The Need for Movement (part 1)

What is the purpose of Grace Church? Hopefully by now you are well on your way to being able to know it by heart…

“Meeting people where they are; Moving people to where God wants them to be!”

Some would quickly say, “Here we go again…we are making our church all about evangelism.” Well to be honest, I am more convinced than ever that evangelism must be the engine that drives the church. However, as vital and as important as evangelism is, our purpose at Grace Church is not just about evangelism. Being used by the Spirit of God to help move people along to where God wants them to be does not end when someone makes the decision of faith to trust Christ. The need to continue to be “moving” in our Christian walk never ends this side of heaven.

I think that is why so many Christ-followers are anything but vibrant about their faith. They have stopped consciously “moving” in their walk with the Lord. We all need to keep moving (growing) in our Christian life! If we don’t, the results are predictable. What happens when we are not moving (growing) in our Christian life? Well, let’s think of times in our lives when things aren’t moving. How about a monster traffic-jam? How many of you like sitting bumper to bumper for hours on a hot summer day moving an inch at a time wondering what could possibly be causing such a back-up? What does this lack of movement cause in your life? For me, I can some it up in just one word…FRUSTRATION. It is the same with my faith. When I quit growing, when my faith isn’t continuing to move, I become spiritually frustrated. My faith becomes more of a frustrating routine than an intimate relationship with the God of the universe.

Take water as another example. What happens to non-moving water? After a while it becomes stagnant and filled with a stench that becomes a breeding ground for annoying mosquitoes. So it is with our faith. When we quit moving forward, when we quit taking the next step of faith, we become stagnant in our walk with the Lord. Jesus said in Matthew 5 that we become like salt that has lost its saltiness.

So you see, our purpose as a church isn’t just about unbelievers. It’s about you and it’s about me. Every believer in our church from the newest babe in Christ to the person who has been around seemingly since Moses must keep moving. Once we have moved from the community to the crowd to the curious and finally to the convinced as we put our faith in Christ, we must not stop. We must become grounded in our faith and move into the realm of the committed where we dig deeper into the meat of the Word and where we take greater steps of faith. We must then move into the level we call the core. We must begin to spiritually reproduce in others and become mature spiritual leaders. And even that is not the end. We never reach the full potential until we ultimately stand before Jesus face to face in heaven. Until then we must continue each one of us, to allow God to use Grace Church to help move us to where He wants us to be.