Choose Life

     My friend, Bethany Dillon, posted an article entitled "What to do When Your Church is Changing" to her Facebook, this afternoon. It was exactly what The Lord had been speaking to my heart. I thought I would take the opportunity to share my heart with you today.
     Though some of us would like to temporarily revisit the birth or infant-hood of our children, only an unnatural affection for that child would wish them to live a life without growth and change. To wish that for your infant would be to rob them of their life, because life is just that...a series of growth and change. If we were to receive the tragic news of a loved one receiving an injury or illness that left them physically alive, but incapable of walking, talking, or speaking - if they could breathe and all of their organs function normally, and perhaps they could even think, but possess no means of expressing their thoughts or feelings because they could only communicate on the same level as an infant - we would say that person's "life" had been cut short...that they were not really "living".
     This will sound offensive, but I can't help but wonder whether someone is spiritually alive when they want to be what they were forty, twenty, or even one year ago. I certainly hope I have learned, changed, and grown in the past year, and I CERTAINLY pray I do not possess the same maturity and understanding I possessed as an infant! Occasionally, I would like to revisit my childhood. I remember the safety and the love of my parents. I would relish running along the creek banks and building stick forts with my cousin Shannon or walking the railroad tracks with my grandfather, but consider how much life I would leave behind. And not just for me. That life preserved and unchanged would mean a world without my husband, my children, my walk with Christ since I was saved...and that's no life at all.  Similarly, a church clinging to the past is wishing its future away. Lives God placed you in your community have been unaffected and the "family" He willed for you is nonexistent...because you stopped "living" years ago. 
    Suppose with me that a living, healthy person was placed in a tomb filled with rotting corpses. If he remained, he would be poisoned by their condition of death, until he was at last, dead as well. Be careful to recognize a tomb when you see one. Tombs may have a very different beginning, but once they shelter death, they are rarely anything else. If  you're part of a church that is trying to change and grow, you should thank God for sending someone into your fellowship who is fighting for life...for your life , the lives of your children and of so many others. You are blessed. God is extending His life-giving grace to you. If you are the only one fighting for life, you may need to leave the tomb. (I know Someone with experience in that situation, by the way.) 

"I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." - Deuteronomy 30:19

Here's the link I mentioned at the beginning:
                    http://joemckeever.com/wp/church/