JOY LIKE SWORDS

We have made a bad habit of rushing through the introductions to the epistles. If all of the scriptures are profitable to us, then even the introductions can teach us about God, how he is working, and how we should respond. Take Colossians 1.3 for example:

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you,

Paul always thanked God when he prayed for the Colossians. Don’t rush past that. Ask yourself, “When was the last time I thought about another believer and was drawn into worship at the thought?” That’s what Paul did. God had accomplished the Colossians salvation. Paul wasn’t able to rescue anyone. God was the strong man who lifted the Colossian believers from death into life.

As I think about the 2-3 close believers that I have been ministering to I get excited about what God is accomplishing in them. I see them hoping in his grace, and trusting in his power. And that excites me. They aren’t trusting in me. I hope they never do. And as I think of them I want my thoughts of them to turn into praise of God and his goodness. I want to immediately move into worship of a saving God when I think of those who have been rescued.

In the introduction to his book, Church in the Making, Ben Arment asks a bold question,

How did church planting become such a spiritual crapshoot?

He points out that when asked why their plant is growing most planters respond by saying, “God is just blessing.” Conversely, when asked why their church is dying most planters say, “God is teaching me a lot right now.” His point is that most planters don’t have a good idea why church plants grow or decline.Faithfulness and Fruitfulness, Growth and Decline

I would argue that the same is true of most pastors, regardless of whether or not they are planters. Trying to pinpoint what is causing growth or decline isn’t easy, but it’s not because we don’t have any ideas. In reality, you can probably pick out 10-20 reasons, but none feel any more influential than the rest. Trying to figure out what is making a church tick is like trying to understand another human being. It has a life of it’s own, and it’s complicated. It has a history. There have been long strings of decisions made that have shaped the church into something today that it wasn’t even a year ago.

Have you ever felt that in your own ministry? Have you ever drove yourself crazy trying to understand the church you serve?

Over the last 2 years I have experienced something of a transformation of the heart. The transformation didn’t begin with the following scripture passage, but it is summarized by it:

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. ² Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? ³ Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? ⁴ Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? ⁵ Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith—⁶ just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?

I grew up knowing that God saved me by grace through faith. Salvation is God’s business. That always seemed evident enough, and I believed that the corollary to that statement was this: sanctification is my business. Lost people need the gospel, and saved people need good works. I’m not sure exactly why I thought that way, but two years ago the weight of Paul’s words finally began to crush me. Salvation is by faith. So it is with discipleship. Read Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase:

You crazy Galatians! Did someone put a hex on you? Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, for it’s obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives. His sacrifice on the cross was certainly set before you clearly enough.

^2-4 Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it?

As I read those words I felt like a biologist who was drowning. All of his study has told him that humans need air to survive, but the sting of saltwater filling his lungs confirms that truth more than any study. I had known that obeying God was impossible outside of Christ, but none of my obedience had brought pleasure, only a heightened sense of guilt.

I had been paying what C. S. Lewis calls the tax of the moral conscience. Every devotion was duty. Every missed devotion was condemnation. But, Paul says the transfer of the gospel isn’t from death into limbo, but from death into life. Death brings captivity, life brings freedom. Christ didn’t just accomplish my salvation. He also accomplished my sanctification, my discipleship, and only as I press into him and find myself in him do I become his disciple.