When God Moves...

Remember this post from a little while ago? (Truncated for effect)

"The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church."

I am listening to John Piper preach on John 5:36-47 right now. You know those A-HA moments when God speaks to you? Piper hit on something that immediately drew me back to the Tim Keller passage noted above. Look at John 5:43(ESV):

43I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him.

Why would people be so against someone who comes and takes his cues from another...gives glory to another...walks in the will of another? Why would they prefer someone who "comes in his own name"...who struts around and makes much of himself? Because the latter example fits right in with who we are. We can get behind a king like that. We'll be more than happy to fall in line and strut around with him and have our ego fed and our pride fulfilled. But who wants a Messiah who is humble, who admonishes the prideful, who offers himself as a living sacrifice? NO ONE. Unless God moves. Because that kind of Messiah makes me look at myself with guilt. He makes me feel bad about myself. He is convicting to my core. This is why Jesus attracted the broken and marginal and not the prideful who lived for themselves.

Now go back to the beginning of this post. Why do so many of our churches not attract the broken and marginal but rather the prideful and moralistic? Who are they giving glory to? There can only be one answer that would attract the prideful like a magnet.

Themselves. "Not my will but your will be done." The most terrifying phrase to any human. It means death to ourselves yet that is where life is truly found.

Oh Lord, help me to not be counted among those whose desires for praise and pride eclipse desire for You.