Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves,When our dreams have come true Because we have dreamed too little,When we arrived safely Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when With the abundance of things we possessWe have lost our thirst For the waters of life;Having fallen in love with life, We have ceased to dream of eternityAnd in our efforts to build a new earth, We have allowed our vision Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, To venture on wider seasWhere storms will show your mastery;Where losing sight of land, We shall find the stars.We ask You to push back The horizons of our hopes;And to push into the future In strength, courage, hope, and love.
Sir Francis Drake
Dear God, i ask you to rock our world and rattle the cage of ME and my PASTOR FRIENDS that we will be disturbed to the point that we cannot sleep, that we cannot stand in our pulpits without weeping, that we will be broken as your heart is broken for the lives of those in our communities without a Savior.
Eddie I feel your passion and loved the Drake prayer. One thing I would like to hear your heart on is te line "we have become theological debaters trying to impress the suits." I believe the church as a whole is not equipped to deal with post-modern thought and culture. The fact is while America is spiritually hungry, we have seen that their internal hunger is being fed by moral relativism and efforts to make Christianity archaic and irrelevant. While apologetics are not exciting and genearlly can't be dealt with on Sunday morning, I contend that if the church and its leaders does not equip its people to earnestly contend for the faith, the great commission will become increasingly more difficult. While we do not need to become theological debaters, do we not need to know what we believe and effectively communicate it to all who need the answer? I would love everyone's thoughts on this. Keep the blogs coming. I love this!
ReplyDeleteJon,
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts are exactly with yours. The term "suits" is probably not the correct term. I do have the heart that the message of Christ does need to be given to all who need the answer. "Suits" being debating between ourselves and other religious faiths of how church should be done and who is right doctrinally. My thoughts is that we should all agree on one main thing, the Great Commission and go out to fulfill it. To not allow our differences of music, dress, ministry style, whether we sprinkle or fully immerse divide us from convincing the unconvinced with the life changing message of our Savior. Thanks for you thoughts. I love these discussions and hopefully clarified that EVERYONE needs the answer and it is Christ, him crucified and risen.
I get what you are saying, man. By the way let me know how sprinkling works for you. I would love to try it sometime just to see what kind of reaction i would get from the "suits." LOL.
ReplyDelete