Our session is engaged in a year of spiritual development, to learn how to be more godly leaders. As part of this process, each month one elder provides a statement of faith to help the rest of us learn more about his or her faith. At one of our recent meetings an elder said, “I love Jesus so much that I can hardly wait to get to heaven so that I can see him face to face.” This comment stuck with me because it was so different from what I normally hear. People tell me that they look forward to the joys and blessings of heaven. They say that they’re looking forward to seeing loved ones who have died. Will heaven be a place of joy and blessing? Absolutely. Will we be reunited with loved ones there? I think so. But these are not the reasons for our hope of heaven, any more than the reason for having school is for children to ride in yellow buses and eat in the cafeteria. School is for learning, and heaven is for us to be in Christ’s presence.
At times we are guilty of what I call a “mercenary faith:” following God so that we can receive blessings from him. There’s no doubt that God blesses his people. But if that’s our reason for being Christian, we’re missing a vital part of our faith. The focus of Christianity is upon bringing glory to Christ, not upon getting blessings from him.
The story is told of a young Presbyterian candidate for ministry who was interviewed by a presbytery a couple centuries ago. Unfortunately for the candidate, there was a crotchety old preacher in the assembly who loved to ask candidates a tough question: “Would you be willing to be damned for the glory of God?” The bright young man, who had been told to expect the question, had a ready reply. “I am. And I am also willing to damn you, and to damn this whole presbytery!” According to the story, the young man was approved for ministry on the spot, and the old preacher never asked his question again.
How about you? Would you be willing to be damned for the glory of God? It’s a ludicrous question, of course, because it’s inconceivable to imagine how God would receive any benefit from the damnation of any of his beloved children. However, it raises a matter that all of us should take seriously. The true question is: Are we more focused upon the good stuff that we get from God, or upon the things we can do to honor and praise him? This is what Jesus calls us to when he tells us to take up our cross and follow him. This is what Jesus himself did in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he turned away from a life of popularity and power in order to accept the bitter cup that brought glory to God.
The blessings of the Christian life may be what leads us to the Lord in the first place. But if we never move beyond it, something is sorely lacking.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Uprooting Sin
This summer I wanted to get rid of some nasty prickly weeds in a patch of woods that I like to visit. So I brought my weed whacker and mowed them all down. It was wonderful – until they started to grow back again. So I realized that in order to get rid of them, I needed to pull them up by the roots. As I pulled them up, I soon discovered that the roots ran in a tangled network from one plant to another, sometimes in unexpected and confusing directions. I also learned that the biggest plants didn’t have the largest roots. Some of the deepest and strongest roots came from plants that I almost overlooked. Once I had uprooted the plants and pulled out as many of the roots as I could, I realized that new plants will quickly spring up from the roots that I couldn’t get. In order to fill the void that I had caused by pulling up the nasty weeds, I scattered some quick-grow grass seed. My hope is that by the time the weeds try to grow back, the new grass will have already crowded them out and the weeds will not be able to overcome their new competition.
As I dealt with these annoying weeds, I thought about how we try to remove sin from our lives, and I recognized a lot of similarities.
• If we think that we can get rid of sin in our lives by removing the most obvious and visible parts of it, we’ll soon find out that the sin will come right back. Sin has deep roots that lie beneath the surface of what we’re usually aware of.
• When we start the difficult work of uprooting our sin from the deep places in our souls where it lurks, we will be surprised at where the sin runs. Calvinists call this “total depravity:” every corner of our lives is tainted by sin, just as the weeds’ roots ran even through the places that I thought were clear. As soon as you assume that there is one aspect of your life that is free from sin, you run the risk of allowing its undiscovered roots to spring forth.
• The most dangerous sins sometimes seem to be innocent and easy to deal with, just as the plants that were easy to overlook had strong roots. We need to be vigilant and address even the smallest sins because we never know how much they are ruining the goodness that God wants in our lives.
• Sin is never simple to deal with. Each sin is connected to other sins in confusing ways. If you attempt to remove one sin, you’ll soon find out that it is associated with other sins in ways that you would have never guessed. You can’t just work on sin in one part of your life, because it is part of the sin in other areas as well.
• It’s not enough to get rid of the sin in your life. You need to replace it with something healthy and blessed, just as I want to replace my weeds with grass. They tell addicts who come out of rehab that they need to change their lifestyles so that they are around people who lift them up and won’t allow them to revert to their old addictions. Jesus told the story of a man who had an evil spirit removed from him but hadn’t allowed the Holy Spirit to fill him instead. The evil spirit came back and brought seven friends with it.
Above all, we can’t weed out the sin in our lives without the grace that God offers us. Call upon the Holy Spirit to be the master gardener of your soul!
As I dealt with these annoying weeds, I thought about how we try to remove sin from our lives, and I recognized a lot of similarities.
• If we think that we can get rid of sin in our lives by removing the most obvious and visible parts of it, we’ll soon find out that the sin will come right back. Sin has deep roots that lie beneath the surface of what we’re usually aware of.
• When we start the difficult work of uprooting our sin from the deep places in our souls where it lurks, we will be surprised at where the sin runs. Calvinists call this “total depravity:” every corner of our lives is tainted by sin, just as the weeds’ roots ran even through the places that I thought were clear. As soon as you assume that there is one aspect of your life that is free from sin, you run the risk of allowing its undiscovered roots to spring forth.
• The most dangerous sins sometimes seem to be innocent and easy to deal with, just as the plants that were easy to overlook had strong roots. We need to be vigilant and address even the smallest sins because we never know how much they are ruining the goodness that God wants in our lives.
• Sin is never simple to deal with. Each sin is connected to other sins in confusing ways. If you attempt to remove one sin, you’ll soon find out that it is associated with other sins in ways that you would have never guessed. You can’t just work on sin in one part of your life, because it is part of the sin in other areas as well.
• It’s not enough to get rid of the sin in your life. You need to replace it with something healthy and blessed, just as I want to replace my weeds with grass. They tell addicts who come out of rehab that they need to change their lifestyles so that they are around people who lift them up and won’t allow them to revert to their old addictions. Jesus told the story of a man who had an evil spirit removed from him but hadn’t allowed the Holy Spirit to fill him instead. The evil spirit came back and brought seven friends with it.
Above all, we can’t weed out the sin in our lives without the grace that God offers us. Call upon the Holy Spirit to be the master gardener of your soul!
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Listen to the Holy Spirit
Since the dawn of the Pentecostal movement about a century ago, references to the work of the Holy Spirit tend to deal with things like speaking in tongues and other flashy, sometimes intimidating, spiritual fireworks. It’s unfortunate that those of us who don’t emphasize these kinds of spiritual gifts have come to ignore the powerful work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, how She draws us to God, and how important She is for our Christian discipleship. (Re-read my May article if you’re curious about why I refer to the Holy Spirit as “She.”)
According to the ancient Greeks, Hermes was the messenger god. He’s the one with wings on his hat and feet. He had to be fast, but he also had to figure out how to take something that the gods said and figure out how to make it understandable for humans. After all, gods are different from people, and what makes sense to one is incomprehensible for the other. My doctoral work focuses on hermeneutics, which gets its name from Hermes. It’s a fancy word for interpretation: how to understand something that comes from a different culture, time, or way of understanding the world.
The Holy Spirit is the Christian Hermes. As the Bible tells us, God’s thoughts are as different from ours as the sky is higher than the earth (Isaiah 55:8-9). Because God is so different from us, we need help to understand what He wants to say to us. Otherwise, His word to us would be incomprehensible, and would probably overwhelm our puny human brains.
One of functions of the Holy Spirit is to bring God’s word to life within us. Without the Holy Spirit’s work, the Bible would be an ancient book written by people long gone. It would have nothing to do with our lives. Without the Holy Spirit, our prayers would be nothing more than talking to ourselves. Our words would fade away as soon as we speak them, and we would never hear God’s response. Without the Holy Spirit, even the work of Christ would be strange and inaccessible for us. We’d have no way to comprehend the new life that he offers us.
Fortunately, that’s not the case. As Jesus promised (John 14:26), He sent the Holy Spirit to teach and instruct us about divine matters and to help us continue to have an open line of communication with God.
The work of the Holy Spirit goes in both directions. We need the Holy Spirit to understand what God wants to tell us, whether it’s through the words of Scripture, a sermon, or some other way. And we need the Holy Spirit to lift up our prayers for us, because we cannot do it ourselves (Romans 8:26-27).
As you lift up your heart to God the Father and to God the Son, don’t forget the third Person of the Trinity. Praise the Holy Spirit for the connection with God that She makes possible.
According to the ancient Greeks, Hermes was the messenger god. He’s the one with wings on his hat and feet. He had to be fast, but he also had to figure out how to take something that the gods said and figure out how to make it understandable for humans. After all, gods are different from people, and what makes sense to one is incomprehensible for the other. My doctoral work focuses on hermeneutics, which gets its name from Hermes. It’s a fancy word for interpretation: how to understand something that comes from a different culture, time, or way of understanding the world.
The Holy Spirit is the Christian Hermes. As the Bible tells us, God’s thoughts are as different from ours as the sky is higher than the earth (Isaiah 55:8-9). Because God is so different from us, we need help to understand what He wants to say to us. Otherwise, His word to us would be incomprehensible, and would probably overwhelm our puny human brains.
One of functions of the Holy Spirit is to bring God’s word to life within us. Without the Holy Spirit’s work, the Bible would be an ancient book written by people long gone. It would have nothing to do with our lives. Without the Holy Spirit, our prayers would be nothing more than talking to ourselves. Our words would fade away as soon as we speak them, and we would never hear God’s response. Without the Holy Spirit, even the work of Christ would be strange and inaccessible for us. We’d have no way to comprehend the new life that he offers us.
Fortunately, that’s not the case. As Jesus promised (John 14:26), He sent the Holy Spirit to teach and instruct us about divine matters and to help us continue to have an open line of communication with God.
The work of the Holy Spirit goes in both directions. We need the Holy Spirit to understand what God wants to tell us, whether it’s through the words of Scripture, a sermon, or some other way. And we need the Holy Spirit to lift up our prayers for us, because we cannot do it ourselves (Romans 8:26-27).
As you lift up your heart to God the Father and to God the Son, don’t forget the third Person of the Trinity. Praise the Holy Spirit for the connection with God that She makes possible.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
The Forgotten Commandment
Are you having a lazy, relaxing summer? If you’re like most people, I suspect that your answer is “no.” We go through this odd pattern every year, assuming that the next season will have a slower pace and allow us to catch up on chores and relax a bit.
But each season just seems to be busier and more hectic than the one that came before, and we never get that chance to relax.
The busy frenetic pace of our lives isn’t just a hassle and a bother. It’s a sin. Unlike other sins, it’s one we seem proud to commit. There’s a hint of pride in our complaints about our hectic schedules. Because we’re busy, we’re important. So many people and projects depend on us. If I don’t paint the garage or clean out the refrigerator, it’s not going to get done. And the world will quit spinning if there’s a dirty refrigerator or shabby-looking garage at our house. That’s what we tell ourselves. So we fill our days and weeks and months with more and more activity, secretly congratulating ourselves on how important we are. We even think that we’re being good faithful Christians by being so busy. After all, doesn’t God want us to serve him and better the world?
This is sinful. And it’s a big sin: so big, in fact, that God named it in the Ten Commandment: “Honor the Sabbath”. Can you imagine ignoring and violating other commandments this way? God commands us to take a day each week to enjoy being with Him, to rest and relax and rejuvenate our spirits.
Three things prevent us from honoring the Sabbath. First, there are practical complications. Some of us have to work on Sundays or have ongoing family commitments that we can’t ignore. These concerns can be addressed if we’re flexible and not dogmatic about our Sabbath-keeping. Make Tuesday your Sabbath. Or divide your Sabbath into two half-days. Be creative, and you’ll be able to be obedient.
Second, we live in a culture that values hard work. Usually, this is good. But it becomes a problem when we stake our self-image upon the work, that we do. If you think that you’re a good person only if you work hard and do lots of things, then you’ve lost sight of the fact that you are a valuable and precious person just as you are. God loves you and takes delight in you; you don’t have to prove anything about yourself when it comes to the Lord. If that’s what God thinks of you, it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Your value comes from His love, not from your activity.
Third, we work too hard because we are arrogant. Does that surprise you? But it’s true. We violate the Fourth Commandment because we believe that we are so important that the world will stop spinning if we don’t take care of things. Everyone is counting on us! Taking a Sabbath rest forces us to recognize the truth that God is in charge of the world, and that He’s able to take care of things without us being on call 24/7. Remember: God himself took a Sabbath rest after creating the universe. Do we think that we’re more important than God himself?
Peter
But each season just seems to be busier and more hectic than the one that came before, and we never get that chance to relax.
The busy frenetic pace of our lives isn’t just a hassle and a bother. It’s a sin. Unlike other sins, it’s one we seem proud to commit. There’s a hint of pride in our complaints about our hectic schedules. Because we’re busy, we’re important. So many people and projects depend on us. If I don’t paint the garage or clean out the refrigerator, it’s not going to get done. And the world will quit spinning if there’s a dirty refrigerator or shabby-looking garage at our house. That’s what we tell ourselves. So we fill our days and weeks and months with more and more activity, secretly congratulating ourselves on how important we are. We even think that we’re being good faithful Christians by being so busy. After all, doesn’t God want us to serve him and better the world?
This is sinful. And it’s a big sin: so big, in fact, that God named it in the Ten Commandment: “Honor the Sabbath”. Can you imagine ignoring and violating other commandments this way? God commands us to take a day each week to enjoy being with Him, to rest and relax and rejuvenate our spirits.
Three things prevent us from honoring the Sabbath. First, there are practical complications. Some of us have to work on Sundays or have ongoing family commitments that we can’t ignore. These concerns can be addressed if we’re flexible and not dogmatic about our Sabbath-keeping. Make Tuesday your Sabbath. Or divide your Sabbath into two half-days. Be creative, and you’ll be able to be obedient.
Second, we live in a culture that values hard work. Usually, this is good. But it becomes a problem when we stake our self-image upon the work, that we do. If you think that you’re a good person only if you work hard and do lots of things, then you’ve lost sight of the fact that you are a valuable and precious person just as you are. God loves you and takes delight in you; you don’t have to prove anything about yourself when it comes to the Lord. If that’s what God thinks of you, it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Your value comes from His love, not from your activity.
Third, we work too hard because we are arrogant. Does that surprise you? But it’s true. We violate the Fourth Commandment because we believe that we are so important that the world will stop spinning if we don’t take care of things. Everyone is counting on us! Taking a Sabbath rest forces us to recognize the truth that God is in charge of the world, and that He’s able to take care of things without us being on call 24/7. Remember: God himself took a Sabbath rest after creating the universe. Do we think that we’re more important than God himself?
Peter
Monday, June 22, 2009
Idol Talk
Money has been on everyone’s minds a lot lately. Or maybe I should say, money has been on people’s minds more than usual lately. Ever since the world economy took a nosedive last fall, we’ve all be worried about finances. It’s very understandable, of course. If you haven’t lost your job, you’re worried you might. And if you’re lucky enough to keep your job, you may have a salary cut. If you’re living on investment income, you’ve suddenly discovered that the money you were counting on has disappeared. Money woes are rippling through the entire country, as everyone from local charities to Fortune 500 companies are struggling to get by. It’s even affected our church, when we lost more than a quarter of the money we saved for the building project and the session is working hard to keep our books in the black.
Our faith has a very simple word for this concern we have about money: idolatry. You’ll find it right there in the Second Commandment, when God forbid his people from having idols. We may be tempted to think that this commandment doesn’t really apply to us these days. “After all,” we think, “aren’t idols those funny statues that pagans bow down in front of?” Yes, those are idols. But idols come in all sorts and sizes. And the worship of idols takes many different forms. An idol is anything that competes with God for the place that he deserves in your life. Here’s a checklist to see if you may be in danger of having an idol in your life. Ask yourself the following questions.
1. Do I count on it to take care of me if I get in trouble?
2. Do I want as much of it, or to be around it, as much as I can?
3. Do I think it will make me happy or fulfilled?
4. Do I have it in mind when I make major decisions?
5. Do I devote significant time and resources to it?
If you’re like most people in our society and our world, you could probably ask yourself these questions with money in mind and discover that you’re in danger of having money as your idol. You may be allowing money to have the place in your life that belongs only to God. Look again at the questions, and see if you might answer them something like this:
1. I earn and save money for a rainy day.
2. I play the lottery or work extra hours to try to get as much money as I can.
3. With a little more money, I can get things that will make life nicer.
4. I plan my time and my energy around what costs the least or earns me the most.
5. I put a lot of time and effort into earning or managing my money.
There’s a funny thing about idols: they never really deliver on their promises. God warns us away from idols not only because He deserves top space in our lives, but also because He knows that idols will hurt and disappoint us in the long run. And that’s certainly true when it comes to money. We think it will make us happy, but all it does is stress us out. And getting more doesn’t make us happier after all. Studies have shown that big lottery winners are more unhappy a year after they hit the jackpot than they were before. We think money will give us security and will protect us, but events in the last year have shown us once again that it just ain’t so.
Money is a necessary part of life in this society of ours. But it doesn’t have to be the most important part. That place belongs to God alone, who truly can give us lives of joy and significance, and who will never let us down.
Our faith has a very simple word for this concern we have about money: idolatry. You’ll find it right there in the Second Commandment, when God forbid his people from having idols. We may be tempted to think that this commandment doesn’t really apply to us these days. “After all,” we think, “aren’t idols those funny statues that pagans bow down in front of?” Yes, those are idols. But idols come in all sorts and sizes. And the worship of idols takes many different forms. An idol is anything that competes with God for the place that he deserves in your life. Here’s a checklist to see if you may be in danger of having an idol in your life. Ask yourself the following questions.
1. Do I count on it to take care of me if I get in trouble?
2. Do I want as much of it, or to be around it, as much as I can?
3. Do I think it will make me happy or fulfilled?
4. Do I have it in mind when I make major decisions?
5. Do I devote significant time and resources to it?
If you’re like most people in our society and our world, you could probably ask yourself these questions with money in mind and discover that you’re in danger of having money as your idol. You may be allowing money to have the place in your life that belongs only to God. Look again at the questions, and see if you might answer them something like this:
1. I earn and save money for a rainy day.
2. I play the lottery or work extra hours to try to get as much money as I can.
3. With a little more money, I can get things that will make life nicer.
4. I plan my time and my energy around what costs the least or earns me the most.
5. I put a lot of time and effort into earning or managing my money.
There’s a funny thing about idols: they never really deliver on their promises. God warns us away from idols not only because He deserves top space in our lives, but also because He knows that idols will hurt and disappoint us in the long run. And that’s certainly true when it comes to money. We think it will make us happy, but all it does is stress us out. And getting more doesn’t make us happier after all. Studies have shown that big lottery winners are more unhappy a year after they hit the jackpot than they were before. We think money will give us security and will protect us, but events in the last year have shown us once again that it just ain’t so.
Money is a necessary part of life in this society of ours. But it doesn’t have to be the most important part. That place belongs to God alone, who truly can give us lives of joy and significance, and who will never let us down.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Naming the Holy Spirit (Just in Time for Pentecost)
There’s a problem with the English language. We don’t have a personal pronoun to refer to someone without saying that they’re male or female. Other languages have a word that can mean “he,” “she,” or “it” depending on the circumstances. We don’t. Normally, this isn’t an issue because we generally know the gender of the person we’re talking about, and we pick “he” or “she.” (“It” refers to stuff that isn’t a person, so that one doesn’t count.) Until about a generation ago, “he” could be used on those rare occasions when we didn’t know if it was a male or female that we were talking about. As the feminist movement helped us to become sensitive to how this can be a problem for some people, we’ve started to use the somewhat awkward “he/she” construction.
So what pronoun do we use for God? God is a person, so “it” just doesn’t cut it. We know that God is neither male nor female, so calling God “He” or “She” is equally inaccurate. Some people try to avoid the entire issue by never using a pronoun for God. But this can sometimes be ridiculous: imagine reciting John 3:16 by saying “For God so loved the world that God gave God's only Child…”. So I, and many people, use the male pronoun for God. I do it for two reasons. First, it’s the traditional and customary way to do it. Referring to God as anything other than “He” would take some of us a lot of getting used to. And the strangeness of calling God “She” would interfere with people’s ability to hear what’s actually being said. However, some people would argue that there is a good reason for breaking with tradition at this point, because calling God “He” reinforces the dominance of men over women in our society which has so often been unhealthy.
My second reason for calling God “He” is a better one. While we know that God is neither male nor female, Jesus instructed us to call the first Person of the Trinity “Father.” And when the second Person of the Trinity became incarnate, he came as the male Jesus. So two of the three Persons of the Trinity have been revealed to us through male-oriented language. It doesn’t make God a man, but it tips the scales for us to refer to God with male pronouns.
However, when it comes to the third Person of the Trinity, things are a bit different. The Holy Spirit is a person, just as the Father and Son are. But have you ever noticed how we sometimes refer to the Spirit as “It”? That’s just plain wrong. Imagine how demeaning it would be for you to say something like “I talked to my neighbor yesterday. It told me about its new car.” If you wouldn’t talk about another human that way, why in the world would you talk about God that way?
So, do we call the Spirit “He” or “She”? If I’m correct in thinking that many of us refer to the Spirit as “It,” then our traditional and customary language is wrong, and wrong enough that it needs to be changed. Calling the Spirit “He” would reinforce the wrong notion that God is male. So I suggest that we refer to the Holy Spirit as “She.” It may sound odd, but it’s no more incorrect than calling the Spirit “He.” In fact, there’s some Biblical justification for this, if we accept that Proverbs’ personification of Wisdom as a woman is a reference to the Holy Spirit, and if we take Jesus’ message to Nicodemus seriously that we must be “born of the Spirit” (John 3:8), since women have exclusive birthing rights.
Calling the Holy Spirit “She” isn’t a radical claim about the nature of God. It’s simply the best that we can do until the English language gives us better choices.
So what pronoun do we use for God? God is a person, so “it” just doesn’t cut it. We know that God is neither male nor female, so calling God “He” or “She” is equally inaccurate. Some people try to avoid the entire issue by never using a pronoun for God. But this can sometimes be ridiculous: imagine reciting John 3:16 by saying “For God so loved the world that God gave God's only Child…”. So I, and many people, use the male pronoun for God. I do it for two reasons. First, it’s the traditional and customary way to do it. Referring to God as anything other than “He” would take some of us a lot of getting used to. And the strangeness of calling God “She” would interfere with people’s ability to hear what’s actually being said. However, some people would argue that there is a good reason for breaking with tradition at this point, because calling God “He” reinforces the dominance of men over women in our society which has so often been unhealthy.
My second reason for calling God “He” is a better one. While we know that God is neither male nor female, Jesus instructed us to call the first Person of the Trinity “Father.” And when the second Person of the Trinity became incarnate, he came as the male Jesus. So two of the three Persons of the Trinity have been revealed to us through male-oriented language. It doesn’t make God a man, but it tips the scales for us to refer to God with male pronouns.
However, when it comes to the third Person of the Trinity, things are a bit different. The Holy Spirit is a person, just as the Father and Son are. But have you ever noticed how we sometimes refer to the Spirit as “It”? That’s just plain wrong. Imagine how demeaning it would be for you to say something like “I talked to my neighbor yesterday. It told me about its new car.” If you wouldn’t talk about another human that way, why in the world would you talk about God that way?
So, do we call the Spirit “He” or “She”? If I’m correct in thinking that many of us refer to the Spirit as “It,” then our traditional and customary language is wrong, and wrong enough that it needs to be changed. Calling the Spirit “He” would reinforce the wrong notion that God is male. So I suggest that we refer to the Holy Spirit as “She.” It may sound odd, but it’s no more incorrect than calling the Spirit “He.” In fact, there’s some Biblical justification for this, if we accept that Proverbs’ personification of Wisdom as a woman is a reference to the Holy Spirit, and if we take Jesus’ message to Nicodemus seriously that we must be “born of the Spirit” (John 3:8), since women have exclusive birthing rights.
Calling the Holy Spirit “She” isn’t a radical claim about the nature of God. It’s simply the best that we can do until the English language gives us better choices.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Semper Ref
Presbyterians call themselves “Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda.” This is typically translated as “The Church Reformed and Always Reforming.” But for reasons that I’ll explain in a bit, there’s a crucial error in this mis-translation. We recognize that as individuals and as a church, we’re never quite where God wants us to be. For us, the life of faith is an adventurous journey, as we seek to change ourselves into what God wants us to be. Because of the sin that is a part of human nature, the journey starts far from God. And even while we seek to draw closer to Him, we continually swerve off in other directions and need to get our bearings straight over and over again. What this means is that we never sit back on our accomplishments and congratulate ourselves that we’ve “made it” and are all squared away with God. There’s always more work to do, and there’s always errors in our lives that we need to correct. It’s true for us individually, and it’s true for us as a church.
A tremendous change has just taken place at Old Union Church. The character and purpose of our congregation remains the same, but with our new building, the possibilities for what we are able to do in God’s name, and the witness which we carry into the community, is very different. It’s going to take us a while to sort through it all and figure out what we can now do. In the midst of all this newness at Old Union, it would be easy for us to wish for the way things used to be. Change makes us uncomfortable, especially for something as important to us as our church. Weren’t things good enough before? Why do we have to change? The answer is simple: we are the Reformed church that is always reforming. Change, growth, and development is in our very nature. As our motto indicates, we are a future-looking church, eager to discover how we can change to be more faithful to God. Traditions are wonderful, but they are the foundation for our journey, not the final destination.
But what kind of change are we talking about? Not all change is good, and we can all think of plenty of examples in which change made things worse. This is where the accurate translation of our motto makes all the difference. “Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda” does not mean “The Church Reformed, Always Reforming,” but “The Church Reformed, Always Being Reformed.” Change isn’t something we do; it’s something God does to us. We do not undertake our journey of faith blindly. God leads us and works in us to make us the people and the church that He wants. We depend upon the work of His Spirit to reform and change us according to His purposes. From the very beginning, we have sought for this building project to be God’s plan for the direction of our church, and not just something we thought of by ourselves.
It’s exciting to begin a new chapter of our church’s history. Let’s continue to seek God’s guidance to ensure that we are being reformed by Him.
A tremendous change has just taken place at Old Union Church. The character and purpose of our congregation remains the same, but with our new building, the possibilities for what we are able to do in God’s name, and the witness which we carry into the community, is very different. It’s going to take us a while to sort through it all and figure out what we can now do. In the midst of all this newness at Old Union, it would be easy for us to wish for the way things used to be. Change makes us uncomfortable, especially for something as important to us as our church. Weren’t things good enough before? Why do we have to change? The answer is simple: we are the Reformed church that is always reforming. Change, growth, and development is in our very nature. As our motto indicates, we are a future-looking church, eager to discover how we can change to be more faithful to God. Traditions are wonderful, but they are the foundation for our journey, not the final destination.
But what kind of change are we talking about? Not all change is good, and we can all think of plenty of examples in which change made things worse. This is where the accurate translation of our motto makes all the difference. “Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda” does not mean “The Church Reformed, Always Reforming,” but “The Church Reformed, Always Being Reformed.” Change isn’t something we do; it’s something God does to us. We do not undertake our journey of faith blindly. God leads us and works in us to make us the people and the church that He wants. We depend upon the work of His Spirit to reform and change us according to His purposes. From the very beginning, we have sought for this building project to be God’s plan for the direction of our church, and not just something we thought of by ourselves.
It’s exciting to begin a new chapter of our church’s history. Let’s continue to seek God’s guidance to ensure that we are being reformed by Him.
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