WHAT IF BUTTERFLIES CRAWLED?

It does seem that so much of life has traps set just waiting for the snare.  The captured are usually us.  What's worse is that if not careful we begin to assume that's the way life goes; snagged, injured, discouraged, and even worse....stuck.  But it is not supposed to be this way.

Jesus didn't experience punishment on the cross and then declare; Let me pay you back by making you go to church.  You know that I like church...now.  But it wasn't always that way.  (And yes, my critics, I know that church isn't the building, it's the people.)  To many the church represents anything but new.

Cutting edge?  Current grasp?  Effective reach?  These terms might fit Facebook or Twitter; but would hardly ever be used as an accusation toward the church.  And, while this might be true, it is wrong for the church to be behind.  There should be nothing newer in the communities than our churches.

Let me repeat.  From what I read in scripture THERE SHOULD BE NOTHING NEWER IN THE COMMUNITY THAN THE CHURCH.

We believers are called to be new creatures; old things have passed away and new things have come.  But this isn't the trend.  The route that we take is basically what worked yesterday is good enough for me to day.  Serious thought must be given if this is our doctrine and practice.

The very essence of being born again is to start life over; not in sitting upright in a pew and paying attention, but to take on a new heart for an entirely new kind of life.  It isn't a matter of stopping doing bad things and beginning to do good things.  It's more.  It's a transformational experience just as a caterpillar transitions into a butterfly.

Can you imagine a butterfly that still crawls?

If butterflies still crawled they wouldn't be butterflies.  They would be  known as buttercrawlers.

Christians are to be new people (born again, John 3;3-5) who are in perpetual, constant, repetitive renewal...as in re-new...as in new again.  Christianity is being blunted by steady input to cling tightly to the past.  Preference may win the battle; but no productivity will signal the war was lost.

Therefore we do not lose heart, though the outer man may be decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day (II Cor. 4:17).  Renewal...day by day by day. Butterflies are not commissioned to crawl.  May Christians learn to fly in the exploration of experiential renewal.

I want to quit my crawling.  I want to stop my old-habit-limiting of the faith concepts.  I want to fly in the new; not grovel in the old arguments that still don't produce new life. How many churches out- duel other churches in their Sunday School class chatter while neither of the groups rage with a fire for effective evangelism?

So I ask if you would pray for me.

I want to meet with radical Muslim leaders to see where they hurt, where they are distracted, and how Jesus might begin to occur as more than a Prophet to them.  I want to know what it is about our outreach efforts that are ineffective because such are weary-worn.  I want to know what ideas God would have for effective evangelism that would surpass what the Silicon Valley could imagine, create, and produce in their admirable display of thinking new.

I want to be as a butterfly that....gets to fly.