In his book, Spiritual Growth, Arthur W. Pink describes growth in Christian grace as a journey downward:
Growth in grace is a growth downward; it is the forming of a lower estimate of ourselves; it is a deepening realization of our nothingness; it is a heartfelt recognition that we are not worthy of the least of God’s mercies.
We have lost sight of who we are as the people of God. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, longing to lead us through the desert, has been invited as a mere accomplice to our 5-year plans – desperately clever strategies for securing an increasing share of a declining market of prospective believers. Meanwhile, people just beyond our comfort zones are drowning in a sea of fear, isolation, mental illness, drug dependency, brokenness, and despair, while we count heads on Sunday mornings as proof of God’s presence and favor.
The beginning and end of our search for the Kingdom of God:
The perpetual search for the Kingdom of God imbedded into our DNA begins with Micah 6:8:
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
The search ends at the judgment scene of Matthew 25, where neither the self-righteous nor the redeemed have any recollection of meeting Jesus as hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, and in prison. Citizens of the Kingdom of God hear these words,
Come, you who are blessed of my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world (v. 34b).
In all our ways as humans and professing Christians, we are to act justly and live as agents of mercy. If acting justly and loving mercy is truly to be inadvertent and instinctive, however, it can only be done by walking humbly with God. This presupposes living in a state of joyful repentance.
Finding Jesus outside our Christian ghettos:
God is calling us to get out of our insular Christian ghettos and into the world of human imperfection and suffering. It is there that we will find Jesus, the “pearl of great value” (Matthew 13:46). We will find him in the homeless shelters, the jails and prisons, at the soup kitchens, in the tattoo parlors, in the bars, in our divorce courts.
We won’t always know where we are going. We may be unable clearly to define what we are doing or why. Once committed, however, we won’t want to go back. God, you see, doesn’t have a 5-year plan. He has an eternal plan. In order to share with us that eternal plan, he invites us to give up our plans. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 28:11).
Do we dare abandon our familiar and safe fallback positions in pursuit of the present, dynamic, victorious Kingdom of the living God?
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1 Pink, Arthur W. (1977). Spiritual Growth. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, Section 5: The Analogy, p. 6. http://www.davidcox.com.mx/library/P/Pink%20-%20Spiritual%20Growth.pdf
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