WEDNESDAY LONGINGS

I don’t know about you but I long for somethings to get back to normal. Not all things but somethings. One definition of a Conservative is to conserve things as they are, and one definition of a Liberal is to change things to, hopefully, something better. When it comes right down to it, I think most of us are Moderates, wanting to change some things and to keep some things the same. This assumes that Conservative and Liberal are opposites.
But there is another way—a more Biblical way—I would propose. It is to become a Radical. I know that radical has a somewhat bad rap today but if we take the word at its original meaning things change. Radical means to go back to the roots, or to go back to the beginnings, of things. I would like to see us go back to the times of the Early Church as Acts 2 and 4 says, “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all”. And, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
The Church of God is one of the Churches that descended from the Radical Reformation, a subpart of the Protestant Reformation. The Radical Reformation wanted to go back to the early church of the Bible and to use the Bible alone as God’s rule of faith. And, for me, the Bible trumps both Conservatism and Liberalism (and all other isms). If we use the bible as the bottom line in our decisions, especially, the New Testament with its teachings of love, we will become Moderate. The things outside the will and rule of Christ must change and whatever is obedient to Christ must not change. As Colossians 1 says, “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation”. “He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.”
When Christ is not supreme nothing will ever be right: Politics, America, society or our world. Only when Christ is acknowledged as supreme will this world ever become anything but chaotic.
I long for the times when chaos is defeated and goodness and light reign. I long for the time when Christ is acknowledged as Lord of all. I use the word, “acknowledged”, rather than “made”, because He is Lord whether we know it or not.
“These are the times that try men’s souls” said Thomas Paine. These are chaotic times, times that will not be made right by politics—Conservative or Liberal. These times call for a Radical approach—a time when America goes back to Christ or die! What if the Corona Virus is only the beginning of tribulation? Or this may be the last opportunity America to come under the reign of Christ, for if we go back to “things as normal” we will continue our descent into chaos and destruction.
One question: What kind of world are we leaving our children and grandchildren? A better world coming under the supremacy of Christ or a chaotic world descending into the bottomless pit?
2 Corinthians 13:14, “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
Jim