Hello Church!
Marci and I just returned from Malibu from our marriage retreat – it was splendid; great views, great talks, and a nice time of refreshment. As you might imagine, our favorite times weren’t spent sitting around a board room talking about marriage – that’s important, but our most impactful moments were waking up early and watching surfers at daybreak in the cool ocean breeze, and enjoying new food in a new place with my favorite person.
And this serves as a kind of metaphor for what we need as a church! Sometimes we miss the most important thing in the world – to just sit back and behold the splendor of the gospel! It’s a common biblical word – particularly in the Psalms: behold! See it; and be amazed. When we stand shoulder to shoulder in wonder and amazement at Christ and his mercy, we are better connected, more purposeful, and more joyful. There are a few things that tend to get in the way of this amazement, in no particular order (because idols will be different for each individual):
Busyness – We just get focused on other things that feel more urgent, so we become poor stewards of our time, giving only the bare minimum of ourselves to the Lord.
Culture – There are things in the world that bring more satisfaction in the moment than the long-simmering power of the gospel; we like our friends, our good times, our autonomy, our fun, and our causes – and they feel more important because they feed us instantly. Love Jesus more.
Theological Distinctives – It might seem a strange one, but sometimes we love what separates us from other Christians more than the gospel itself. Knowledge is power, and I mean that in the worst way possible. We feel powerful when we should be in awe, and we become stifled to the beauty and simplicity of the gospel because we love what elevates our own minds.
Faith in Self – Sometimes we fail to be in awe of the gospel because we don’t believe it; we want to hold onto our beliefs that we’re good enough, that God wouldn’t do things in a certain way because it goes against our culture’s sensibilities, or we just don’t want to give ourselves to anything that requires commitment – we love to trust in ourselves!
The Therapeutic Self – Researcher Christian Smith coined the term “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” as a description as the most common religion in America today. I will be good, feel good, and acknowledge that there’s a God somewhere. It’s the therapeutic self which has taken off more than any other aspect of this description since the term originated around the year 2000. If something has made you feel sad or uncomfortable, it is cut off – and that includes the church. This cannot be.
We’re all going to be tempted by one (or more) of these, and this is a call to a deeper commitment to His church because of the magnitude of the gospel. Wake up, o sleeper, and rise from the dead (Eph. 5:14)! He took a lifeless body in each of us and breathed life into us – you can’t get much more dramatic than that! The creator of heaven and earth, who knit you together in your mother’s womb has called you by name to himself. He delights in you, sings gloriously over you (Zeph. 3:17), and finds you to be absolutely righteous in his sight. Instead of being held back by any of the idols that may plague us, why not sit in the beauty of the gospel, with unity and thanksgiving?
The gospel is infinitely grand! It couldn’t be bigger. Behold the beauty of God and his mercy!
Consider these words from the psalmist:
One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to inquire in his temple. – Psalm 27:4