A few months ago, we had a few seniors at Master's Academy give their testimonies focusing on what God has done in their lives during their schooling time. One of the students whom I won't name since I didn't get permission ahead of time, spoke of her struggles with moving to Vero Beach. They were comfortable at the home they lived in previously, and she couldn't understand why God would uproot them from a good place to take them somewhere else. There were other things she mentioned, but at the end she said that she came to understand that she had to allow God to do a new thing in her life. I remember being struck with the wisdom of that statement. How many of us have struggled when God has started a new thing in our lives? New is uncomfortable. It is strange and unpredictable. New experiences require things like trust and faith. We cannot rely on our experiences and knowledge when we go into new territory, and I believe it is this very thing that makes new things both highly avoided but also highly needed.
This struggle with the avoidance of change is a plague to the church too. That might sound a bit harsh, but it really is true. The church doesn't want a new thing. It wants to do what it's always done, and this mindset is keeping us from getting involved in the new thing God is doing right now. And we will miss it if we're not careful.
Back when the church was getting its start, they had a similar decision to make. It seems like a non-issue to us who aren't 1st century Jews, but the decision to allow Gentiles to become believers was a huge decision for them. Part of their spiritual identity was the fact that the Jewish people were the chosen people--set apart. They were to be so different from their pagan neighbors that they would stand out. This separation had two results: it helped them see that God was different from the pagan gods, and, unfortunately, it caused them to miss God's vision for the pagan people. Repeated throughout the OT is God's beautiful vision of the the Jews being a light to the pagan people so that they too may believe. Those great statements were faded out in the light of the special position of being chosen. They took great pride in this distinction, and in their ability to follow God's law (in contrast to the pagans).
When Jesus came on the scene, He threw everything they thought they knew into a confusing mess. He healed on the Sabbath; He dined with sinners; He helped Roman officials, He told stories where the bad guys were the heroes; He touched the unclean; and He basically told them everything they thought they knew about following God was wrong. He was there to change things, and they did not like it one bit. In Mark 2:18-22, some people questioned Jesus as to why His disciples did not fast like the other groups did (meaning John's disciples and the pharisees). He explained that this wasn't the time for fasting, but then goes on to explain what was at the root of their question. Why wasn't He (and his disciples) behaving the way everyone thought they should? The answer was simple. God was doing a new thing.
"No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; or else the new piece pulls away from the old, and the tear is made worse. And no one puts a new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins." Mark 2:21-22
Bottom line is this, when God does something new, we just won't be able to fit it into our old way of thinking. We're going to have to change. We're going to have to give up the way we think things should be done, and, using the Word of God as our guide, we are going to have to go into uncharted territories and live a life of adventure.
The early church had to understand this, and we have to understand it now too both as a church and as believers. (For more thoughts on how the church is changing, read Ed Stetzer's "The State of the Church in America: Hint: It's Not Dying")
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