I have been considering lately the future of the Church and what it will look like. What good does God have purposed to accomplish through this pandemic crisis? How does He want to grow/change the Church in this season? We know He makes beauty for ashes (Isaiah 61:3). We can only assume amid our crisis there is something beneficial being worked out for us by God (Romans 8:28). As I have conversations with on-fire believers, those who are passionate about the gifts and calls on their lives, I begin to see one aspect of the post-pandemic Church.
These conversations are impassioned with purpose-driven hearts. They are also sprinkled with a little dissatisfaction with the Church. One says we need to evangelize and questions why the whole church is not evangelizing. Another says we need to meet the needs of those in our churches and our communities, why isn’t the whole church doing this. I used to say why isn’t everyone as passionate about the Word of God as I am? Then revelation – and spiritual growth – came.
We are one body with many parts, one church made up of many gifts and callings (1 Corinthians 12-14). I believe the Church of the present future God is birthing out of this pandemic is a passion-filled Church. A Church, a global body of Christ, which recognizes the governing groups over a church body are not “the Church”. We, believers, are the Church. We must come to recognize the gifts and call on our lives while releasing others to serve in theirs. We are not all evangelists, we are not all helps minded, we are not all preachers, teachers, prophets. Our passion for Christ and His service is tailor-made for each individual (Psalm 139:13-16). Your gifts and calling are revealed in your passion for the kingdom of God.
It is time to passionately serve Christ by fulfilling our role in the body without judging those whose function serves as a different part of the body. Paul said it well when he related this to a human body. If we were all eyes, how could we hear, if we were all ears, how could we see? If we were hands but cannot walk, etc. Of course, he said it differently but with the same intent (1 Corinthians 15-27).
I still believe we are beginning to experience the greatest outpouring of God’s Spirit in history. I keep hearing it as “a fuller dispensation” of the Spirit. We must understand Satan and his hordes have only a certain number of tricks. One tool he enjoys deploying against the Church is dissatisfaction. It leads to judgment, which leads to divisiveness and bitterness. When we entertain these thoughts and feelings, we become the pandemic in the Church. When we let our passion for Christ diminish the passions/gifts of others we become the virus.
The good news is there is a vaccination that works instantly to cleanse the Church. It is known as repentance. Jesus already paid the price for our sin and we merely need to come to a humble revelation of our sin, confess it, and let Jesus wash it away, then ask Holy Spirit to fill us again. We need to ask God to show us how to awaken the gifts and callings in those around us to complement and support those gifts and passions with which we serve.
It is time to press in to God with hearts and lives surrendered to His will. We need to spend ample time with Him so we hear His call and are quick to partner with what He is doing in and through us. When every authentic believer will do this, we will be a healthy global body and see the greatest move of the Church in history. Why? because we will make room for Holy Spirit to lead and guide as He was sent to do for us and the Church will function by its original design.
And let us keep paying attention to one another, in order to spur each other on to love and good deeds, not neglecting our own congregational meetings, as some have made a practice of doing, but, rather, encouraging each other. And let us do this all the more as you see the Day approaching (Hebrews 10:24-25).