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Part 2: The Broken and Beautiful Church | A Call To Shepherds
"God established the church. He set her apart and called her to be a beacon of hope to the world around her. But the church, like Israel, is also prone to wander from the path God set before her.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones captured this tragic tendency when he warned,
“The church is always to be under the Word; she must be; we must keep her there. You must not assume that because the church started correctly, she will continue so. She did not do so in the New Testament times; she has not done so since. Without being constantly reformed by the Word, the church becomes something very different.”
Many church leaders start with good desires: to share the Gospel, to study the Scriptures, to grow in spiritual maturity, and to serve those in their care. But just because a church started well doesn’t mean it will finish well. It’s far too easy to forget our origins and pattern ourselves after the world around us—worshiping the idols of power, influence, or notoriety. We are vulnerable to pride and the allure of success. When these things continue unchecked, we may find we begin to favor the strong over the weak and vulnerable, elevate and build churches as kingdoms rather than taking the posture of servants, and neglect or mistreat those God has entrusted to us."
Part 1: The Broken and Beautiful Church | “Something isn’t Right?”
The church is both terribly broken and remarkably beautiful, but she is still God’s plan. It can be hard to hold these two truths together at the same time, especially if your spiritual mentors, fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers have wounded you. This requires willingness and work not to throw the baby out with the bathwater but to test everything and hold on to what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). We can honor the church and those who labor for her while also being honest about their sins, weaknesses, and failings. We can forgive and make allowance for one another’s faults while also calling for repentance. We can trust what God is doing through his Church, even when skeptical about the organizations representing her. We can acknowledge and be thankful for the fruit we’ve experienced while always recognizing when weeds begin to choke it out. We can love while also choosing to leave.
Psalm 2 || The Lord Reigns
"Do you ever feel powerless and anxious about the state of our world? Wars, threats of wars, terrorism, corrupt national and international leaders. At times it feels like one big powder keg that could blow at any time. It can be concerning at best and panic-inducing at worst. But Psalm 2 grounds us in a truth that transcends the chaos. It's a message for both the power-hungry and the powerless: the Lord reigns."
Psalm 1 || Rooted In God’s Ways
As we delight in and meditate on God and his instructions, we are transformed, nourished, and sustained. The call to action is to set our minds and hearts on the Lord and his instruction, and the result is that we become like trees planted by streams of water. Healthy trees live long lives. They grow deep, complex root systems embedded beneath the ground surface, which helps them weather wind, storms, and droughts. They can bend and sway when the winds come without being ripped from the ground. This beautiful analogy is meant to teach us that though life brings chaos and turmoil our way, we are not uprooted because we have grown deep in the Lord.
Beholding and Becoming
In beholding God’s love, we are invited to become the beloved. In beholding God’s forgiveness, we are invited to become the forgiven. In beholding God’s mercy, we are invited to become the redeemed. In beholding God’s compassion, we are invited to become the comforted. In beholding God as Father, we are invited to become like little children. We become as we behold.
Navigating Life’s Fog
Life is complex and nuanced, which makes it impossible to reduce people and circumstances into overly simplistic answers or categories. People will surprise and disappoint us and fail to meet our expectations. Reality will creep in like a thief in the night and rob you of what you thought your life would be. Everything can change in an instant, flipping your entire world upside down. Life consistently dismantles our illusions and confronts us with a truer tale. There are no hard-fast rules or equations to follow to ensure life will turn out a specific way. Because that is not the economy of life. All of life happens to all people.
Tales Tattoos Tell
We all have things that tell something of our journey with God—like pins in a map indicating where we’ve been. Some of mine just happen to be tattoos. What are yours? What can you point to and say, “Here is where God taught me about his faithfulness? Or his mercy? Or his justice? Or his fill-in-the-blank?” Maybe it's the death of a child, a spouse, or a parent. It might be a medical diagnosis or chronic pain. Maybe it’s your perfectionism, workaholism, or addictions. Perhaps it’s been through tragedy, or maybe it’s been through triumph. What are the markers, and what story might they tell?
The Gift of Going First
When we deny, minimize or spiritualize our sin and suffering, we rob ourselves of the rich experience with pain as our teacher and Jesus as our mender.
Looking For Life
Cultivating gratitude trains us to look for signs of life—the redemptive and restorative works of Christ amid the daily deaths.
Why The Wholehearted Project?
The Wholehearted Project is an invitation to live a truer story, one that embraces the “both-and” of life—the broken and beautiful; the groaning and gratitude. It’s an invitation to live in a world where both doubt and devotion, faith and fear, can co-exist in the life of a faithful believer. It’s an invitation to show up to the world, to yourself, and to God as a sinner, sufferer, and saint. It’s an invitation to be equally alive to pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow.
A New Resource for Advent
Christ bridged the gap between creation and new creation with his outstretched body— allowing us safe passage out of this no man’s land haunted by the echoes of life and delivering us to the source and substance of life—Christ himself.