While You Are Wating…

For many of us who follow Christ by faith there is a powerful anticipation for each approaching Sunday.  While acknowledging that we are not bound by any laws to observe one day above another (Col. 2:16-17) , we are compelled by love to esteem highly what has been called “The Lord’s Day” for nearly 2,000 years.  The reasons we joyfully look forward to this day has nothing to do with some enforced mandate to be somewhere and participate in something; no, we look forward to Sunday because we have been greatly loved by a God who affords us a weekly family reunion with others whom He has loved.  In short, God invites us to His place to enjoy Him with others of His children and to experience a visible reminder that we are not our own but belong to something much larger than ourselves.  Sundays allow us an imperfect, incomplete yet inspirational view of the coming reality.  We will escape this world and be gathered as one to the very presence of the Lamb who has purchased us with His blood.  Until that glorious moment…we are waiting.

“For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.” – Galatians 5:5 {ESV}

There are many things that we must wait for in this life:  delayed justice, physical healing, perspective on confusing circumstances, open doors of opportunity, restoration of relationships, material provision – your list can go on and on as can my own.  When Paul was writing the letter to the Galatians he was teaching them that a right standing with God is only achieved through the merits of Jesus Christ and nothing more.  The people he was writing were prone to legalistic self-effort and seeking to gain good footing with God through man’s religious ways.  Paul forcefully corrected them for the six chapters of Galatians and gave a gold nugget of a statement in the verse I posted above.  “We eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.” In all our awareness concerning what God’s word says about our call to be holy, obedient, selfless, sacrificial, generous, forgiving and spiritual, let us humbly acknowledge that we will never fully achieve this Christ-likeness on earth.  Our propensity to be unholy, disobedient, selfish, demanding, greedy, bitter and carnal are with us daily.  We ebb and flow in our experience of personal sanctification and growth and there are times when we despair over how ungodly we are able to think and act.  Quite frankly, keeping rules and observing religious guideposts don’t deliver us from our tendency toward sin.  Only the grace of God can accomplish this through the power of the Holy Spirit.  That’s why Paul said that, through the Spirit, exercising faith, we strongly anticipate the fulfillment of our hope and the obtaining of the promise of complete righteousness.  We don’t affect this hope of righteousness by religious maneuvers and jumping through ecclesiastical hoops.  It is not that we are detached and passive either.  Our faith moves us to cooperate with the working of God as He develops us into the likeness of His Son.  Part of this cooperation, however, is our waiting for the fulness of it by faith.  Do you know what it is called when your perfect standing with God through Christ will be mirrored by an absolutely holy personal existence?  Heaven, it’s called Heaven. And you can’t get this yet down here on earth.  So you wait.

I’m going to wait alongside of many others today at the church where I serve and worship.  I don’t have to go to church – I get to.  There are innumerable Christians in Egypt, China, Iraq and Lebanon who are praying for the chance to legally gather together and worship Christ.  We don’t have to pray for that opportunity because it is clearly and freely ours to make use of today.  There’s no sulking in my soul when I think of investing a full day immersed in worship, service and belonging.  Where else can I go and be afforded an opportunity to share life with so many others who have been brought out of this world and are being prepared for the next?  The most sublime experience offered to humans is the activity of worshiping Christ.  I can do this all by myself and I often do.  Yet I simply cannot bring myself to minimize the privilege of gathering with brothers and sisters and worshiping together on Sunday.  God has made us to be one and this is not such a lofty thought that it discards the simple element of us being physically gathered together on earth…by faith…in the Spirit…waiting for the fullness to one day arrive.  The more I write today, the more I look forward to meeting with some of you in a few hours at Meadow.  My hope is that some of you who hadn’t thought of Sunday gatherings in the way that I’ve written will see that you belong with us today – or at least you belong somewhere with other believers.  Christ has made a place for you alongside of us.

Fill the vacancy and do not be surprised when He fills your heart.