Psalm 8.2
In Psalm 8, the poet made some significant affirmations regarding the acts of God. First, the Lord has displayed his name throughout the earth and above the heavens. Thus, God has declared his omnipresence. God is not "in" the natural world; the Psalmist was not an animist. God is understood in what he has done, but is not limited by his creation. He dwells not in rocks and trees, birds or butterflies; he lives in and through his people.
Second, the Psalmist affirmed the omnipotence, or sovereignty, or God. "You have established strength." Two possibilities exist for understanding God’s establishment of his strength. First, one might see this phrase as describing how God accomplished, or brought into being, his strength in the world: through the mouths of children and nursing infants.
A second possibility presents itself. God established the fact of his strength, in that, he proved or displayed convincingly his power. The key to choosing either proposal rests in how one understands the role of children and adversaries.
Who is the enemy of God? We immediately respond, "Those who hate God." That is correct as far as it goes. Yet, we must realize that all of God’s enemies do not "hate" him, if we mean hate as a deep, visceral anger.
Many of God’s worst enemies are good, moral, religious people. To hate is to reject. Religious people have in fact disregarded God. What they focus on is their ability to properly carry out certain prescribed rituals. So, anyone who has attempted to manipulate God by their "programs" has, in fact, hated him. If we believe we can make churches grow and work by our own efforts, we have disregarded God; we have ignored, or hated him.
In the NewsMax article I cited in an earlier blog, the observation was made that "Once a congregation reaches a critical mass of around 2,000, its numeric strength alone becomes a powerful attraction. It becomes self-generating. Size begets growth."* So, the overriding concern for any church, then, is to become big in order to become bigger. "It becomes self-generating" is a truth rooted in mass-marketing principles, not Scripture. Has bigness become a god?
Ironically, the goal of any congregation should be the development of its membership into greater Christ-likeness. Being a big church can become an end in itself, and the spiritual growth of believers an adjunct of size. We may have lost sight of what kind of growth is more important.
Seemingly, we are attempting, by our proven effectiveness at "growing" churches, to "establish" God’s power. Our programs, location, worship style, and ministerial personalities have replaced biblical principles as the foundation for the church. As a result, pastors and ministerial staffs experience incredible anxiety due to the pressure to "grow" the church.
Yet, the Psalmist stated that God proves his power through children and nursing babies, not sophisticated media personalities and marketing specialists. Why children? When the issue of greatness in the kingdom was raised, Jesus observed that "unless you . . . become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."
Paul was perplexed by being unable to rid himself of his "thorn in the flesh." He had prayed diligently, but to no avail. Odd, Paul prayed for the "thorn" to be removed, but God did not take it away. Instead, he let Paul’s disability remain. Why? "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." God is not so much concerned with our ability to make churches big as he is with our willingness to trust him as a child. Then and only then will the real strength of God be revealed.
The italics are mine.
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