"Be Not Afraid of Greatness"

I have been thinking a lot lately about the Kingdom of God and how difficult it can be to live in that tension. People simply don't like it. To have a Kingdom church means to have a somewhat unpopular church, because such a church lives and desires to continue to live in constant tension. It just isn't safe.

There is such a tendency in our faith lives to want immediately out of tension. Tension makes us uncomfortable, and it challenges our boundaries. As we start to explore the power of the Holy Spirit in our church, this will become even more evident. The Spirit goes where it will and does what it will. It will heal someone here and set free someone over there. This makes such an experience difficult to pastor. Churches will tend to go to extremes when encountering the "already and not-yet" nature of the Kingdom of God.

One extreme is to get extremely goofy with the Holy Spirit stuff, where manifestations and experience become the end, rather than the means to the end. They will then fall into triumphalism, declaring victory over all things and proclaiming healing in all situations. This puts human demands on the Spirit, short-circuiting the will and sovereignty of God. This is gnostic at its very core, because it then causes a divide between the physical and the spiritual, placing all things spiritual on a much higher plane than the physical. No thought is given to faith or Biblical exegesis, because why bother? It's all about the experience. The Bible exists for God to give us secret messages when we pop it open during some euphoric, eyes-rolling-back, flopping on the floor, spiritual state of manifest, mystical glee. We will have all the money we need, we just need to claim it. You want to be healed? Believe, and God has to do it. The end result is to invalidate the pain and suffering of people in need and to write them off as unbelieving or weak (in the "flesh"). This is an overly strong focus on the already-inaugurated nature of the Kingdom. The declaration that the Kingdom has fully come (and we just don't know it yet) can lead down a path that takes us far from our reliance on God and far from a healthy, real faith journey.

On the other side, a church may well go to the extreme of ignoring or rejecting the move of the Spirit altogether. This is understandable at times, because the emotionalism and "experience as the highest order of faith" approach can be so distasteful when seen in its true light. But to reject the move of the Spirit is also to circumvent God's sovereignty. It is the declaration that God no longer moves today, and we are in this on our own. It is an unhealthy focus on the fact that the Kingdom is not fully consummated yet. There is nothing but sin and death in this world. This leads to a fatalism and stoicism that kills the fire in any believing person. People become automatons, simply waiting to go to heaven. They end up having to perform all kinds of exegetical gymnastics in order to produce a fantastical account of the end times that sells books but fails to truly inspire a life-transforming faith. There is no urgency or desire to be active in the world. No one will be healed, because God no longer does that kind of stuff. Suck it up and hide like the rest of us in church, peaking your head out into the world only when Walden Media releases a film or there is another protest at Walt Disney World (protests are a great excuse for a family vacation). Toe the line, don't make waves, and everything will be good and safe.

Well, neither of those extremes are acceptable options, as far as I'm concerned. I choose to live in the tension. The Vineyard as a community of churches has chosen as an international body to stay in the tension. We are a Kingdom Church that exists for the sake of the world. God does move today. He does heal, cast out demons, restore broken lives, and set people free! The Kingdom is here! Yet, it is not fully here. There are times that people are not healed. There is sin and death all around. Yet, the good news, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is a message of hope, for this life and the next. We can be saved now and we will be saved for eternity. The Spirit is moving, and we don't control the Spirit. Yet we realize that we are useless as a Kingdom movement if we don't engage the world. When we pray, we pray with expectant faith, but we pray according to what God is doing, not according to what we want to see happen. We are rooted in the Word of God, seeking to explore the mystery of God and to find more questions that spur us on in our faith, not to dissect God or get simple answers. We think, we feel, we believe, we experience. We have an intellectual faith that is empowered by the Holy Spirit so that we can physically do the stuff of the Kingdom. There is no separation or division within ourselves. Mind, heart, and strength (body) are what we use to love, worship, and obey our God.

What does this mean practically? It means that we move as people who are already set free yet have a journey to complete. We are moving toward what he created us to be: a People in His likeness and image. That, my friends, is something worth living and even dying for. Will we have to be with messy people and see some Spirit stuff that is out of our control? Yes, but only if you don't want to go back to being a stoic who never trusts God to do what he will outside of our scripts and expectations. Will we have to think and work out our faith? Yes, but only if you don't want to be a mindless revival junkie going from one spiritual high to the next. I believe that God is looking for a People to walk that radical middle line.

I want to live out a faith that challenges every part of who I am. I want to walk out that faith with like-minded people who will rise to the challenge and not cut and run when things get messy or tough. I can't do this on my own. We believe that God built the church that God wanted to build in Adullam in order to have the vehicle to take us down that path. I am sick of the status quo. I have been there, and I found it to be bankrupt. I am ready to strap on my helmet, buckle up, and go for the ride.