I have heard it said on many occasions but we are the hands and feet of Jesus. That’s a wonderful metaphor but it invites a question,” How can we be the hands and feet of Jesus if we don’t have the eyes and ears of Jesus? If one is to do the will of God surely one must first discern that will. Yet, I think it all too often we just assume that we already have things pretty much figured out for ourselves. So we just keep doing whatever we’ve been doing. However what we are doing, all too often, is flying blind.
Most churches stay on automatic pilot on default settings such as:
- Keeping people happy
- Loyalty to history and heritage
- Maintaining long time ministries
- Survival
- Budgets and buildings
- Strong personalities
Every one of these default settings will ultimately lead us off course. Every one of them will ultimately crash the plane. Yet, they feel safe to us and we love safety. However, we are anything but safe, for the will of God is never safe. It leads us into the wilderness, on wild journeys against great challenges, and to the cross which we must all take up for ourselves. Faith and safety are antithetical. At the end of the day only two things matter:
- The mission (why we exist) and,
- The vision (where we are going)
We need to be challenged, to have imaginations captured, to attempt to do with God…things that we could never accomplish on our own. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians is his prayer for us too.
“For this reason I kneel before the father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge…. that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Jesus Christ throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.”
“Throughout all generations,” he says. What the church needs is the power that comes from “a love that surpasses knowledge,” “a power at work in us,” “a power able to do more than we ask or imagine.”
Our first task is to look to see where God is already showing up…and he is! Every time this church has stepped out beyond the comfort zone, God has shown up. He showed up a couple of Sunday nights ago, when young woman from Arms of Hope shared powerful testimony of what God has done in her life. Months ago He showed up as he gave us the opportunity to buy Him 66 acres of land for a purpose bigger than we can get our heads around. We know that He can use all those 66 acres. We just don’t know how He’s going to do it, yet. And God has been with us through the great recession, so that, not only have we paid our bills we have updated a decrepit looking church building and added ministers and missionaries.
I have a vision for this church. The vision is for “more than we can ask or imagine.” It’s a vision where we are working hard to discern what God is up to…constantly looking and asking that question. And it is a vision where we are praying for him to reveal his will to us.
One small way that we going to do that is with a day of prayer on Friday, May 24. We would like as many people as possible to come and take up a vigil to pray for individual prayer needs and to pray that God will reveal His vision for our church.
