Loaded Weapon

You will either be offended in some way, or impassioned to respond with a heart-felt "Amen!"

I do not normally keep a weapon in the house, and have very rarely, if ever, had a loaded weapon in the house. However, a few weeks ago I was impressed to place my handgun in a place where I could easily get to it (in a safe place the kids could never get to). It was about the time I was loading .40 caliber hollow points into the clip that I noticed my wife staring at me in disapproval. You can probably guess the details of the “discussion”. By the end, she had to agree with me… What good is a gun without bullets? I guess I could throw my Springfield XD Subcompact (that is my gun by the way) at an intruder.

It may be intimidating to see a firearm aimed at you, yet without ammunition, the gun does not serve a purpose… other than deceiving others about it’s power.

The heartbreaking parallel is how this is too often a metaphor of the local church. Let’s bring it even closer to home… it can be a picture of our spiritual lives.

Jesus referred to one level of this deception by calling some religious people “white washed tombs… full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean.” They looked right on the outside to some, but there was no transforming power at work on the inside.

God paid such a supreme price – sacrificing His Son - in order to satisfy His pure justice. This price enables Him to dispense mercy upon those who believe. The result is the salvation of our eternal being. Our response to His mercy – though freely given and unable to be earned – should be that of humble thanksgiving and a life of passionately pursuing Him and loving others.

When we live as though God’s mercy is cheap – ignoring the great price He paid for it – the result is an empty weapon. When we ignore or deny the power of God, we may be able to fake the appearance of Godliness, but on the inside we are spiritually bankrupt.

One of the issues that are so abhorrent to God - so much so that Jesus spent a lot of time battling it in Scripture – is a works-based salvation theology. This, taken to the extreme, is a life so self-righteously consumed with outer correctness in others; the byproduct of inner pride and a heart full of sin…utterly opposed to God. A church, or a person, becomes deceived when they think they can keep all of the laws of God and be accepted outside of grace. Every single time, the result is a church, or individual, that is consumed with external appearance. In the church, the self-willed nature of man is bent towards defining righteousness based upon his own preference (music, dress, who’s in charge, preaching style, etc). In my experience, these empty weapons are characterized by stirring dissension. They never disciple another person, except in their own brand of self-righteous religion, and they never see spiritual births as a byproduct of their own spiritual passion. That sounds harsh, but I think Jesus was even sterner.

We need fire! We need authentic passion within that drives us to be the Church! The power of God that changes us from the inside out – producing fruit authentically spirit-born – should season our very lives, our gatherings, and our mission statements. The mission of the church – God-worship and loving-others – does not need another empty person or another church with a trendy name that is really a powerless, empty shell of wagon-circlers known more for it’s splits than for the mercy they show others. May we be passionate to be that kind of people and that kind of church! For His glory and for His fame! And for those in the Kingdom who are tired of forgoing the power of God in our midst for the sake of those in fear of a loaded weapon!