Urban Reformation

There was a time in my teenage years, in which I had become so disconnected with my parents in my own rebellion toward them, that I spoke little to them. The “culture” within my family was a bit focused on “self” if you could imagine, to the point where often if we were home and eating we all had our own televisions in our rooms and if we couldn’t agree with what was on Television which was much of the time we went to our rooms and each turning on our own channel watched what we wanted. This could be any time, after school, after church it was just the way things were at the time.

So I’ve once again been contemplating on “The Proximity of The Body” with one another, and how we as American’s work in applying God’s word from the things we hear, read, listen to, such as sermons.

This evening a picture came into my mind. What is our level of application in proportion to our knowledge of the thing we’ve heard? And to what degree from our understanding have we shared with someone with a lesser degree of understanding the truths that have been revealed to us? Am I pointing to discipleship? Yes but not exactly that. I know that in some cases there won’t be an “application” that you can latch onto and “do” in all sermons.

Perhaps some of you would say, “yes I do that” and you contemplate the sermon with your spouse or even perhaps your children, you frequently share what the Lord is doing in your life in sanctification perhaps or with your small group?

Let me ask another question, how many of us are content, even satisfied to some large degree to have the knowledge, or having heard the sermon to meditate upon a great truth of God without actually having put it forth in either sharing this truth with someone else or putting it into practice within our own life?

Imagine for a moment the woman at the well(John 4), after having been told that Jesus was the Messiah holding with inside herself this truth and telling no one. The truth is the most transforming, amazing thing in her life just happened she experienced meeting He who saves, and the God of the Universe in the flesh, can you imagine it for even a moment if this would happen to any of us, what our response might be or even should be? Part of the transforming power of the Gospel is that Jesus Christ through His Holy Spirit so often uses truth of who He is and His message from God’s word, or the pulpit as a propellant to spread the Good News to others.

What has the culture of the United States done to quench the spirit? We have taken our spiritual food in as if the preaching of the Word were like entertainment, and we allow it to sit upon us as if it is a hefty meal on a Sunday afternoon, and it now no more moves us to tell others about Christ or to be different than we once were but we weigh these deep theological truths and understandings in our own minds and then we sit back and often take a nap, admiring simply the meal itself.

So we take our meal back to our rooms only to mediate for a moment and get some sort of deep satisfaction often like one gets from watching the tube, as if they had participated in something which happened to “someone else” never having been moved by the Power of the Gospel nor having to make any changes whatsoever in our lives. We chew some more on the meal and then to forget soon within a week or two what was said or what it was that we ate altogether, perhaps to be rediscovered again in a few months if the recipe is made up again for a similar meal time, and to be admired but not applied once more.

I believe part of the meal time is to come together as a family and then even as a church family to bring these truths into realities of true, deeper, Christ centered, Christian living. This is so easily said, but as I grow older I don’t think there is a substitution for meditating on the word, and allowing the word of God, or the sermon, to so reach the depths of your soul that you can hear the Lord’s conviction in a real way. The reality of the conviction of the Holy Spirit lived out within the Body as we move closer toward sanctification and Holiness.

Many many times I think this is done in community fellowship within the body. This fellowship is like gathering around the table at dinner time and processing the meal, savoring the meal and then not sitting back and keeping the meal just between you and your family, but the fact that there is so much food to go around you soon get your fill and you have food to give to others, much like two fish five loaves which never ended.

This is realizing that this food is truly from God and that it is by God’s hand that you have an abundance of truth in the meal of which you are compelled to impart to others people. You gently get wrapped up in the lives of the fellowship of the body of believers, in which this abundance of food is put to use, and then more so you share it with the lost in teaching them to come to the meal which is only truly satisfied at the cross of calvary….

I want to draw one more comparison, in how this Americanized thinking has taken place in “The Church’s” understanding of Missions.

It is far easier to find a missionary to support, to sit back and know that they are a million miles away with only e-mail to keep track, and with financially supporting them, not that these are invalid or bad things in and of themselves, in fact there is a very valid and a great calling for those who are truly “holding the rope” if you will for those in the field. However, this can also be used and often is used, as a mode of justification for being a spectator of missions within a local church, an ease of the conscience to send money, eat the meal and admire from afar.

And when this latter motive is present, it is much like sitting and watching, and ensuring ones safety and comfort at the cost of propagating the gospel or sharing the meal. This can be in fact sitting in your room watching the missionaries on T.V. as they do the work and as you justify your meal in lethargy because of it’s great taste.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. – John 12:24

If sending money for you isn’t part of this “self-death” process of dying to self in order that life may be produced we must examine ourselves.

Church planting would possibly be sharing the meal with your family, and then locally the lost, but most do not view local church planting and missions on the same plane. Both are started with the intention of sewing the gospel into a place that is in great need of the gospel, yet often it seems the romanticized mission abroad is held in higher regard. I in no way shape or form want to take away from Missions abroad only expand the minds and thinking about local missions. It again starts with me, and my thinking, and whom I’m telling about Jesus Christ, and then in our churches, and then into our towns, cities, states, and then the world!

We say to the individual new missionary, “If you’re not sharing Christ here before you go, you won’t be doing it on the field.” However, we don’t say to our churches, “If we’re not planting churches locally, then we won’t be planting churches on the field?” And I ask myself why? Are we more interested in sending someone away and watching them, as a possibly praying spectator, never having planted a church in our own culture or preached or taught on home soil and yet swiftly we are willing to send them off? So that we may see if they are truly prepared for the field? Now there is truth that many many missionaries have gone before with out this preparation, but it also does not negate the fact of our responsibility in it, nor the poor view of our spectator mentality when it comes to home missions.

So my three points to dedicate to prayer are:

Not to be gorged with food admiring the food and not sharing with the congregation as brother’s and sister’s hearts are knitted together, and then not sharing with the world who are lost.

Meditate Meditate Meditate, that we may hear the conviction of the Holy Spirit and be moved to change.

Pray for our own testimony, our churches, our local missions, and our missions abroad that God may be glorified in all.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. -Acts 1:8

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. -James 1:23-24

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