While I found great thrill in learning about the Restoration Movement when converted to Churches of Christ, it seems clear this movement has also gone about to set many traps. The very idea of restoration is to keep, preserve, and repeat with habit forming motion those ideals reclaimed. The trap is that man loves to hold to the old and God loves to provide the new.
His call is constantly toward the new bent. Man loves the new so well that if not careful he will fossilize it into habit which will eventually grow counter to the newness of God's day by day refreshment.
God is a regenerationalist.
At my tenure and age I marvel at how much we have shut God out from His own kingdom by our stubborn preservative mindset. Yet, take a good look at the struggles to find a significant number of people in their 20s in most of our churches.
Next, quit blaming their disinterest.
These are alive and ambitious of heart. It is our stale and lethargic rote styles which keep them at bay.
The Spirit of God regenerates which causes me to wonder, as well as seek out, if the solution to blending all levels of generations into ideal harmony is for all to be born of the Spirit and then be led by the Spirit. While we charge that we are to be born again through baptism, it seems we soon calcify by preserving that which we once found new because we want to keep it in that form....yet it soon grows....old.
God is a regenerationalist. We are alive when abiding in His and by His and with His Spirit. We are dull, lethargic and unproductive when we set out to keep the new at bay.
No comments:
Post a Comment