I’m sitting in the evening service at the moment, listening to Corey Turner speak, and to be honest it’s hard to listen to him without a complete biasness; he’s a very overt charismatic, who chooses to use the normal methods of delivery in this context, which could be summed up as impassioned speech
My point of difference at this moment, is that Corey is purporting that the church needs to embrace the supernatural aspect more; and yes, the supernatural is in the bible, and were enacted through the disciples
I love though, the dialogue in Bruce Almighty, where they reduce the parting of soup to a parlour trick, and accord the status of a miracle to a single mother being able to work two jobs yet still find time to take her son to soccer practice
What’s harder; praying for someone as a once off, or visiting them every week, journeying through their struggles with them?
Yes, in the ideal, you would combine the both of those, you would pray AND journey with them, but if we are brutally honest with ourselves, how often do we just leave things at a prayer and the token follow up?
GOD is not a super side kick!! He’s NOT there for us to COMMAND him!! To have him conduct parlour tricks at our beck and call, or our behest!!
...
I sit here though, and wonder; what’s the point of being able to sit here and pick at things? Or that matter, is there really a point in us being able to get our doctrine super, squeakily correct?
So I have an issue with the church I go to choosing to make a “stand” on gay/same-sex registration, whilst advocating for parties that continue to make our upper-middle class lives more and more comfortable at the expense of the battlers; a church that is ok with making “proxy” judgments yeah, I have an issue with that
But at the end of the day, what does that matter? No, not a contentious question, but moreover a seeking one; seriously, what does it matter?
So what if I’m right doctrinally, or the church I go to is right??? At the end of the day will this have changed the world in any way???
Perhaps no, not really, and perhaps because the proportion of our lives that we truly devote to God is just that small
And before we start to argue about that, let’s differentiate between time we spend doing church things, and proportion of lives that is truly God’s. There’s a difference; time spent involved in church things could also be boiled down to what we choose to do with our left over parts of life
How much do we compartmentalise our lives; how much do we tell God that we’ve got the job thing worked out, the life plan worked out, the car plan worked out, the partner thing worked out (“I want that one!” What if God has a different person? Do we trust him, or do we just want?), and THEN we give Him the remainder of all that for Him to use???
So perhaps it’s not all that bad if we’re doctrinally incorrect, because the extent of the damage/good we can do out of the minute portion of our lives we truly give to God is probably, in the scheme of bettering the world, proportionally as small
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6 comments:
Blogging in service? =D.. challenging as always yet I don't quite agree. There's a danger in being rebelliously opposed to the cliche miracles ie soup-parting and focusing on the more romantic miracles of life ie busy working mom. Smacks of the Jews out in the desert after the Red Sea and them doubting God's power despite of the pillar of smoke and fire - obvious miracles being ignored. They're both awesome, soup and mom.
Plus, Corey DID say that it takes praying for 100 people to be healed before a single person actually IS healed. That doesn't sound like commanding God to sommersault and bang the cymbals at our beck and call.
Church to be doctrinally right -> What is the role of a church? To believers, to non-believers and to God Himself? If we can't get it right, how can we reach out to others? It'll be like prescribing the wrong medication to the ill. What about believers? If we can't get it right, won't that be an anchor around our ankles, keeping us from reaching greater heights in our walk with God?
And would God approve of a church that doesn't have the doctrines that He has decreed? I'm not promoting hypocrisy and indeed, you're the last person I'd ever think of calling that. But for the rest of us, before we try to save the world, we've got to get our basics and our foundations right. We can't do backflips before learning to cartwheel.
Hmmm. See, I don't reckon you need to have all that much sorted out before you can start saving the world. I think working towards saving the world helps us work out what's good doctrine, just as much as good doctrine should help us in saving the world.
Rahaha! What does one say? How can I answer this without incriminating myself...
Ok, I give up. I can't - cause I'm guilty as charged...even if I disagree with how it all goes down, I'm the same as everyone else...
hey nate...just wanted to say I enjoy reading your blog. It's been interesting to watch you journey. :)
The first thing I thought of when I read the posts above was: Jesus didn't say anything about doctrine. He just told us to follow.
Wow. You have a great point there, praying with only the token follow up. Praying, supernaturally, but not offering myself to 'walk through' the problem, too. After all - 'By this the world will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another'. Surely that includes prayer (which includes God) but does not end there.
Darn it.. i think this will be another post that 'sticks'... Add it to the 'what is love' post earlier in the year, and you may have influenced my whole first half of 2007...
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