The Scriptures mark
out a path that guides and leads us to God’s future. In our day, as we sense acutely
the new challenges presented to the work of the Gospel, followers of Jesus must
hold to the practice faithfulness to God’s word as a key habit to cultivate and
embody. Such a way of life will serve as the fuel for revitalizing existing
communities of faith and for the launching of new ones.
The Trust Issue
Most of us resonate
with a high view of Scripture. We are committed to biblical authority. Yet faithfulness
to Scripture is more than a doctrinal confession. It is a way of life marked by
a deep trust in God’s Word. Trust is the fundamental starting point for living
into God’s future. Trust is lived out in faithful obedience to the guiding
vision of the Bible.
Faithfulness to God’s
word means trusting at a deep level that God has our best interests at heart so
that we are willing to realign our lives with Scripture daily. Reading the
Scripture faithfully keeps God as the constant subject of our lives.
In Genesis 3:1, the
serpent opens his dialogue with Eve in the garden by asking, “Did God really
say…?” Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes the sublime observation that this discussion
was the first conversation about God.[1]
With a subtle turn of a phrase, the serpent shifts God from being the subject
to being the object. When God becomes an object, we run the risk of
substituting God-talk, some naïve theology, a political ideology (of the left
or right), or even the work of church renewal for a vital moment-by-moment
relationship with God. When we remain open to a daily encounter with our Living
Lord, the Scriptures will continually astonish us and draw up deeper into the
world that God desires to create. Thus, before moving forward in any work of
God, we must settle the trust issue.
GPS
A continual
realignment with Scripture is necessary because God’s mission is a movement
rather than some static entity or institution. Jesus’ call was to follow him
into the world to make disciples and to serve as visible witnesses to different
kind of world—the Kingdom of God.
As soon as we commit
to movement, we run the risk of getting off course. As long as we remain
faithfully rooted in Scripture, we have access to God’s cosmic GPS navigational
system. Scripture serves as the guiding voice to keep us aligned and on course.
In times when we find ourselves off course, the Scriptures will call us to realign
ourselves with the values and message of the Cross.
The work of church
renewal and the planting of new communities is challenging and often leads us
into uncharted waters. As disciples of Jesus, we must learn to rely on and
trust the Scriptures to lead us to our destination just as much as we rely on
GPS equipment for our treks to unknown places in our daily lives. Apart from
the Scriptures as our eternal GPS navigational system, we are left only with
the folly of self-reliance or trust in the collective wisdom of the very lost
world that God desires to send us into for the work of his mission.
Lived Out in a Believing Community
The message of
Scripture is lived out in community. Faithfulness to God’s Word involves
serving as a missional community. As we seek renewal and revitalization in our
day by reengaging the Scripture, we will find ourselves shaped as individuals
but drawn together into communities formed by the Scriptures.
Newbigin writes,
How is
it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to
believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented
by a man hanging on a cross? I am suggesting that the only answer, the only
hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it
and live by it.[2]
Paul describes the purpose of such a community in
Philippians 2:15-16, “so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of
God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which
you shine like stars in the world. It is by your holding fast to the word of
life that I can boast on the day of Christ that I did not run in vain or labor
in vain.”
Communities that are soaked in and shaped by
Scripture serve as clues. They shine brightly as the stars painted on the sky
on the blackest night. Paul’s simile is an apt one for our day. We are called
to be stars, but resist our tendencies to see this as some individual call.
Since ancient times stars have naturally been grouped into clusters and
constellations that tell of deep mysteries. When we as Christ’s Church live
faithfully in accordance with the Scriptures in the work of church renewal and
planting, we will collectively speak to the world the Gospel story in all of
its abundance.
© 2015 Brian D. Russell
[1]Creation and Fall, 111.
[2]Lesslie
Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society
(Eerdmans, 1989), 227.
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