Friday, December 05, 2008
Yeah, We Do Tend To Get That Backwards
Milt Stanley finds in this post what may be the greatest pullquote of the decade:
I have actually heard people justify this approach on the basis that Christ has done the hard work so we do not have to. Well, Christ has prevented the work from being fatal, but He has not prevented it from being hard. And the work Christ has done has yet to work on us.
I am currently in what, by any worldly measure, would have to be declared the best time of my life. I am making an exceptionally good living. I have a loving and caring wife. I have good friends and a church home that at least manages not to screw up too badly. It honestly could not get much better than this.
And yet, in the wake of my father's death, now 18 months ago, this has been one of the most emotionally turbulent and trying times I have ever been through. Oh, there were a couple of worse times in my youth, but this has been a really rough patch.
God, if we are really open to him, is always going to be stretching us. What He wants us to be is so radical, and so difficult, that it will always be trying. His work on the cross created a path, a path that did not exist before - WE MUST STILL WALK IT. He did not take the journey for us, He only made the journey possible.
Why do we so often offer the world a destination, when it is a journey that we have to sell? Well, the journey is such that the destination is the only thing that makes it worthwhile. But that said, we so often forget to mention the journey that people feel like they are being sold a bill of goods. Like promising weight loss without a diet; we are dishonest.
Which means, we have not gotten very far along the journey ourselves.
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"The masses want a resurrection experience without ever going to the Cross."Boy does that just about sum it up.
I have actually heard people justify this approach on the basis that Christ has done the hard work so we do not have to. Well, Christ has prevented the work from being fatal, but He has not prevented it from being hard. And the work Christ has done has yet to work on us.
I am currently in what, by any worldly measure, would have to be declared the best time of my life. I am making an exceptionally good living. I have a loving and caring wife. I have good friends and a church home that at least manages not to screw up too badly. It honestly could not get much better than this.
And yet, in the wake of my father's death, now 18 months ago, this has been one of the most emotionally turbulent and trying times I have ever been through. Oh, there were a couple of worse times in my youth, but this has been a really rough patch.
God, if we are really open to him, is always going to be stretching us. What He wants us to be is so radical, and so difficult, that it will always be trying. His work on the cross created a path, a path that did not exist before - WE MUST STILL WALK IT. He did not take the journey for us, He only made the journey possible.
Why do we so often offer the world a destination, when it is a journey that we have to sell? Well, the journey is such that the destination is the only thing that makes it worthwhile. But that said, we so often forget to mention the journey that people feel like they are being sold a bill of goods. Like promising weight loss without a diet; we are dishonest.
Which means, we have not gotten very far along the journey ourselves.
Technorati Tags:journey, destination, cross, resurrection
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