that’s the infatuation and warm fuzzy, butterflies in the stomach sort of love.  We are to love and that word in and of itself requires action and demonstration.  The nouns of the verse provide the context in which we are to love.  We are to love the Lord, to love ourselves and to love those around us as much as love ourselves. 

The greater question of what is the point of the church can be answered with the application of this principle, but how we carry out that love in the modern church seems to be a bit elusive.  Shaking hands with other believers during a greeting time at one of our services hardly seems to sum up the love mentioned in the verse. Attending a class or a common interest group can also fall short of that love demonstration.  It seems to me that the best way to arrive at the answer is to look at what the bible says the early church spent their time doing.  The early church seems to be more a community than an organization and the book of Acts says that they gathered in public places as well as from house to house on a daily basis.  They were sharing meals together, and doing whatever it took to meet the needs that anyone had.  The passage suggests that the people knew each other and that they knew each other well.  That type of relationship develops after spending a lot of time with someone.  It is obvious that there was intimate relationship because they knew what each others needs were. 

An examination of the letters that make up the rest of the New Testament shows a wide range of admonitions to the church members to demonstrate their love for each other by some of the following: be devoted to one another, honor one another, live in harmony with one another, edify one another, accept one another, instruct one another, greet one another, agree with one another, bear each other’s burdens, be submitted to one another, and forgive one another.  The modern context of the Christian church has often broken these admonitions down to simply sit in the same room with one another a few hours a week while the professionals do the heavy lifting of body ministry.

The second principle that we can apply to best live out the Good News in our modern culture is to implement the Great Commission. “Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age”. Matthew 28:19 NLT

Being that I recently hit the big 4 0, I took some time to reflect on what it is that I have been doing with the years that God has entrusted to me.  It occurred to me that I watch too much TV, stress out too quickly, and don’t spend enough time doing the things that matter the most   A quick calculation also showed that I have spent nearly 8000 hours of my life attending church services.  While that may be a lot compared to some people, it may not be even a drop in the bucket compared to others.  One way or the other those hours spent in services have given me one thing, a decent perspective on just how it is that the churches I have been a part of try to fulfill the Great Commission.  In my church experience we have employed an outreach principle.  We try to reach outside of the walls of the church building and get the “unchurched” (not God’s Term) to come into the church facility to attend some sort of “outreach event”. It can be a drama, concert, seminar, give away, carnival, bizarre, bake sale or pancake feed.  Most of these events ended up focusing on the event, than the message as though if we just get people to the facility that some of our Christianity might rub off on them. 

With all of the time, effort, and money involved in outreach events it seems to me that we often still miss the point that we were to GO.  I believe that in order to fulfill the Great Commission that we need to focus on going to the lost not expect them to come to us. 

           The bible says that Love (the great commandment) is going to be the way that the world will know that we are Christ’s disciples.  In the book of Acts it states that the world looked in and liked what they saw and that the Lord added to the church daily those that were being saved.  In those days the church gatherings were conducted in public places as well as in private homes, but the church was being lived out everywhere that Christians went, for the church is constructed of living stones, the people of God.  I would suggest to you that Christ intended for us to go live out our Christianity in whatever venue we are in.  When our lives reflect the light and love of Christ it should wet the appetite of unbelievers around us.  I believe that the Christian fully alive living out their passions and public is the bait on the hook when fishing for the lost.  All the programs we want to a put together, all the efforts to get the lost the darken the church building doors pale in comparison to the testimony of one changed life that goes on to flourish in such a way that causes others to take notice.  The bible says that we should “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have...” 1 Peter 3:15 Notice that it says to be ready to give and answer.  That suggests that people will be asking a question.  Why do you have such hope? That may well translate to: Why don’t you yell at the ref like the other parents do?  How come you are so positive all the time?  Why do you work so hard for the company? How come you don’t talk bad about the boss like everyone else?

I suggest to you that we take our faith into the world and live it out in an attractive manner.  This will require intentionality, but it will require something even greater, that our faith in Christ be genuine and that the world can see how it is so positively transforming our lives.  That may be the biggest challenge we face in the current Christian church.  Are we genuine and growing?  If not it may be reflective of the way we have been doing church instead of being the church.  If we just accumulate attenders instead of converts, or are settling for converts instead of growing disciples what the world sees may not look much different than what they already know.  For the ineffective faith is hardly attractive, it almost relegates the Good News to a get out of jail free card.     

           I’m not suggesting we abandon our commitment to involvement in the church, I'm not looking to promote the concept of small churches or house churches or the doing away with the authority structures within the organization that we currently call church.   I am however fully committed to rediscovering what God intended the church to be and then helping the believers around me to be just that The Church.   Novel idea Huh?  A friend of mine recently called it a church experiment, and it may well be, but I like to think it has a better chance of success at fulfilling God’s plan for his disciples than how I had been doing things in the past and it seems to me, THAT IS THE POINT!  

           I believe I'm am called to inspire courage in the average believer to be fully themselves,  to live out a no holds barred, full speed ahead, love filled life with Christ.  If we can forget about the fallout, remember who we are truly accountable to, ask Him to highlight our impure motives and to give us wisdom and understanding, we can rediscover what church is supposed to be.  If you hear my heart and are intrigued or inspired by something I have shared, please share your thoughts with me.  corywalker@cox.net