Where Do We Go From Here?

January 1, 2020 Pastor Tim Dodson | Menomonie

Ok…so I’m a bit uneasy. Perhaps knowing that fact does little to endear myself in the hearts and minds of my church brothers and sisters. I guess I feel like as the Pastor that I am supposed to be the bastion of enduring strength.

As I look out “across the river” at 2020, I wonder now where we are to go from here. Is it our destiny as a church to plod down that well-paved road of religion in America? It’s not that I am disappointed in how far we have come over the past 30 years as a church. Nor am I saddened by the lack of advancement into the territory of the enemy. It’s really not that at all. In fact, the journey has been extraordinary! Yes, bumpy for sure, but what a ride!

It’s more of a trepid feeling of the future, really. The idea that it would be very easy now to settle into a spiritually comfortable rocker on a porch somewhere and wait for Jesus to come pick us up. But I also have a real sense that there is more to do. MUCH more to do really! Maybe it’s my age and strong desire to finish well, but I don’t want to rest and I still have fight inside me. But is that how my church family feels?

Over the past year it seems on various levels and multiple platforms that God has been questioning us as to our personal and individual lifestyles. We’ve talked a lot recently as a church body about simplicity and priorities, but has His message gotten through? After all, the pull of the world is strong, and our tendency will always be that we deserve our comforts and possessions. So we indulge and we accumulate. And over time…subtly and quietly we start to look just like the world. We dress the same, drive the same cars, listen to the same music, and watch the same movies. We raise our kids the same… (failing at the same rate), our marriages are the same, our vacation time is the same, our houses look the same, our time and priorities are spent the same. Most of all, just who is our model? Because most often the ‘bar’ is set by the next guy in the pew beside us!  2 Corinthians 10:12 (NLT) speaks of such saying “But they are only comparing themselves with each other, using themselves as the standard of measurement. How ignorant!”

Somewhere along the way…if we are under the belief that we are actually still in the game, we have to stop and evaluate. And most of all, be honest with ourselves…

There are many “mirrors” that we can utilize in scripture for this task. One of which is in Luke 7…the story of Jesus’s visit to the house of the Pharisee. Jesus was “in the house” but it wasn’t the Pharisee who was receiving the kudo’s… it was a woman who had every reason to see herself us the last in line for the attention of the Son of God.  Verses 37 and 38 tell us that “she brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil… and stood at His feet behind Him weeping. She began to wash His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head; and she kissed His feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil.”

I wonder how long it has been that each of us have put ourselves in her shoes? No, not philosophically, but in reality! How long has it been since you embraced such a radical manifest of love toward our redeemer? Or maybe…there is no ‘radical’ left in you? Do we remember…like that woman, the magnitude of what we were forgiven of? Have we embraced a soft “suburban-style” faith?

Recently Vice President Mike Pence’s gave the commencement address at Liberty University where he warned his audience they’d leave Liberty to live and work in a country that doesn’t particularly like them:

My message to all of you in the Class of 2019 is — derives of the moment that we’re living in today. You know, throughout most of American history, it’s been pretty easy to call yourself Christian. It didn’t even occur to people that you might be shunned or ridiculed for defending the teachings of the Bible.

But things are different now. Some of the loudest voices for tolerance today have little tolerance for traditional Christian beliefs. So as you go about your daily life, just be ready. Because you’re going to be asked not just to tolerate things that violate your faith; you’re going to be asked to endorse them. You’re going to be asked to bow down to the idols of the popular culture.” [Vice President Pence via The White House]

Sadly, Christianity as a movement has largely already “bowed down to the idols of popular culture.” We have essentially made ourselves comfortable in a world that is ok with your faith as long as you don’t open your mouth about it. Are we ok with simply “fading away?”

“Give me one hundred men who love only God with all their heart and hate only sin with all their heart and we will shake the gates of hell and bring in the kingdom of God in one generation.”

— John Wesley

Pastor TIM