I shared for a few minutes last night with about 75 high schoolers. I told them I’d been watching the news a lot lately and I’ve decided the world is a mess…I told them that my generation owes their
generation an apology, not because the world is a mess, but because
we’ve done very little to fix it. We’ve handed out
bibles when we should’ve handed out food, clothes, and love. We’ve
handed out judgments when we should’ve handed out blessings. We’ve handed out political answers when we should’ve offered His Spirit of grace and forgiveness. We’ve been mostly “lawmen”, when what the world really needed was “Christ-men”.
One of my pastors used to say “the world won’t see Christ in us until we see Christ in us”. John reminds us in his first epistle of this fact – “as He is, so are we in this world”. Listen to me, we are what they’ve been looking for, we are the answer they’ve needed all along. The
breakdown didn’t come because they didn’t understand who we were, the
breakdown came because we didn’t understand who we were.
Christ didn’t die on the cross to just get us out
of hell; He died so that He could restore our purpose for being here in
the first place. We are to be Him with skin on in this world. We are to love like Him, care like Him, hand out mercy like Him, and even die for people we don’t like, like Him. I didn’t say it was easy, but I am saying its right.
We haven’t kept our part of the original deal “to bring the fruitfulness of the garden to the barrenness of the earth”. We like Adam were created outside of the garden and then placed into its beauty. This happened so that we could have a vision of what we are to create in the rest of the world. This
is more than voting for the right party, going to the right church, or
having the right doctrine, it’s about us getting into the mess and being
Christ in the middle of it.
So we owe the generation behind us an apology for not doing our part and for not properly instructing them about their part.
I see great hope in this next generation. I see the answers we’ve all been looking for. I believe they just may be the ones that actually get this stuff and do something with it…
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BRILLIANT! BRILLIANT!! “This is the generation of those who seek Him, who seek Your face, O God of Jacob. Lift up your heads, O gates; and be lifted up, O everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.” (Ps 24:6-7) I believe!!
Back in the ’60’s, my generation (Baby Boomers) said we were gonna change the world.
Well, we did…
…but not the way we thought we would.
Michael, right on what you shared in this blog! I have a 22 year old daughter who is serving in Malaysia right now being the hands, arms, mind, life of Jesus to the people who live there! Praise God for her generation that truly “gets it” and is being obedient to the call on their life to share the Gospel to a lost and dying world…Great blog!
Words from Jesus “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ” But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you maybe sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. for if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” Matthew 5:43-46
Lord Jesus help us to love our enemies
This is the church, when we ARE the church, that my children may take notice of. But not those that preach and hurl condemnation as quickly as we shove Bibles and rules in their faces and down their throats…it just takes some of us longer than others…grace, grace, grace…
Brilliant! What an honor to walk along with both of you as we play our parts in God’s Kingdom Dream.
Being a Grandfather of eight your message screams aloud to me. It is more “comfortable” to pass out bibles than to deal with the mess. May we all be less and HE be more..
Wow, thakns Seth this was really great to read! i really loved it.