Time to Start Changing the World
Psalm 11:3 asks an important question for our day and age. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? That’s a great question. When the foundations are gone, when right and wrong are seen as matters of choice, when absolute truth becomes relative, when objective God is replaced with subjective man, what can the righteous do?
I think many of us want to do something, but what? The problem seems so big, and we seem so small. What can we do? What can we do when opening the doors to the church is no longer enough? What can we do when Christ and His message are seen as unnecessary, out of touch, and out of date? What’s a world changer to do?
We must have real answers for the next generation. What will we say tomorrow when the children of today come to us with their children? What do we tell them when they ask, “Where were you? What were you doing?”
Check out the following quotes. I think they’ll give us a good starting point.
The famous missionary E. Stanley Jones once wrote, “How often we put religion into a sacred day, Sunday, and a sacred place, the church, and leave it there--embalmed!”
Author and pastor, Robert Coleman writes, “Unless opportunity is provided for outreach, the group can stagnate in self-contentment, and eventually fossilize into nothing more than a mutual admiration society.”
The founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley, told his followers, “Observe: it is not your business to preach so many times and to take care of this or that society, but to save as many souls as you can, to bring as many sinners as you possibly can to repentance, and with all your power to build them up in that holiness without which they cannot see the Lord.”
Joe Stowell aptly points out, “If we don’t actively engage the world on [Jesus’] behalf, we have fallen short of following Him. For if you follow Him, He will ultimately take you right to the needs of those around you. It is obvious, even to the most casual observer, that He came to effectively engage His world, not to hibernate with His chosen few.”
These men have it right. It can no longer be “church as usual.” We must seek to engage and change the world as Christ engaged and changed the world. How about you? Are you ready to be a world changer?
