This is the final post in REVIVAL blogs written by Patrick Heston. If you have not read part one or part two, you can click on their names and it will take you there.
I met a self-fulfilling prophecy on route 140 in Bethalto just last week.
I was heading west and approaching a go-light. You may call it a stoplight, but it is green just along as it is red, and as my grandson can tell you, “green means go.” And until that light tells me I must stop, I’m going. So, I was headed toward this go-light, traveling behind a lady who was headed for a stoplight.
I know that because, even though the light was green, she kept hitting her brakes and progressively slowing down. I know what she was thinking: “It’s gonna turn red. It’s gonna turn red. It’s gonna turn red.” And guess what? It did!
She fulfilled her own prophecy.
We do much the same thing as a church.
We say, “God doesn’t do that today. God doesn’t do that today. God doesn’t do today.” And guess what? He doesn’t. And we say, “See, I told you.”
We have fulfilled our own prophecy.
On two occasions in the New Testament, when Jesus turned loose the power of God to heal, he said to the person being healed, “Let it be done to you according to your faith.”
Let that soak in for a moment.
“Let it be done to you according to your faith.” And it was. The person was healed.
That is the positive side to faith.
But there is as well a negative side to faith.
Jesus went home one day, back to Nazareth and to the Synagogue where he had worshiped as a boy. He had done amazing things–healings and miracles–all through the surrounding countryside and villages. But, when he came home, Mark says, “He could do no mighty work there.”
Why not?
Was Jesus different?
No, he was the same Jesus in Nazareth as he had been away from Nazareth.
Was there a rock quarry in town with a huge deposit of krpytonite that drained his powers?
No, I don’t think so. This is not a comic book Superman we’re talking about; this is the Son of the Living God in flesh.
Yet, there stands that troubling truth in Mark’s typically bald narrative: “He could do no mighty work there?”
Why not?
Mark wrote, it was “. . . because of their unbelief.”
Can’t you just hear the citizens conversing among themselves as the home-town-boy-made-good shows up? “He can’t do those things. He can’t do those things. He can’t do those things.” And guess what? He couldn’t.
They fulfilled their own prophecy.
In Nazareth as well, it was done to them according to their faith.
In many ways, the church of today is the hometown of Jesus.
We don’t believe he works here as he did there. We don’t believe he does now what he did then. And, surprise of surprises, we’re right. He doesn’t.
We have fulfilled our own prophecy and it has been done to us according to our faith.
If there is, as some suggest, already an epitaph over the modern church, it surely reads, “It was done to us according to our faith.”
We have a faith problem, stemming from a mindset that believes we arrived too late to get what God had to offer.
Like an unnamed man with a demon-possessed son who came one day to Jesus, we need to say to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief.”
But we have a commitment problem as well.
If it is true that we arrived too late to get what God has to offer, then we’re off the hook.
How convenient is that?
All this lack of power, all this lack of impact in our church and in our lives–it’s not our fault. How can we be blamed for God’s lack of provision? This whole stinking mess is God’s fault.
He’s the one whose stuck us in this anemic dispensation we didn’t ask for, where the church hobbles around helplessly in splints and bandages instead of living in health and wholeness.
It’s all God’s fault.
That’s a relief.
But . . . what if we’re not too late?
If we are not too late to get what God has to offer, well then . . .
If that is the case, we can’t blame God anymore–not even subconciously. Instead, the fault lies squarely at our own doorstep. And the issue is no longer God’s lack of provison, but our lack of commitment.
In the late 1970s, I heard an interview with the great Australian tennis player Rod Laver. He was being asked the reason behind the Australian dominance of professional tennis in the 1950s and 60s. Laver pointed to the phenomenal talent of those Aussie authletes–of Rosewald and Roache and others, who like Laver himself, were viewed as gods wielding tennis rackets. But, then, Laver quickly turned his attention to Australia’s tennis coach of the time, whose name, I believe, was Harry Hoffman.
“Hoffman was a disciplinarian, a slave driver,” explained Laver. “He told us when to get up of a morning and when to go to bed at night. He told us when and how to practice. He told us how to put on our socks, how to tie our shoes, how to comb our hair, how to brush our teeth, and what kind of toothpaste to use. The man demanded our total commitment.”
Then he was asked, “Will we ever again see another regeime of Australian tennis players like those who dominated the world scene in the 50s and 60s?”
“No way. You’ll never see it again.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . we don’t want that kind of commitment anymore.”
In truth, as Bible readers, we are amazed at the culture-transforming power exerted by those early Christians. But we don’t want that kind of commitment anymore.
Again, to quote Dean Kelley, “If our faith is really going to count for anything, if our Christian life is really going to mean anything, we have to be willing to become totally involved. That’s what it means to live, to spend rather than save ourselves, pouring out our vitality and vigor, our sweat and tears and blood for what we believe. . . . The power generated by that intense commitment of life in voluntary devotion to (Jesus) is, in the long run, the greatest power in the world.”
Indeed, it is.
But we don’t want that kind of commitment anymore.
OK . . . but then don’t blame the whole mess on some sort of stupid dispensation theology, for that makes God the cause of our problems, and nothing could be further from the truth.
To see the church revived, to see the church restored to its intended purpose and power, making impact on contact with its culture, is the dream of God.
Do you honestly think that dream goes unfulfilled because God doesn’t want that kind of church anymore?
Isn’t it at least a bit more likely that God’s dream for the church goes unfulfilled because we don’t want that kind of commitment anymore?
Our lack of commitment springs from a mindset that makes all our problems ultimately God’s fault, because we arrived too late to get what he had to offer.
We must root-out that mindset for revival to come.
I also believe, however, that a vital practice has been uprooted in the church.
Put simply, we have taken radical obedience to God, radical following of Jesus, and pulled them up by their roots.
Oh, we still obey, we still follow, but like Peter after Gethsemane, it is following at a distance, following while avoiding the risk, following so as to save our lives, not lose them.
Ours is largely a convenient obedience, an agreeable following–that which fits our schedule; that which allows us, not Jesus, to determine when and where we follow, how and to what extent we obey; that which has built-in parameters and safeguards so that we don’t go overboard, or disturb our spiritual status quo, or take matters too seriously.
A lot of words adequately describe the lifestyle of the modern Church and today’s Christian, but “radical” is not one them.
No wonder the chuch isn’t what it used to be.
By contrast, those early Christians lived radically: selling possessions–houses and lands–to help those in need; living and loving boldly and beautifully; risking reputations and even fortunes for the gospel’s sake; reaching out to those on life’s fringes–the least, the lonely, and the lost; the neglected, the outcast, and the oppressed–taking Jesus to those at the end of the road; honoring God’s will as primary while keeping their wills secondary; standing and speaking for Jesus, even if it meant loss of job, or income, or social status; obeying Jesus at all cost, even in the face of persecution and martyrdom; following Jesus only and always . . . wherever, whenever, and regarless.
Radical.
No wonder the church was what it was.
Did you know that the word “radical” comes from the Latin “radix” and means “root”? The original church got to the “root” of what it meant to really obey God, to really follow Jesus. The modern church, however, seems long-ago to have uprooted such radical obedience and following. It is no longer nourished. It withers and dies.
We falsely assume that twenty-first century soil will not grow first-century radical commitment. But that is not the case at all. The reality is that we have uprooted the plant. And, in case you didn’t know it, that stops growth . . . it even stops life.
The reason the modern church has so little impact on contact with its culture is not because our culture views us as too serious about Jesus, but because they sense that we’re just not really that serious at all.
The reason the modern church has so little impact on contact with its culture is not because our culture views our lifestyles as so radically different, but because they see our lifestyles as so remarkably similar.
Cardinal Sueans wrote years ago, “What men are waiting for from the church, whether they realize it or not, is that the church of today show them the gospel. Our contemporaries want to meet Christ who is alive today. They want to see him with their eyes and touch him with their hands. Like those pilgrims who approached Philip one day, they say to us, ‘We want to see Jesus.’ Our contemporaries want a meeting face-to-face with Christ. The challenge for us as Christians is that they demand to see Christ in each one of us; they want us to reflect Christ as clearly as a pane of glass transmits the rays of the sun. Whatever is opaque or besmirched in us disfigures the face of Christ in the church. What the unbeliever reproaches us with is not that we are Christians, but that we are not Christians enough. That is the tragedy.”
And we must no longer blame that tragedy on God.
That tragedy is the byproduct of the church uprooting radical obedience and following.
We cannot expect something uprooted to thrive, even to live. Uprooted things die–in the plant kingdom and in God’s kingdom.
When radical obedience to God and radical following of Jesus are uprooted, the potential for true revival dies.
What else can it do?
If we are serious about revival–personal, corporate, and cultural; revival that will sweep through our lives, our church, and our community, having impact on contact with our culture–we must, while the soil of our hearts is fertile and receptive, replant radical obedience and radical following.
Revival swept through the nation of Judah when, first, Hezekiah and, then, Josiah radically obeyed God.
Revival swept through early America when, under the powerful, biblical preaching of Timothy Dwight and Jonathan Edwards, people radically obeyed God and radically followed Jesus.
Revival swept through the country of Wales when teenager Evan Roberts radically obeyed God and radically followed Jesus.
The truth of the matter is that we are not waiting on God for revival; God is waiting on us.
He is, isn’t he?
For what possible reason under heaven are we making him wait?
And how much longer will we keep him waiting?
There is a rhythmic ebb and flow to revival, just as there is to the spiritual life.
If there is to be that centrifugal force that propels us with power into our communities and provides impact on contact with our culture, there must first be that centripetal force that draws us in a fresh way, a close way, a right-now way to the heart of God.
From that center, we are able to, once and for all, root-out the misguided mindset that we arrived too late to get what God had to offer, and to replant radical obedience and radical following at the core of our lives.
Then, and only then, revival will come.
Then, and only then, impact on contact will become the norm, the rule rather than the exception.
Catch the rhythm!
