Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil.
Proverbs 3:7

There is a great struggle in the worldwide Church today. It is the longing to be culturally relevant while maintaining doctrinal purity. This is not a new struggle, by the way. If you look all throughout the Church’s history, you find Her constantly making cultural adjustments in order to reach out to those who are far away from God. Changes in music, language, culture and medium have all been a part of these adjustments throughout the centuries. There have always been reformations, some memorable and others marginal. At times this leads to great advances in God’s agenda on this earth. Other times, it leads to a distracted Church that becomes inwardly focused and self-seeking.

So when does the Church move from being a catalyst for God’s glory to being a hindrance needing God’s discipline? It seems to me that the downward spiral begins when the Church loses Her focus on God as the focal point and makes “church” all about the individual. When the stories in the Scriptures begin to trumpet the greatness of man rather than God. Prayers begin to dwell on what God needs to do for me rather than how I can adjust my life to participate in what He is doing. Sermons become self-help theories on how to live a successful life that gratuitously mention Scripture as proof text. Even the “worship” becomes “me” oriented as I sing more about what I am going to do rather than who God is and what He has done.

And it’s not just the health and wealth guys who miss the mark. It’s the guys who make everything in the Bible about us rather than about God. And while I do believe that God is a relational God who is seeking to bring a distant people back to Himself, I don’t necessarily think that He went to the extent of His Son on the Cross just so that we can feel good about ourselves and have nice, moral lives. And yet, if we’re not careful, we can quickly adjust the Salvation story to one where we are the main character and not Jesus.

It doesn’t take a theologian to notice that this has been the struggle of the people of God all throughout the Scriptures. God delivers His people from their sinful choices and they turn the blessing of God into an opportunity to become self-absorbed and treat God as though He is their servant rather than their King. Eventually God sends a prophet to remind the people of their narcissism and His glory and they repent and recapture a lifestyle that exemplifies the fear of the Lord.

So while the struggle in the Church today is nothing new, their is another element that I am becoming more and more conscious of. I am actually a part of this struggle now. What I mean by that is this specific point in the history of the church has moved from being something I read about in “Church History” to something I am living out in “Church Now”. The question I have to ask myself is where will I find myself in the history of God’s Church?

Now you should know that I am operating under the premise that Jesus is not coming back in my lifetime. Not that I would be opposed to it if He did, but given 2000 years of Church History and the number of people throughout the centuries who have been waiting on pins and needles for the skies to crack open, I would say the odds are really good that Christ’s triumphant return might not happen during my short breath here on the earth (sorry Tim LaHaye). When I first came to faith in a “Jesus might come back tomorrow” church, I was convinced that today might be my last on the earth. So I lived with a reckless abandon that, while passionate, did not prepare me for a potentially long tenure in Christ’s Church. The older I get, the more I realize that success is not determined by a moment of passion, but by a lifetime of faithfulness.

So, given the probability that I will one day be a part of the Church’s history, where will I be found as a result of the choices I make today? I don’t need the name recognition of a Martin Luther or a Charles Wesley. In fact, I’m really okay that nobody knows me, save a few friends and family and the 3 people who read this blog. But I don’t want history to find me in the camp of the self-seekers who treated the Church like a job and assumed intimacy with God where there was none.

I want to be a man who the Lord takes pleasure in and does not have to use as an example of what happens to you if you treat lightly the things that are Holy. I want to be the kind of person who demonstrates to the world that God is huge and that we are small. That God’s first motive is His glory and not my comfort. That the cross was more about Him than about me. Where my prayers become more about His greatness than about my small needs (that He’s promised to care for anyways if I seek His Kingdom first - Matthew 6:33).

I guess I want to be the kind of man who becomes shadow as Jesus moves to the forefront.  I want to remain covered in God-stuff so that everything that I touch has the smell of God on it. I want the fingerprints I leave behind to bear no resemblance to my own, but to those of Christ.

I want to be found faithful.

I want the same for you.

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