GOD'S PROCLAMATIONS - By Jon Crabb
The countdown timer on the blog and website gave a number to my feelings of anticipation that accompanied the launch date of our church - a church plant from scratch in Pasadena. I had been reading the blog written by Pastor Chuck and was excited about the prospect of being part of another church plant. The theology and beliefs were orthodox and the purpose was missional and outward looking. I felt called to be a part of it.
And the first official service on 10/10/10 was amazing! There were over 100 people in attendance and enthusiasm was high. It felt like we were stepping into something powerful that God was doing in our area.
The second week was equally impactful as well but for a different reason - there was hardly anyone at the service. It turned out that most who came that first week were kind well-wishers who would not end up being a part of our church going forward. The previous church plant that Brooke and I had been a part of started with a group of 30 or so believers from another church - our core group was committed to encouraging each other as we got things going. Prism had no such group. Yet I still felt like this was something that God was doing and that we should be a part of.
I could fill many devotions with witness to what God has done in our lives over the past ten years at Prism but I’ll just mention a few of them briefly here. Our young kids having only one or two other kids in Sunday school with them and watching God answer their prayer for other kids to come to church. A middle school youth group being formed. Money showing up on the last day possible just before we needed it to make it another month. Three of our kids being baptized in the Huisken pool. Serving alongside many we had never met. The building where my grandparents got married, Chapel of the Roses, being at first rented to Prism and then miraculously sold to and privately financed by the family who had owned it for many years. Praying for money that I didn’t have to give to our church for an immediate need and my cell phone company letting me know that I was overpaying for a business plan I wasn’t using - and writing me a check for the $500 I was praying for. Watching God provide people at just the right time. And so on.
The highly anticipated launch, the reality of the second week, and all of the wonderful and trying times afterwards are reminders and pillars to me of what God has done, showing his power and my dependence on Him for anything to happen. They are concrete examples which are helpful when the next moment of uncertainty comes. They are enough to show me that God is in control and is at work even when I can’t see or understand what He is doing. They remind me when I am tempted to forget. And they are all part of the greater story of what God is doing in whole world throughout time.
My family’s experiences and our church’s path is only a very small part of the greatest story ever, a story that is still being written yet has an ending that has already been declared. God’s proclamations, the last value for our church, are what the mission, vision, and other values all rest on.
In the beginning, God created. Humans rebelled and sin entered and were separated from the only One that could truly fulfill our greatest desires and needs. In the end, the city that needs no sun and the Lamb on the throne with the healing of the nations and the servants of God worshiping Him. No longer anything accursed, no more mourning, crying, or pain.
My story and our story fits in time between these times. God’s word tells us what has been and what will be. It tells us why we are and what we are to be about.
Hebrews 12 references the great cloud of witnesses who have lived life before us and point us to the One who gives us the fullness of life mentioned in John 10. The little shepherd brother turned greatest king of the chosen people is revealed not only as a man after God’s own heart but as a murdered and adulterer. Most of the New Testament is penned by Paul, the most unlikely of characters, the greatest of the sworn enemies of the followers of Jesus, who was blinded and commanded to change on his road to have others killed.
God somehow weaves history again and again to preserve His chosen people through Joseph and Moses and Ruth and Esther and countless others. And it all leads to Jesus, the God-man, born miraculously and making all things new. He appoints those which are to go into the world and make disciples. The church is described as the bride of Christ against which the gates of hell cannot stand. Wisdom for every area of life and poetry and songs to express the human experience are included along with instructions on how to interact with each other and nature.
God’s story, written in the Bible, supernaturally inspired and given to us to know enough to trust what God is doing, is everything. It is the rock, the lamp to our feet, the light to our path.
It is why we as a church exist, tells us what to believe, and guides everything that we do.
1 Corinthians 13:12 says that for now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
Our church is meaningful in the scope of history only because we are part of God’s global church throughout all time, somehow undeservedly redeemed from rebellion to be transformed to praise, worship, and enjoy our greatest treasure forever. God’s proclamations in His word light that mirror just enough that we can trust the ending that is already written.
