GPBC Blog

By Richard McElroy--

I’ve been running my pick-up for years now.  It came my way used, with only 18,000 miles on it, some twenty year ago.  The age and dings show, but nothing takes away from the heart of the engine and easy power-wheelbarrow-way it gets things done.   The old red truck is reliable and consistent: rain or shine.   But over the last few months I’ve had to take it onto forest tracks and thick-grassed access roads.   I can count five times where a little mud and little rain has led to spinning wheels, rooster-tail sprays of mud and a very frustrated driver going nowhere.  It’s a great truck; it’s always handled anything.  I liked counting on it performing as it always has.  I replaced the tires late last year and only have a few thousand miles on them.   Something must be wrong. 

The tires were only month’s old.  So the off-road traction should not have been the problem.  It never has before.  I pulled the paperwork on the tires and read, “All Season”.  I fingered the treads and realized these tires are made with the purpose.   Their designers and engineers created a tire ready to grip through ice, sleet, snow and rain.   Big long channels in the treads displaced all the watery elements while fat cubes of tire gripped the road.   I saw my off-road problem immediately: the truck is just fine, my tires were never designed to go through mud and tall, wet grass.  

Then I found myself thinking about some of the frustrations we’re all living right now.  My emotions and attention for daily routine, for family and church have been spinning with no traction.   I mean up until a few months ago everything was running great.   We celebrated and mourned with great intention and heartfelt love.  Opportunities to serve, meet and learn hummed along in high gear.  Then it all stopped.   I am really feeling and wondering is this my red truck moment for my walking with Jesus, for being church and family?

Greg’s timely series “Waiting Well” sure is speaking into my thoughts and prayers.  Wayne’s challenge scripturally to “Wait Well” by not fretting, by trusting in Jesus and looking to do good out of God’s love helps.  But I’m still caught wondering.

I would have been happy to do church and follow my Jesus routines. But now I’m spinning.   My problem, like the tires and the truck, is considering does the spinning and waiting change Jesus and the church?   We know how the whole story ends, right?  John recorded it in Revelation, 21:3, And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God.  We hear God Himself: And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” He also said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”  But we’re stuck in the waiting.  

Don’t you imagine Israel over it’s history must have experienced feelings and wonderings like ours? I found this “all things new” theme being shared with the Jewish nation through the writings of Isaiah: Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:19) God is repeating His willingness to pursue Jacob, the future gathering of all of Israel to Himself and the forgiveness of all trespasses. It must feel like our own waiting.  I imagine a thousand years of “I love your promises Lord but we’re still waiting”. Does their waiting change what the God of Israel is going to do?  No.  

I love the church!  I love Jesus.  I really like my truck. What its been created to do hasn’t changed. Our church is created to be the expectant messenger.  That hasn’t changed. So these feelings of spinning and uncertainty don’t change Jesus’ plan for me, for us. When we said “Yes” to Jesus’ offer of new life in Him, He made us His own, chosen, like Israel. My desire to live and walk with Him remains the same.  My love for the church and my faith family remain the same.   A desire to grow and serve others, loving as He loves, remains the same. 

I guess I am wanting to embrace the truth that who I am and who the church is hasn’t changed.  My fretting and spinning over these last few months need not distract me from what we have been made to be, in Jesus.   In fact,  I wonder if my own readiness to continue to love and serve in any way possible that is unlike the past routines might be Jesus exact plan.  Am I willing to even get a little excited about being more reliant on Jesus guiding me to be acting, studying and praying in new ways unheard of before this day? 

He told John and His followers: Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. ²⁵ “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live, (John 5:24-25). Let’s pray for each other. I want to flip my feelings of what’s lost in holiday tradition and church routines into “Jesus help me live in the new possibilities”! I need to remember Jesus is still building up His family and me, even when I don’t understand, in my spinning.