Trinity Blog

Have you ever seen a movie where someone has amnesia?  The person with no memory often spends the whole movie looking for clues so they can reclaim their past.  But usually (if it’s an interesting story anyway), they find out that being free of their preconceptions has allowed them to do and become things they could never do or be before!

Or maybe you’ve read about the studies where teachers are told which students are the “gifted” students and which ones “need extra help” – except that they just choose them randomly.  Guess what?  The students’ performance tends to go along with what is expected of them.

OK.  Why am I telling you this?  I think that the members of our church family are selling themselves short!  To use John the Evangelist’s* language,

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. – 1 John 3:1-2

There are plenty of people around us who don’t understand who God is, what God wants, and what God can do.  If we let them limit us, we will always end up as less than what we are called to be.  We are children of GOD! We don’t even know what we will be yet – it’s too amazing for us to understand.  What we do know is that God has called us to walk in the light.  As Eric Price reminded us at our stewardship celebration luncheon in November, our church has a mission.  We are called to bring light and love and peace to our community by serving them in the name of Jesus Christ, by loving them with the love of Christ and by sharing with them the Good News of the gospel.  If we shrink from our calling, who’ll do it?

I think most of us would agree that, as Christians, we share the calling I just described.  Still, we make excuses like, “We just don’t have the resources” or “I don’t have a good enough relationship with that person to tell them about the Gospel” or “I’m sure God will reach them through someone else.”  I know.  I’ve told those things to myself before too.  But those statements are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how God works and who we are!  When we say those things, we’re limiting God!

In fact, if we refuse to do our mission because we can’t figure out how God will provide the means to carry it out, we deny who we are in Christ.  God tells us that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13).  Do we believe that?  Or do we believe that we can only do things that make conventional sense and leave a comfortable buffer?  God tells us that we are called to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  (Matthew 28:18-20)  We’ve been doing that!  Now – when people need God the most – is not the time to back off!  We need to continue to live out our call even though it may mean we have to deal with financial unpredictability and last-minute rescues.  But along with those, we’ll also get to hear God tell us “Well done!” in the end.  And we’ll see transformed lives!  We’ll watch children and youth grow up in Christ.  We’ll see people conquer addiction.  We’ll feed and clothe the needy.  We’ll bring hope to the hopeless.

Can we agree that God is calling us to become something that has not yet been revealed?  If so, can we agree that what God has in mind for us will be – as for the amnesiac in the movies – something much better than what we could be if we stayed within the comfortable limits of what we’ve always been?  I know that’s the church I want to be part of!  It’ll be an exciting God-adventure!  Are you with me?

Risking to Live in Christ with You,

Pastor Steve

* “John the Evangelist” is another name for the author of the Gospel of John, the Letters of John, and the book of Revelation.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 6:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.