Article: "The Limited"

“The Limited”

February 2012

I am sure that there are some in our body who are fans of the various and sundry Clint Eastwood films. (a local Chicago station that is well known showed a bunch of his movies and called it “Squint like Clint” week). In one of his movies Clint Eastwood plays a police officer who lives by his own rules in the face of the bureaucracy of his own police department. From this movie came one of Clint Eastwood's famous lines stated to a criminal who had pushed his luck to far: “A man's got to know his limitations”.

Whether we like it or not we all have limitations to our abilities, gifting, and insights. We tend to want more power, money, control, or attention than is good for us or that we could manage if we even had it.

The early chapters of Genesis teach us that we are made “in God's image” and that one of our main purposes in living is the management and care of his creation on his behalf. This is what a “steward” is. The steward is not the King, but manages on behalf of the king while doing so in the name of the king. God has gifted us to be stewards of our time, talents, money, children, his church, one another (to name a few), and the entire created order. He NEVER asked us to do HIS job for him, though. He asked us to be faithful in completing the responsibilities he has given us within the context of what he has called us to be in EVERY area of our lives (we would rather just pick those few that we are good at to the neglect of the others, but that is another topic).

The point is this: Only our triune God is infinite. This means that he is unlimited in his ability to do all things well all at once with out blinking an eye!

Acts 17:25

^“.......nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things”

Jer 32: 17

“Ah Lord God! It is you who made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.”

There will always be times to push ourselves to our limits because God is stretching us and showing us that we can be more than we thought we could. However, the reality also exists that he wants us to realize our limitations, and focus on stewardship and faithfulness as we “run the race”; we must remind ourselves that this race is a marathon and not a sprint. This means that we have to “pace” ourselves and prioritize who God has called us to be. He has given us all many roles, and he wants us to be faithful in all of them.

As a church we must apply these same principles to our future aspirations and planning. Before anything we are a people called out to be the bride of Christ...TOGETHER. While God will undoubtedly takes us places that we never thought possible, we must be the people who he has called us to be. That means that in our general planning and outreach we must be aware of who we are as a church in our spiritual gifting individually, and in our abilities generally. If we stray beyond who we are right now, we risk the temptation to frustration, division, and disillusionment. As we responsibly seek his moving and direction, we will need to continually keep his often SLOW process in mind. Even if we are reading his moving among us accurately, we have to take time “to be still and know he is God” before running forward in our necessary planning and hard work!! In addition, no one person gets all of God's direction without the aid of the rest of the body; we listen and move together.

As we look to future planning there will be several things that I will be stressing.  I believe these things to be scripturally foundational for us if we are to move forward to be effective for our Lord.

• We need to continue to authentically develop an atmosphere of love and grace because we are allowing the Holy Spirit freedom as a people of humility and love
• We need to embrace our God as infinite and ourselves as finite and dependent on him
• We need to continue to develop our ability to be big picture (long-term) and small picture (short-term) thinkers and planners.
• We need to continue to bathe all that we do in a thoughtful and focused openness to the Word of God and to the Holy Spirit.

In the next few newsletter articles I will be investigating with you the implications of accepting our infinite God and our call to be faithful but finite followers of Christ. We will look at topics as they relate to the problems of burnout, effectively using our gifts in the body of Christ, or allowing other good things to cloud us from those things that are central to being the church of Jesus Christ. In later articles we will also tackle some of the topics related to the other points listed above.

Because of our God, we have a lot to look forward to, and the knowledge that he is with us every step of the way. God is doing his work, and calling us to participate in it. How will we answer his call?

Father Tom