Friday, January 19, 2007
Free To Be Weak
I am always astonished at how God chose to change the world. Like Elijah at Horeb, where God was not in the fire or wind or earthquake, when He chose to fundamentally change our world, He did so quietly. Ultimate victory came from apparent weakness, a willful submission of power unto death.
I could not help but think of that as I read this post from a blog called "A Place for the God-Hungry." (HT: Transforming Sermons)
Related Tags: church, genuine, weakness, radical, different
I could not help but think of that as I read this post from a blog called "A Place for the God-Hungry." (HT: Transforming Sermons)
For too long I lived in bondage to peer pressure (whining about the church and its expectations) and people pleasing (defining love as making people happy with me) as well as to the craving for human respect (What if I do my very best and I still don?t matter to that person?). This kind of thinking avoids two critical realities:This is indeed radical personal stuff, but it also radical stuff for the church. What if we released the church from bondage to peer pressure (Why is that church having so many more on Sunday morning than mine?), people pleasing (If we only make our church more attractive, more people will come!) and human respect (If we don't have the building, technology, and clout we'll never get anywhere)? What if the church tried to change the world through a radically different model than the worlds? You know like Jesus did!
My genuine sinfulness.
My desperate need to receive God?s love and to find my identity and my sense of self-worth in that love.
Without those two realities, I will simply be (as Manning suggests somewhere in his book) like a travel agent who is handing out travel brochures to faraway places. Places that I can talk about but have never visited.
Related Tags: church, genuine, weakness, radical, different
