What a joy for me to participate while visiting there. Beautiful, authentic people.“The only people who like being changed are babies with dirty diapers.” (Robert Maranto).
My son’s pastor at Crossroads Church in Cincinatti is not only a dynamic speaker but also an effective writer. Brian Tome is a tremendous change agent, developing a church of 10,000, into a body of Christ-followers, most of whom had given up on church. I’m going to take some concepts out of his book, Welcome to the Revolution, and hope to titilate your appetite for change, that is, growth in Christ.
Rather than focusing on a list of rules or principles for growth, he suggests “stay in the flow of what God is doing.” This takes discipline – a daily choice to stay in the flow, including prayer, Bible reading, community and mission. God gives moments of extra grace – a spiritual turbo boost as it were, to speed us along the flow of what God is doing. However, it takes time and patience to become the person God wants us to be. Our challenge is the hard work of eliminating sin from our lives and adding in other things that are pleasing to God, all the while advancing His Kingdom and blessing others.
We stay in the flow by putting ourselves in a postion where God will do His work in us as we cooperate with Him. Some call this “co-creating” with God. Spiritual formation. That’s the term often used. Envisioning a life wholeheartedly devoted to God, structuring our lives with the four key components of Bible, prayer, community and mission, co-producing with God His life within us and experiencing all He is worth!
“Picture a three-legged stool If you’ve only got one leg, you don’t have a stool. But some people try to exist on one leg. Many try to be Christ-followers on the Bible alone. What happens when you take one leg and try to sit on it? Go ahead. Find a wooden dowel or a broom handle and sit on it. That’s right. You look like a Bible-only person with a stick up your butt. You do need the Bible, but you need the other legs as well.”
The other two legs are prayer and community. The seat of the stool is mission. It’s what holds everything together and serves as the platform of life. The goal of the stool isn’t the legs; it’s the seat. In the same way the goal of our lives is not to read the Bible, have spiritual community or even pray to God. The goal of our lives as Christ-followers involves the revolution happening in us and what our role is in bringing the Kingdom to fruition.
Question to pose: how’s my discipline factor in staying in the flow of what God is doing?
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