God’s into plumblines …
Not pendulums.
Author: Plumbline Faith
Simple Truths from a Lifetime of Service to the King of Kings
Until we lay aside the filter of church as we’ve come to know it …
We will never see or be the church as the New Testament actually shows it.
I’ve yet to see God turn His face …
From those who love and trust Him.
Seldom will evil fess up to its own culpability …
Which is why it is unrealistic to expect closure from an evildoer on an injustice they caused.
Instead, find closure by fully expressing to the Lord the hurts and wrongs your heart still carries …
Then forgive and release your need for justice to Him.
Not to excuse the evil or those who did it …
But to acknowledge the wrong, find freedom and move on.
Honor in God’s Kingdom comes not from fame, fortune or followers …
But being faithful.
Church in the New Testament …
Had nothing to do with sitting in pews.
Paul of Tarsus:
Lashed, left for dead, shipwrecked, jailed, scorned, abandoned, tried, beheaded.
I guess he never heard about “Your Best Life Now.”
I may have an ability or perspective that you lack.
But I have yet to meet anyone – and I mean anyone – who does not also exceed me in some aspect of their own abilities and perspectives.
Likewise, no church, ministry or movement will be healthy if it pulls into itself or thinks itself beyond everyone else.
This is true also with our different sub-cultures, theological “tribes”, and the often unexamined presumptions and sensibilities of our own community of like-minded friends.
Unity in diversity through humility, not uniformity through hierarchy, is God’s intent among those who love Him and heed His Word.
Although we all love the “glory stories”, we also need to tell of our failures …
Because it’s our failures which often teach the most.
The narrow gate is wide enough for each who travels through …
But not enough to also carry all their baggage too.
True grace doesn’t save us from conviction and repentance …
But loves us enough to take us there.
It’s hard to share Christ together …
When we aren’t sharing life together.
“Religion” today …
Means all the stuff in the Bible we don’t wanna heed.
Any utopian ideology, agenda or movement always starts with lofty ideals that ignore human nature and God’s sovereignty.
As its zealots inevitability fail to create their perfect society and transform human nature, however, frustration sets in and they begin to rationalize coercive means to achieve their goals …
Which is why they always end up, if left unchecked, creating tyranny instead.
Christianity in Western cultures has lost sight of God’s fierceness …
Wanting instead only His comfort and affirmation.
By defining God’s attributes by our own standards, however …
We’ve lost the ability to be effective salt and light to not just to individuals but to whole societies and nations.
I routinely ask men I mentored in the jail, who give their lives to the Lord there, why it’s so hard for them to become part of a church when they get out.
I then follow up by asking whether, after being released, they were ever invited into someone’s home for a meal and fellowship from any church they visited.
The answer? Never.
I’ve asked this hundreds of times, not just of men trying to put their lives back together after jail, but also of others living in the woods or in homeless shelters.
The answer is always the same.
In twenty years, I’ve seen no exceptions.
We all love arms-length “ministries” and “programs” that make us feel good about helping “those people”, so long as it’s not too close and personal.
I guess most “churches” are look-alike religious social clubs for cookie-cutter “believers” rather than real Christian communities.
How tragic.
In the meantime, our house remains a place of hospitality, friendship and fellowship …
And our lives continue to be enriched beyond measure because of it.
Is God using you to build His ekklesia …
Or are you using God to build your church?
Grace and repentance?
Authentic faith embraces both as inseparable.
The most enduring qualities of lasting faith …
Are gratitude and wonder.
When we fully confess and wholly give our greatest mistakes and related burdens to God …
He turns them into stepping stones for good.
Mercy can be either an amazing wellspring of good …
Or a disturbing cover for evil.
Jesus:
Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.
“Christian” Existentialists:
We are neither left nor right, and don’t want to offend, because Christ is All (about our sensibilities).
The New Testament says God distributes different gifts and functions among us to advance His Kingdom …
As we minister one to another and a waiting world.
Today, we use those gifts and functions to advance our own kingdoms …
As we create titles, hierarchies and “ministries” over one another before a disgusted world.
Many want God to forgive them …
Few to define them.
Until we fully surrender the “what if?” disappointments of our past to God …
We will never fully embrace the “why not?” joys He has for our future.
