Chapter 2 Applicaton. Change or die. We choose.

[Juanita]

 

Application.  Dead or Alive?  We choose. 

God calls us to do the impossible. That includes loving everyone in tangible ways; if we live it out, we will turn the world upside down. It happened before. He intends that it happen again.

Yet, everywhere we find believers frustrated. We hear countless stories of frustration as people who think they are ‘doing it right’ continually fail in their efforts. Their children and friends get divorced; their businesses fail, their ministries fail to product fruit. What’s happening?

We have the resources of heaven and yet we aren’t turning the world upside down. Instead, godlessness is growing stranglehold roots in all arenas of society. What gives?

How about this, lets pray longer and do the same things in the same way we’ve done them before and expect there to be fruit. Or, let’s change up how we meet together and suddenly we will see people everywhere experience the love of Christ. Ahhhh. No, not going to happen.

Jesus told us that what we do will tend to age and become fruitless. “Don’t put new wine into old wineskins.” We spend endless hours fretting that our current wineskins are not accommodating new fruit, new wine. Why fret? We’ve been told that this will happen. Jesus told us about the solution: new wineskins.

From Johnny’s and my vantage point, I’d say that we struggle with fully coming to terms with what ‘new’ means. Some people think ‘new’ means ‘find a Biblical model and copy that’. We have to come to grips that ‘new’ means, well, new. We have to focus on learning how to do things in new ways. And, if our goal is to see increasing fruitfulness, we need to check for fruit and change how we approach ‘new’ when we see that we are losing the wine and moving into fruitlessness.

Folks, this is not how people typically ‘do church’. We have the option: do new things in new ways and learn how to be fruitful. Or, see the impact of the church on lives and society continue to dwindle and die.

How shall we live?