Newsletter: February
The Christian life is intended to be an adventurous life. That’s the first thing we need to see. Even though church may seem like a safe place to hide from the dangers of life, that is not what God intended. There are times we need to venture out into deep waters. There are times we need to listen to our faith rather than our fears.
Some of us like change. Some of us do not. Some of us like challenges. Some of us do not. Some of us are oriented to the future. Some of us are oriented to the past. Some of us have come to faith seeking comfort. Others of us come to faith because we fear we are already too comfortable. John A. Shedd once put it this way, “A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.”
It takes an extraordinary amount of courage to live on the edge. It takes an extraordinary amount of courage to live out your Christian faith in a culture of compromise. Many of us would say, “Don’t make waves. You’re doing well. Why rock the boat? Don’t cause any trouble.” But the call to serve God sometimes forces us to leave our comfort zone--to confront people we don’t want to confront, to take stands that make us unpopular, maybe even to leave situations that tempt us to compromise what we believe. Our Christian faith calls us to be adventurers.
It may be that the great sin of the modern church is that we are too comfortable. Where is our passion as the church today? Earlier generations of Christians sent out missionaries around the world. They evangelized entire nations. Other groups of Christians set about curing the wrongs of their society--setting up institutions to help the orphaned, the disabled, those who could not care for themselves. What are we about? What grand vision drives us?
Truthfully, nothing drives many of us, and because we are so anemic in living the Christian life, we miss out on both the excitement and the growth that comes from radical discipleship.
There would be no church today if earlier generations of Christians had sought, first of all, to be comfortable. To be the church is to be part of an adventurous people.
Now you may not think of our church as adventurous. We probably need to work on that. Certainly, that’s not the image that the world has of us. They think we’re a bunch of wimps, a bunch of stand-patters. They think we’re out of touch with the modern world. If that’s true, then we are out of touch with what Christ means for his church to be.
Imagine what you and I could accomplish for Christ with determination. It’s not that life’s problems are too big for us to tackle, it is that our faith is too feeble to make an outstanding effort. God has called us to be an adventurous people touching God’s world in every corner with God’s love, God’s compassion.
But here is what we need to remember: we are led by Christ whose life was a mighty adventure. See him kneeling in the garden, sweat like great drops of blood falling from his body as he prays, “Not my will, but Yours be done.” See him carry the cross up Golgotha’s hill. See him stretched out upon the tree. See the blood rush forth from his punctured hands and feet. Is comfort what Christian living is all about? I’ll let you answer that in the quietness of your own heart.
I could take you to cemeteries all over this globe to graves of Christian people who believed Christian faith was about more than comfort, who gave of themselves daily that the world might know God’s love. They were but walking in the steps of their Master, the grandest adventurer of all. Are you ready to scale mountains for Christ? Are you ready to join him? Are you willing to commit your life to his service? Are you ready to take God’s love to every corner of our community and our earth?