FLEXIBLE OR INFLEXIBLE?

It seems much of the Christian world finds itself perpetually embroiled in where to stand rock solid and where to give room for opinion.  I don't know about your experience.  Mine has noted that a source of church struggle could be found in improper application of flexibility and inflexibility.

Could it be that many of us have stood our ground where God didn't while yielding turf where God wouldn't?

Surely sin goes unnoticed and undetected in these reversals of orders.

The woe unto me statements in scripture would surely indicate inflexibility.  Options of where those woe points are to be expressed may not be as structured.  Paul's woe unto me if I do not preach the gospel restricted his message but left the location of such preaching wide open.

The church struggles between narrow and wide open.  Can any of you say broad is the way that leads to destruction and narrow is the way that leads to life?  Abusively, narrowness has been embedded to corner the church into fearful non-action while discovering the eye-opening wonder of God's grace is not to be found in many places.

Calvin Miller makes a strong appeal when he notes, Always abandon unnecessary rigidity, for God can only direct the flexible.  This is especially interesting to me for my earliest recollection of conversion as an adult included stern warning that God no longer worked directly in the lives of believers.  For years, I heeded that alert with extreme attentiveness.  Oddly, yet now not surprisingly, when one lives from a narrowness God did not require, He doesn't work from there.

The Holy Spirit of God thrives on flexibility.  He must have our permission to be moved about to and fro reaching the lost and building the body of Christ.  There are inflexible matters which can be named and practiced.  These come not from fear mongers; but from faith toward Jesus.  And there is tremendous need for us to let go of our earth-bindings of human reason and understanding.  We must learn to soar in the high places where only God's nature makes sense.

Flexibility or inflexibility?  Yes.  And no.  We must look for Jesus for our abiding rather than rules which gives much pseudo-security resulting in stagnation of the heart supposedly destined for God.