December 23, 2009
Consideration
Last Sunday at the end of the worship service a woman came forward to place her membership with the church. In a quick side bar conversation with the preacher, she was asked if she were an immersed believer. Affirming that she was, he then asked her to repeat the good confession, “I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” I appreciate these steps taken by the pastor. Many folks today want to be accepted as a believer by simply saying, ‘I’m a spiritual person…I have faith…’ Lydia, a seller of purple and a worshipper of God, listened to Paul preach and her heart was opened. After she and members of her household were baptized she said to Paul, “If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my house.” (Acts 16:15b NIV) I feel Lydia’s story delineates the difference between being a worshipper of God and a believer in the Lord.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----I appreciate your expression of the delineation between worshipper of God and believer in the Lord. I believe God reaches out in any of a multitude of ways to every individual everywhere through all times. I recognize His efforts to do so in the subtle truths of each religion that holds to a core of virtues relative to the principles of truth and love. Don’t take me to be saying that every religion is a road to God. I will never say that, because it is false. I am saying that every religion that recognizes a holy and virtuous God other than Christianity extends from the imagination of man but is marked by the influences of God’s personal attempt to gain the attention of the imaginer. For in as much as Jesus Christ is truth and love, every person who humbly and certainly honors truth and love is looking down a road that eventually will lead to His road.
-----The difference between Christianity and all the other religions is that God has prepared Christianity to be this road that leads to Him. Since God is an entity having all the traits of personhood - identity of character and personality, will, initiative, mutuality, and a place of existence - He is real, and He is individual. Therefore, finding God is not just a process of being spiritual, because that only finds a character trait of yourself - spirituality. God Himself must be found. Since He has individuality He is delineated from each of us, so He cannot be found inside the self. The reality of this condition is supported by the fact that He has developed prophets and messengers along a certain road to expose on our side of the divide the meaning of the events God has caused in our history that point to Him on His side of the divide. The messages they have put forth about God’s direct reaching out for man we now possess in the Bible. Through it believing people are guided into the knowledge of God. Then God comes inside believing people after the truth about God - Jesus Christ - is confessed by them. And they in turn then become more messengers along His road.
-----So the way I see it, all these other roads twist around in a variety of directions, never really ending at the throne of God. But every one of these winding roads blazed by the imagination of man that has both the threads of truth and love running along it get straighter and straighter as these threads get more and more prominent. Eventually those straightening roads will end at the road that leads to God upon which His messengers are met and His knowledge is taught.
-----All of that is why I appreciate your delineation between worshipper of God and believer in the Lord. It is also why I appreciate your preacher’s brevity of inquiry. For that road leading to God has many avenues, streets, and allies caused by every individual’s ability to see only dimly as through a mirror. You would not set foot upon some of the allies I walk, and visa versa, yet we travel the same road. So when we gather to worship God together and support one another, we must walk from our individually traveled avenues, streets, and allies to the central core of the road that is clearly and succinctly the basic elements of the relationship with Jesus Christ. If we demand from others an acknowledgment of any avenue or alley we personally travel, we steer our fellowship out of unity with the brotherhood onto a road that veers dangerously away from the truth and love at the core of the certain road.
Travel in delight,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment