"The veranda feels wide, comfortable, but rustic. The pillars, small whole trees, bark stripped, surface rubbed to a splinterless, smooth finish, hand oiled to the warm glow associated with the finest of wood, support the protecting roof like a natural extension of their live counterparts supporting the forest canopy that completely covers the house. Natural forks of branches in the porch railings compliment the pillars and add to the sense of being pulled into the gentle breezes that rustle the leaves, that rustling and the caroled flight of birds, the only sounds around.
"When my life gets stressed, when I need to get away, I come to this porch. I absorb the stillness and I just sit in the comfy rocker staring through the trees at the play of light and shadow on the blues and greens of the small lake beyond.
"It feels so familiar. It literally breathes "home". Talk about your comfort zone. I wish I had some money. I wish I could find this magical hide away. I'd buy it and go there to rest from now straight through forever.
"Humans are made to need a sense of home. Humans are made to long for the familiar, for refuge, for an unchanging corner of continuity. Humans are made for the familiar or maybe, because of the fall, we are simply desperate to escape to innocence and the familiar, the comforting, draws us home to the unaccountable days of childhood, to the Eden times of our lives." (By Wayne Anson - August 3,2000 - unpublished)
We look for it at church.
We look for it in our private lives.
What does your ideal place look like? What is your comfort zone? If asked to describe your mental and emotional ideal, what are the characteristics of "the familiar" in you?
How far can you go? Who around you? What changes? Circumstances? Conditions? Varying from that ideal, that familiar expectation, upset your comfort zone?
Jesus confronts these longings.
Jesus disrupts these comfort zones. Jesus wants to change that familiar place you judge your world by, to change that familiar place which boundaries your expectations of what's right, what's real, what's acceptable. Jesus wants to change your world view.
Jesus wants you to sit down on the veranda that is Himself, to rest in Him, to see your world through His eyes, His desires, His heart, unlimited by the fallen humanity from which you made your comfort zone.
He is all the time standing around in your life, all the time standing at the door knocking when you slip into yourself, into your world view, the limits of your clenched teeth struggle to hold on to the familiar, the boundaries of your own expectations, the culture of your own inner world, your measure of the acceptable, of what's real and the limits on what you will let in and how far you will let Jesus in.
Listen to these familiar words which most of us, most of the local Christian churches, dismiss from their familiar lives:
"All authority heaven and earth has been given to me! Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I will be with you always."
Go! Not me!
Go! That's too far. God knows I'm not comfortable. I can't
do that. My circumstances ... you know.
Go, make disciples of all nations!
That means . . . this nation too! That means your familiar places too!
But, we say, "It means over there," and, "I'm not called to go over there."
Our churches say, "We'll send our missions offerings - over there. But, we are here. We are busy. We are not there."
Still, our hearts feel the "go". It speaks to us, we hear it tug at the life and activities of our local church, our corporate congregation, and each member of us, our own self. We feel the "go" in the depths of our spirits.
We hear the knock. But, it challenges our comfort. It crosses our "familiar", the boundaries of our own expectations. It crosses the culture of our inner world measure of the acceptable, of what's real and the limits on how far from these personal boundaries we will let us "go."
And what will Christ do with this clenched teeth disobedience to His command, "Go!," with these years of not enough resources to help the called ones, "Go!" What will Christ do with the local evidence, that even to our own nation, to the part of the nation next door, down the block, at work, in reach, we somehow can not let ourselves, "Go."
What will Christ do?
Listen again to the familiar - the voice of the Christ! A word written to a church, not just to individual people. Not to people outside the church.
"Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. To him who overcomes, (to him whom I love, to him who I rebuke and discipline, to him who is the reason why I stand at the door and knock) To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches!"
Where is Christ when we are disobedient?
Where is Christ when the church or any one of its members does not answer his call, does not obey His command, does not "go" walk humbly with their God, does not "go" take His yoke upon them, does not take "go" up our cross and follow Him?
Where is Christ left in each act of disobedience, each step that does not follow?
Christ is left out, out of that act, out of that moment.
Christ is left outside! Knocking until we, individually, we, as a church, let Him in.
When we don't go, when the church fails to complete the task, when we fail to reach even the nation which is here, Christ goes anyway. Christ still prepares the way. Christ still begins the harvest. Christ still goes where He has called us to follow.
When we don't go, when the church fails to complete the task, Christ stands on the outside.
Christ stand outside our church doors, with the poor, the strangers, the "others," preparing the field to which He calls us to go.
Working and waiting, Christ stands on the outside of our church doors.
"Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock."
For 20 years, World Relief-Chicago has worked at the heart of the dynamic ethnographic change God has brought to the face of America. Something unexpected has happened. Something unprecedented has happened. While we have reached less and less of our own nation - our part of the all nations - Christ has stood in the field outside our doors called "here". Christ has stood here outside the doors of every local church in America, in Chicago, in Evanston and the smallest of suburbs. Christ has stood outside, but He has been busy. He has been preparing the field. He has been getting things ready for us - who won't leave the "here" - we who are reluctant to "go", we who feel disempowered about the "all nations" over there.
Outside our doors, Christ has been busy. Christ has been getting things ready for us. Christ has been calling the nations. And two by two, and four by four. Five hundred by five hundred and 10,000 by 10,000. And, yes, today, 100,000 by 100,000 and even in a few cases, 1,000,000 by 1,000,000. The mission field has come to our shores.
The mission field lives right outside at our church doors. It has come to our shores. Christ stands outside our church doors, with the poor, the strangers, the "others." He is knocking at the door.
Christ is asking us to go outside, to leave the familiar, to leave the boundaries that have kept us from "going" to even the nation which has been "here" all along. Christ is calling us to leave the "familiar" to minister to persons who do not look, think, or believe like ourselves.
For some of us, this is frightening. For some us, Christ speaks a language so new to our ears that it sounds foreign and we, the church, can not grasp the who and what that Christ asks us to do. Often our familiar places inside our boundaries have no frame of reference to help with visualization. We feel distanced by our lack of knowledge and experience.
The church, members in the church, need assistance laying aside presuppositions, the intellectualism that prevents catching Christ’ vision for this mission field of "all nations" now at our door. We need a vision for being Christ’s instrument for changing hearts and healing lives. Yet too often we barely have a vision of the Church’s mission of compassion let alone a hope for changing lives.
To some, even the idea that Christ would engage human change agents sounds questionable and not religiously or politically correct. The parts of the Body of Christ themselves need changed hearts, hearts for change, in order to themselves re-experience lives that can turn their world upside down instead of trying to hold their old world right side up.
In rebuke to us, God has brought the mission to our doors.
God has brought the warning and evidence of what happens to a society that doesn't trust in Jesus to our doors.
God has sent the trumpet of His voice in the mouths of a 1000 different tongues and the tears of 10,000 shades of race and ethnicity to our doors and if you look at the faces, if you see the history in those tears, if you hear the stories this multitude tells, you hear the trumpet of judgment, judgment against us - the church - loud and clear.
You hear Him say:
"If you do not go where I send you, I will send what you fear, what you do not understand, what you can not see, to you! I will send it to your nation, your city, your neighborhood, your church door, until it makes you uncomfortable. I will send it right to your own door. You are without excuse any more!
"If you won't listen to the voice of Lazarus sent back from the grave and repent and turn from your religious pride, your ethnic pride, you nationalist pride, your new American engendered pharisaism, I will send 10,000,000 infidels to declare your weakness, 100,000,000 strangers to make you declare, with mouths of prejudice, politics, and wonder, how scared you are that "I, God, am not big enough to win over Islam, to win over crime, to win over sin, in your life, in your society, in the cultures and new societies I am sending to your shores, to declare, in deafness to your own words, that I, God, am not big enough, not willing enough, to roll back sin, to roll back sin in your life, to roll back sin in America, by the tide of the crimson blood of Jesus shed for ....
"To reveal your faithless hearts, your culture bound morality, that are as jaded and cocksure of your own applications of the law and grace as were the hearts and culture-bound morality that, in their day, used the law of God to put to death God in Jesus Christ His Son.
"To declare to those that are at ease in Zion and to you who feel secure on Mount Samaria, you notable men of the foremost nation to whom the people of Israel come . . . you put off the evil day and bring near the reign of terror . . . you lie on beds ... and lounge on couches ... you dine on the choice lambs and fatted calves ... you strum away ... and improvise on musical instruments ... you drink deeply ... and use fine lotions, but you do not grieve ... therefore you will be among the first to go into exile ... your feasting and lounging will end!!
"Blessed be the name of the Lord who is and was and shall be the same yesterday, today, and forever."
In rebuke, as well as opportunity, God has sent the world to our door.
God has sent the world to our door:
- to wake up the church
- to scare the church to its kneesto break our secure hearts over the terrors of humanity
- and the fear of our own streets - the fear of the "others" who walk in them
And having woke us up - as God woke up Hillside some 5 years ago - God is not finished.
Having woke us up!
Having knocked on our hard hearts and especially our hard heads, having knocked loud enough and hard enough we again are willing open our hearts to Him, to the Christ that stands outside.
As we at last are opening the door of our church to the Christ outside -
- Our eyes are shocked to see
- Our ears beg to be plugged
- Our minds are repulsed and recoil
- Our hearts are torn and shredded by the sight of the blood, the ravages of war, the gross inhumanity of humans who rape, and torture, and dissect alive, by the unthinkable, the unfathomable that marks the mission Christ has carried with Him to our doors, and the deteriorated conditions in the nation that has always been here and we have not discipled.
- Our eyes are shocked to see
- Our ears beg to be plugged
- Our minds are repulsed and recoil
- Our hearts are torn and shredded
- And our spirits can no longer remain unwilling.
Unwilling:
- to save
- to refuge
- to heal
- to love as, when we were yet broken sinners, Christ
- loved us
- to hold
- to gather from every tribe and tongue and nation
- right now
- right outside our own church door
- the harvest which shall stand around the throne of God and of the Christ, His Son, the Judge.
- to gather the tribes, tongues, and nations who will cry,
"Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come. Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne and to the Lamb! Just and true are His ways! To Him be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!" AMEN!!"
But Christ not only said, "Open the door !"
Christ not only said, "Go ye into all the world.."
(outside your door)
Christ has also said, "And I will come in." Not they - I!
"Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in . . .
I will come in to rebuke and discipline (which means to teach, train, educate, instruct, as a king does his ministers and ambassadors - both foreign and domestic.)
Christ is standing knocking because -
He wants us to let Him into the church
He wants us to let Him deal with all the sin and barriers
in the church; to let Him deal with what you fear, what you do not
understand, what makes you uncomfortable,
and what you can not see.
Until we let Him into the church
He cannot save us from the coals we have heaped on
our own heads to the shame of Christ and of ourselves.
Until we let Him into the church
He cannot transform us
Until we let Him into the church. He cannot disturb our ease in our own Zion enough to
get us to hear what He desires when He says,
"Go ye!" or, His gentler call, "Come, follow
me."
Until we let Him into the church
He cannot nudge the bushel off our head and turn us
into light, instead of disgrace, in the world
standing at our church's doorstep, to the world
looking at America from beyond our borders.
He cannot nudge the bushel basket off our head and turn us into light until we let Him into the church.
Until we let Him in
He cannot peel off our cultural, pharisee, religiosity filled, judgmental, petty squabbling, control grabbing, self protecting, tell it like it is, stinking grave clothes to let the resurrection power of His love compel us out into the mission at our doorstep to glory of God rather than the disgrace that our "Christian culture," our stay at home churchiosity, has brought to His name. And we will again bring disgrace to His name if we do not first let rebuke and discipline purify our gold, consecrate us to His glory, motivate us to right living and thus enlighten our vision for right service every time we step out the door.
Until we open the door and let Him into the church, Christ can't kick, butt, and scrub the inside of the cup and make a people and a church, like the early church, fitted for service.
Until we let Him into the church, He can not turn our church world upside down so we can get out there and turn our 21st century world upside down by the transforming power that is even now resurrecting us; even now resurrecting us from our graves, our own self-created white washed tombs that sit together on the pews.
Until He gets in He can't eat with us
Until He gets in He can't be the "teacher" who will call all things to our remembrance (even the ones you don't know)
Until He gets in He can't make us one as He and the Father are one.
Until He gets in He can't help us be what He has created and called us to be.
Until He gets in He can't educate, discipline, and train us so we will be ready for the on-the-job training that can only happen outside the door.
Conclusion:
Christ has reached into every enclave, every religion, every culture where the evil one has locked Christians out and brought people from every race, ethnicity, language, tribe, and nation here to us while there is yet day in America where the gospel can be heard.
Satan has made major inroads into every church.
Satan has already culturally restricted the American church.
Satan has driven us inside our church doors.
But if we will open the door, Christ will come in to rebuke and discipline, to prepare us to "Go" out, to enable us to change (in spiritual lingo - repent), to think differently, to get a new set of boundaries, a new sense of the "familiar," an new comfort zone - or perhaps in this world a permanent discomfort zone - to help us reconsider, to help us to turn [all these phrases have been definitions of a church repenting] and to help us think Christ's thoughts after Him.
Satan has come into the church with us and cooled us, and used us, and corrupted us.
But if we will open the door, Christ will make us hot! Christ will make us boil.
That's what the biblical words earnest and zealous mean!
Satan knows that if we open the door, if we let Christ in, we will ignite into a rekindled firebrand of the Holy Spirit.
Satan knows that if we open the door, our lives and our churches will explode into a 21st century Pentecost that tumbles us out of our locked up rooms into the mission at our doorstep.
And Satan knows that the people from every tribe, and tongue and nation, whom God has gathered here, will begin to hear us proclaim the wonders of God, will see Holy Sprit empowered miracles of love, care, in an embodied gospel. And these people - the poor, the strangers, the "others"- will pipe that news back to their homelands, back to the hidden corners of America, of the world, and will irrigate the last, the toughest of the deserts of deception with the Gospel of Christ.
"Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches!"
It is we whom Christ loves.
Christ stands outside our church's doors, with the poor, the strangers, the "others."
He is knocking.
And it is exciting, what will happen when we let Him in.
For the ride of your life . . .
OPEN THE DOOR !!!
