Seeing the 'good'

My decision to practise church as a first century model is, as I have written before, costly.  One of the costs is seeing good people become frosty because I don't do 'the done thing.' As I have written before I self assess regularly and always come to the conclusion that there is a historical expression of church and a scriptural expression of church.  But here I want to show how there is no 'right' or 'wrong.'

You and I were born into an age we are not responsible for. As we walk with the Lord we become aware of the world around us.  As we see the systems and structures we feel urged to become separate from them.  That is something we can do, 'come out from' but there is a work only the Lord can do in our core self.  This is to set us free from attachments we have to this world where we prefer self / sin over the Lord.  The paradox of loving the Lord yet being entirely stupid with the flesh can drive you insane at times.  As we walk this walk we go from 'glory to glory' experiencing a better and more fulfilling walk with God as we detach from this world.

When the Lord took on this horrific bag of wretchedness in 1989, there was no process where my state of being was 'right or wrong.'  Obviously when I look back on my walk and remember how I was, I cringe, but the Lord does not consider my lesser self as wrong. When the Lord created the Universe, days when it was not complete were considered 'good.'  Incomplete and work still to do... all good!  It's the 'progress-towards' that the Lord sees and calls 'good.'

Us humans love to think we have 'arrived' and that it better than those we think haven't.  I'm certain the Lord wants us to get to a place of completion like Creation but that will not happen this side of heaven.  So, with that in view we can't invent a scale of what is better than something else.  Instead we can look at all things and see the 'good.'  So where church practice is concerned we can talk all day about the way we think it should be done.  When all said and done I hope we have all investigated fully the Scriptures regarding Church and recalibrated ourselves towards them.  When all said and done we will all stand before the Lord and he will reward us according to what we have done.

Maybe the problems we have in Christianity are because we think we are the completed, full and whole version of what God intended?  Inability to see that we are all on a journey and God has assigned us our worlds to grow into costs us unity.  Lord break open my delusion that I have it all in place and give me a heart that see the danger of categories.

Gary Ward