One of the Great Tensions of God’s Work
A great tension exists between what we receive from God for our faiths and what we receive from the church for our faiths. We are called to live by faith and trust in God, but we look for a church that suits our needs and fulfills what we need at that moment. There is a difficulty in our lives where, as our lives give way to altered time-lines and unforeseen shocks, we expect to find a way to create harmony from our church but we don’t. We expect what we receive from God and what we receive from the church to be the same. When that doesn’t happen, we oftentimes look elsewhere.
For a lot of people, theology doesn’t matter much any more. Core beliefs on baptism, end times theology, or our ministry to the world get replaced by the comfort theology of worship preference or whether a church is too liberal/conservative on social issues. I hear repeatedly from people around our community that a past church failed them in some way.
What I rarely hear is that God failed them. And for that I am thankful. I can help encourage the church to be more welcoming. I can call people to account for a lack of mercy ministry. I can proclaim the power of righteous stewardship. But I cannot change the mind of God. I can plead and intercede on someone’s behalf, but ultimately, God will speak into action what He deems right and necessary. This doesn’t mean that God has “failed” anyone, quite the contrary. But, explaining the mysterious work of God to someone expecting God to act according to their rational beliefs can lead to a higher chance of feeling like God has let them down.
So we must confess that faith is the tension between God’s unexpected great actions and interventions in our lives along with the fulfilled promises we need God to abide by. We need both and we need to understand that both happen directly from God and through His church. When we move from one church to the next, are we adequately giving God the opportunity to work through His people in the way we are supposed to? Because we are sinners, we fail one another more than we would like to admit. But through these times we learn patience, forgiveness, discernment, wisdom, submission, omission, and maturity.
May our prayer this week be that the great tension of faith be witnessed for the strengthening of our spirits. Amen.
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