"All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
My wife has Parkinson's, and we're moving to a smaller, one-level "retirement apartment" in a town north of us: a living-space she can navigate better, nearer to her doctors and medical facilities.
Our church is in the country, about 10 miles south of us. Our apartment will be about that much farther from church. It's not a great distance; but enough that we're having to consider whether we should go to a church in town.
The certainty we have is that God puts His people where He wishes: He is the Head of the Church: it is solely His prerogative. Discerning where God wants us to be is how we've changed churches the 2 or 3 times we've done so in our lives. It's how we'll make this decision, if He indicates we should move.
It's an opportunity for self-deception, of course: and we're as prone as any human beings to convincing ourselves "God" is telling us to do what it is we want to do. That's the usual way people put a "religious" veneer on doing what they want to do. (But God's rule is so total that I've even seen Him put people where He wants them that way...whether or not they act with reference to His will.)
But we've had some experience of God defeating that kind of self-deception.
When we moved to this town 45 years ago, we started going to a church where we heard the congregation were "good people," and the pastor "taught the Bible." Both were true.
But the church quickly impressed me like those world-record pumpkins people grow: impressive eye-candy, but flavorless. It was a church that never felt like a body, in any but name. For eight years I asked God to let us go to a different church. For eight years He said He wanted us to stay where we were. We stayed until He gave us permission to go elsewhere.
This current occasion, it seems God may be stretching us a bit. Always before, I've looked for His direct word to "go" or "stay." This time, I sense He may be telling us to use our discernment whether to go or stay; and then check ourselves to see if it conforms to His. It could be that this time He wants us to test ourselves, to see if we are able to be "guided by His eye" (Psalms 32:8).
So I've been forced to think about God's criteria for a church. And I'm thinking that a church which follows Jesus will "make disciples," as He commanded in the "Great Commission."
We almost always hear that scripture taught as a command to evangelize: but I think it involves a great deal more. Obviously a church which obeys Jesus in "making disciples" will produce believers who operate in His disciplines.
So I'm asking about Jesus' words what a graphic our pastor used this week (not coincidentally, I think) asked: "What did he mean by that ?"
I'm pondering Jesus' metric, to get it in my own thinking so I can hear Him right. I've also asked some of the "iron" people God's put in our lives (Proverbs 27:17) to pray we'll hear Him right.
It will probably be a while before we're able to make this decision; but I think we've found where we should start.
