My good friend Dr. Tite Tienou once said to me, "We must love the church as she is—not just as we want her to be. But then we must use all the resources God gives us until she becomes what God has said she must be and, by his grace, most certainly shall be."
I have often passed that word of wisdom on to young church members and leaders when they express frustration with the state of the local churches they are in. The Lord Jesus loves the church even while we are in the midst of his re-making process. And, I hold on to Jesus' promise that someday his church will be "a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless" (Eph. 5:27). It's difficult to imagine, isn't it? When God is done with his work, each church and each individual in the church will be without blemish.
I have been thinking about that anew while reading and re-reading the Gospel of Mark in recent months. God loves not only the church but also the world. This is difficult for us to grasp when we see all of the evil in our world. Still, repeatedly, the Bible declares that God continues to love the world he made and the people in it. Indeed, he loves the world too much to leave it in the imperfect and broken condition it has been in since Genesis 3. And, God is using his unlimited resources and strength to have this world become all that he has intended it to be since eternity past. God declares to us that someday, all things will be made new (Rev. 21:1–5), and all things will be made right (Rev. 22:1–5).
The Gospel of Mark opens by announcing that the beginning of this magnificent good news from God happened with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus' central message was that the kingdom of God is at hand. That means that the good and righteous rule of God is breaking into a world marred by the rule of many other things. We will be learning about this from Mark's gospel in the coming months. We will see the acts and hear the words of Jesus as he addresses one wrong after another in this world he loves and begins the process of making things right.
My prayer is that we all will allow Jesus to rule our lives and to do his transformative work in us more fully than ever before. And, I pray that we will use whatever resources he gives us to call people to faith in Jesus and to be a part of God's mission of making all things right. Our great hope in this fallen world is that when we see wrong in our own hearts and in the world in which we live, we can have confidence that by the grace and power of God, "This too shall be made right."
To His Glory,
Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor