Boldness

Lord, Purge Your Church

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It’s the early a.m. here and quiet as a tomb. That silence lends opportunity to think.

I’m pondering the state of the American Church. But then, I never stop.

We live in a world coming apart at the seams. Some say that’s not the case, but as I see it, the deterioration is clear. I wonder regularly how it is that all sense is missing from whichever brouhaha holds our attention this day.

It may not be much on the grander scale, but the fiasco surrounding last week’s notorious conference makes it clear genuine Christians must pray this:

Lord, purge Your Church.

If the Church in America is to have any influence at all on the larger culture and society of the United States, the dross must be removed.

Pray also that you are not the dross.

At this point in 2013, I’m fully convinced that the American Church is thinking too far ahead of itself if it continues to believe it can have such an influence. While the gates of hell cannot hold against the Church as a whole, no assurance is given for any one branch:

Ephesus in ruins

Ephesus in ruins

“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. “‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
—Revelation 2:1-5 ESV

We could point to the vitality of the Ephesian Church and its contemporary influence on the world—if it were still around. But the Lord removed that Church’s lampstand and the light went out.

The American Church is at the lampstand-removal phase, if it hasn’t happened already. An opportunity to repent may still exist, but I wonder if it must come down to something more drastic than repentance.

Lord, purge Your Church.

The State of the Miraculous in a World of Unbelief

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One of the hallmarks of the final days, as noted by Scripture, is a horrifying level of unbelief.

Jesus said it Himself:

“Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
—Luke 18:8b ESV

The end of all things depicted in the Book of Revelation shows that even when all of the earth is afflicted by the outcomes of supernatural wrath, mankind refuses to believe:

The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
—Revelation 9:20-21 ESV

There are some today who want to cast aspersions on the Kingdom of God and its many miraculous components, and they want to question how the Holy Spirit works in believers. Oddly, many doing so call themselves Christians. Though they claim to abide by the authority of Scripture and not by personal experience, they regularly challenge the miraculous in the Bible’s pages by asking where all the miracles are today. And they ask why those Christians who still believe in the miracles that are the hallmark of the Kingdom can’t always manufacture those miracles when such is demanded.

These naysayers like to point fingers at the ones who still have faith that supernatural works can occur through the ministrations of simple believers filled with God’s Holy Spirit. When a miracle does not happen, the naysayers often mock those who still believe in the miraculous.

But what the naysayers never take into account is the power of unbelief within a community. They do not ask how it is possible for the Revelation passage above to be true, that despite all the unrepentant have seen and experienced, the recipients of unprecedented levels of supernatural wrath remain in the grips of the powerful delusion that is unbelief.

We turn to the authority of Scripture to explain what happens when an entire community is gripped by unbelief:

[Jesus] went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. —Mark 6:1-5 ESV

Jesus, the Son of Man, who was filled in all His being by the Holy Spirit, who was the sinless Messiah and Alpha and Omega, could do no mighty work in a community filled with unbelief.

When we consider the times we live in and the supposed paucity of miracles we see, do we ever ask if the reason for the lack of the miraculous is because the community around us is mired in unbelief?

Do we ask ourselves what a community of genuine belief can do when all unbelief has been thrown off?Christ and the Community

Do we ever think that the miracle denied the faithful person is because everyone around that faithful person does not believe?

Or do we blame the faithful person?

Or worse, do we blame God?

The question of the miraculous today never takes into account the crippling power of unbelief, especially when multiplied throughout a community. And those who would question the miraculous never ask if their unbelief and the unbelief of those they gather around them is what stands in the way of miracles.

One Empowered, One Not

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Edna had a problem. Her computer’s printer stopped working correctly. The computer followed a day later.

Fortunately for Edna, both devices came with on-site service.

John from the printer company and Chuck from the computer company arrived almost simultaneously at the little house at the end of the lane. John held a thick manual for the printer and was dressed in a spiffy, navy blue uniform with his name embroidered above his heart. Chuck came loaded with tools, drives, and devices and seemed less put together. He also carried a thick manual. He wore a uniform too, but it was faded and had a hole in one elbow, and the headphone/microphone contraption strapped to his head made him look alien.

Both repairmen greeted Edna.

“Just happy you boys are here,” the elderly woman said.

“We’re happy to be here,” the two answered.

But soon, one of the two had less happy news.

John had looked at the printer’s screen and read the code. “I can’t do anything about this,” he said.

Edna frowned. “You looked in your manual and it didn’t tell you what to do?”

“No,” John answered. “Well, actually yes. Yes, it did tell me some of what to do, but protocol requires I call in an engineer who was on the design team. I mean, I know the manual backwards and forwards, but this is how we do it. Only the engineer at HQ is authorized.”

Edna was incredulous and started, “But—”

“—when will it get fixed?” John finished. “Well, the engineer may take his time. He should be back in this area next week.” John stared out a window. “Or the week after that.”

Chuck watched the wind go out of Edna’s sails.

“But I need to print a flyer for the ladies’ auxiliary fund-raiser. It’s next week.” Edna replied.

John offered her a frog-like frown and said, “Sorry. That’s the best I can do. The engineer is really good, though. I’m sure he’ll have you fixed up.”

“Don’t see much of the point of having on-site service if it comes down to this,” Edna said to herself.

But Chuck heard it. Despite the frustration in the words, he smiled.

Edna escorted John to the door.

“A pleasure serving you,” John said. The repairman got in his truck, which was shiny and new, and drove off.

Edna walked back to her little home office. Chuck had out a small notebook computer. He was talking into his microphone. To Edna, it sounded like so much gibberish, but she was sure it was something technical. The repairman stared intently into his computer’s display. “Thanks,” he then said to no one in the room.

“Good news,” Chuck announced. “I was able to discern what your problem is.”

“That’s great!” The woman’s countenance brightened.

“I was talking with the engineer at our company, and he sent a patch that should fix the issue on the computer. Turns out, it was an OS update glitch.”

To Edna, Chuck seemed to rise up an inch taller.

“Yeah, a lot of people got hammered by that one,” he continued. “Those auto-updates sometimes create problems.”

“Yes, they do sometimes,” Edna said.

“Well, I’ll make things better than ever,” the repairman reassured. Edna was surprised to see him move to the printer. Intently, he glowered at the printer’s display.

“I think this is a firmware update glitch,” Chuck said.

“How do you know that, young man?”

“I just know. I think I can fix it.”

Chuck connected his notebook to the malfunctioning computer and ran the patch he had received. With a reboot, the computer was fixed. The repairman then shut off the printer, reached for a button on the back that had escaped Edna’s notice, held it down, and flicked the printer’s switch back on. The printer came on and ran through its startup procedure.

“A miracle!” Edna proclaimed, beaming.

Chuck laughed. “Not quite yet. It won’t run right without that update. I’ll download it and install it.”

Which he did. And soon, both the computer and printer were working right again.

But to Edna’s surprise, Chuck wasn’t done.

“I’m pretty sure your computer was running a bit slow lately.”

Edna was beginning to wonder about this Chuck fellow. He seemed to know things he shouldn’t.

“Yes,” she said. “It hasn’t been itself.”

“‘Hasn’t been itself,'” Chuck repeated to himself with a chuckle. “Yeah, sometimes these things have their own personality, don’t they?”

“My husband could be cantankerous too,” Edna said.

Chuck saw the woman glance at a picture on the wall. “I’m sure he was a great man.”

Edna nodded. “He was.”

The repairman smiled and turned back to the computer. “The hard drive needs defragmenting—badly. The source of the slowness, I’m sure. I’ll take care of that, and you’ll be as good as new.”

And an hour later, for Edna and her little home office upon which the ladies’ auxiliary depended, it was as good as new. Or better. Thanks to Chuck.

On his way out, Chuck handed Edna a business card. As he pulled away in his decade-old truck that had probably seen better days, Edna waved. She examined the white card. Handwritten on the bottom it read, Call anytime—for any reason.

Later that afternoon, Edna phoned the printer company and canceled her service call. She figured if she had a problem with the printer in the future, she had someone better to call.

***

There’s a conference going on this weekend on the West Coast. The equivalence of that conference is to do something about “repairmen” who are out of bounds, especially if they are more like Chuck than like John. That may be well and good, but if folks like Chuck get ground up in the process, that’s not good. Sadly, it does not appear that those running the conference care much about the difference. Maybe they do, but I suspect the Chucks of this world are going to get short shrift anyway.

We need empowered people in the Church. God empowers people by His Spirit because He intends for us to do the work. Wherever we may be, if we are so empowered, we are fulfilling His intent for us, and subsequently, we are helping in the way that He intends. If we reject that empowerment, then we become like John in the story. We can show up, but what good are we?

I want to be like Chuck. Don’t you?