I just could not do it any more.
One of my (many) problems is that I am not really the confrontational type. I can be brusque and up front and blunt when I want to be, and I’ve been informed that I can appear somewhat intimidating at times, though I put that down to the black outfits! For all that, though, I don’t confront people and issues as often as I should. Not saying it should be a daily event, but there is something of the timid in me, that wants to avoid the mess of confrontation.
Of course for the serious pursuits and issues in life, that tendency to avoid only causes a pile-up until the inevitable takes place. You see when you are convicted about something rather fundamental to your operation of life, it should be expected that it will come into conflict with the way things used to be. It should clash with previous held notes on life. At some stage there has to be a resolution that says that the fresh conviction takes precedent over what was the case. That is not an easy resolution to reach and live out – but it is important to live it out.
Such a conflict and confrontation came about when I reflected on some of the gaps between the things I read in scripture about what life in the Spirit was all about, and what I was experiencing on the communal and individual level. There was a significant discrepancy. It was as though people acknowledged something wasn’t fitting, but rather than disturb the given order of things, they would brush it under the carpet and meanwhile grouse about how things were not as they used to be.
What am I talking about? Well things like church being a community of grace where people came from all walks of life to grow in fellowship which meant dealing with who we were warts and all. Dealing with them, bearing with each other, supporting each other, challenging each other to know Jesus and share what we knew.
This was about exercising the gifts God has given us so that we could grow to be more like Jesus. A sense of joint responsibility for proclaiming this good news and living it out in lives of love demonstrating the things that should follow those who follow Jesus. A sense that the presence of God was not just for us to have a feel-good moment that passed. It would inspire us to serve and explore new ways to share with the community in which we lived.
It led us to be compassionate about our state before God and especially those who had yet to know Jesus. It compelled us to live this new life without sitting fat and content in church service, after church service with mouths wide open expecting one person to throw food at us. It compelled us to look for a different way rather than eat spiritual food and get even more fat with no evidence of it energising us for life in Christ. It compelled us to believe there was more to life than being passive bench warmers.
Now those convictions are all well and good if you can keep them to yourself and not disrupt others who are actually content with things the way they are, and don’t know why you would to upset things. Nothing is perfect, implies their rebuke, but this is as good as it gets so don’t rock the boat. Yet while things carry on, people in the pews are dying, people outside the four walls are dying, and we who are enlivened by the cure of the gospel sit and choke on it. Shame on me, shame on them, shame on you, shame on us.
That kind of conviction is not something that you just sit on and maintain decorum and the usual ways of operating. Despite your best efforts to behave yourself, it slips out. It stirs you as you despair at foolishness, it drives you as you pursue the better way set out before you in the dynamic life of Christ.
To some this kind of predicament might appear somewhat frustrating. It is. With that, however, there is the sense in which as it is birthed in a conviction about Jesus, the work of the Holy Spirit, the nature of fellowship, Church and mission, that it won’t go to waste. It won’t be in vain, it will find its outlet, as we keep on pursuing the call of God through living life in the light of His love.
We know there are others similarly convicted on these issues, who on the one hand are desperate to remain respectful and courteous to those who continue to claim to follow Jesus and have brought into the culture of complacency, yet still remain our brothers and sisters in Christ. The deal is not to have a superior attitude, as though we have the truth and they don’t. The desire is to love and respect them, and yet not be suckered into accepting that life and all that is seen in it, is all there is.
That desire is to see Christ, His wondrous works from OT to NT to right now. To see Him and believe He is still passionate about seeing lives changed and transformed to be like Him, as He lives in those who would believe in Him.
It is see those who believe not settle for anything less than the exciting, sacrificial, challenging and life-stimulating pursuit of seeing His Kingdom and will done on earth as it is in heaven.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 