just imagine if this sign was found on the front door of your church.
imagine if this sunday, you went to church, only to find that it was an empty building? not just any building, but one with beautiful stain glass windows on each wall, a gorgeous grand piano with worn in ivories, and enough pews to house the down town area, and then some!
i have been challenged, more than anything else this year, to major on the fact that the church is not A building. the Church is a group made up of a bunch of imperfect people, who love imperfectly, worship with one eye open, remain alone in their thoughts and insecurities, but are loved, perfectly, beyond imagination by the God of this world. the Creator himself.
let's MOVE! i am not saying, ditch your church! i am saying, let's love one another as Christ loves his people... his church. let's move on from our own insecurities, pretenses and facades. let's move in to all that Christ's blood was shed for. Serve our communities through love and compassion. laugh with those who laugh. morn with those who morn. rejoice with those who REJOICE!
we are IMPERFECT but are loved PERFECTLY.
what does a "church on the move" look like to you?
thoughts?
digging deep,
rachel
2 comments:
It's interesting but I've been thinking about what the Church is lately a lot too. Particularly about what it means to love one another. Especially because naturally we're unable to give as well as receive true love because of our differences, imperfections, false self-created self-images, fear of being known, and continuous expectations for everyone else to change before we do.
To love one another is simply a very hard thing to do. To truly love one another not just with words but with everything we do and think (including our motives)-even harder. And we know it.
But somehow so often I have to ask myself questions like "Why is it often so hard to love the Church if the bond that is supposed to bind as all together is LOVE? Why does it seem that the Church is the one that seems to be failing to do this task the most?"
A very good quote from Tim Keller's sermon "The Community of Jesus" helped me to look at it from a different perspective. He quoted someone saying that ““The reason there are so many exertations in the New Testament for Christians to love other Christians is because the Church is not made up of natural friends, it’s made up of NATURAL ENEMIES”.
What binds us together is not what binds together any other human community. Every other human community is bind together by common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs or things like that. But Christians come together not because they form a natural collocation, but because they all have been saved by Jesus Christ and know Him, therefore here is what the Church is-a bond of natural enemies that love one another FOR JESUS SAKE. So be PATIENT. It will take time. But your heart needs it. And Jesus has the power for it.”
zane, dear... perhaps we are connected? i LOVE that you have been thinking about this, too! and, you have brought such a great element of TRUTH!
we are completely identified by how well we love. how well we love our brothers and sisters is a HUGE sign that causes believers to stand out - to be aliens of this world! gosh, i like this quote from Timothy Keller! i like how it seems to strip everything away, leaving love as the binding factor between those who follow Christ. it is just another reminder that naturally, our efforts to love from our own strength, fall SO short of how God can love through us.
loves seems to be the "scent" or "aroma" of a Christian. i have to say, sometimes my aroma can be pretty spoiled rotten, however, by God's grace it eventually died out and becomes fresh and new, once again.
love you, girl! thanks for your thoughts...
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