As a Christian we are a new creation. If we are also commanded to bring others forth to the Kingdom we are really being called to help further create what the Lord initiated by His coming and which He will complete in His second coming. We are to lead people to a new world in the image of Christ. If we don't continue to move towards this new world and encourage and exhort others to do the same they and we will remain as artifacts in the old. We can be a new creation but still retain much of the former outward shape. So much so that often times people can barely notice a difference. We must train ourselves like and athlete trains for running the race of endurance exposed to the elements. Intentions and motives behind actions and the actions themselves mean everything in our belief system.
Although we are charged with spreading the Word to the world, as John Piper said, we are not professionals. It isn't so much because we have some form of amazing human education unavailable to others but rather we have a transendant accepted doctrine that we need to confess to others through our words and our actions. Words that change lives internally and exxternally. We have yoked ourselves to Truth in the form of Christ Jesus. We are to live in this world/kingdom that is now started and was created when Jesus was born and inevitably gave death a great big handful of NOTHING.
Unlike the intrepid travelers of old we have a description of what lies beyond the horizon and instructions on how to get to it. We have had our King go before us to trace the path for us. He the first of many. He paid the dues for our passage and has already planned the accommodations for our arrival in the new world; the Kingdom. Although we have never seen it we trust by faith that it is as He has stated because He is infinitely trustworthy.
Unfortunately, on our way their if we do not stay on the path that He has traced we may go astray. If we wander we will make ourselves susceptible to fiends and wickedness in the form of continued sin or evils that dwell in the shadows waiting for us to lose our way and wander off the path paved in stone and sprinkled with blood.
We also need to allow the Lord to use us to create this new world here now. The Kingdom on Earth. The "Already" portion of the "Already but Not Yet" Kingdom ushered in by Jesus Christs first coming. If you do not allow the Lord to use you to create this new world you'll probably be utilized to maintenance the old. Of course being used by God is infinitely more appealing than any work for the devil.
For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. ~Psalm 84:10
...but we can be so much more if only we empty ourselves and allow the Lord free reign in us.
Our evangelizing to the world and the believer isn't to enable people to adapt and adjust to difficult or decadent world, it is to help them help themselves. By explaining to them that they need to let God move them to the new world and new life promised in our salvation and new nature. We must stay the course and not be tossed to and fro in the storm.
Where possible we should steer around storms that look like they could sink us and try to find safe harvor in God. Where these storms are unavoidable we must pray and cling tenaciously to the Lord, batten-down the hatches and reinforce the bulkheads. The storm will eventually pass and we will eventually reach the far shore.
No comments:
Post a Comment