Humanly speaking my church is a small affair: ten of us meeting in an upper room with finances at an all time low and with a large number of people thinking that’s we should pack it in and give up. And my own response to this situation has been on my mind of late. Until recently I coped with the smallness of my church by taking it stoically on the chin. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the situation and I wanted it to be different but as I couldn’t leave with a clear conscience then there was nothing else to be done but man up and take the hit. As such my church was one of the few things in life that regularly depressed me.
Recently though I realized that this stoic attitude of mine does not glorify God in the slightest. There are many people who do what they find hard to do, there are many people who stoically plod on and persevere in difficult situations, stoicism is not an uncommon human trait. And whilst it is often a good trait to have I was reading ‘I Am Not Ashamed’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones and it occurred to me that there is a superior attitude to have, an attitude that does glorify God, an attitude that is cannot be obtained by any human doing but only through Jesus Christ. If Christianity is real and true, and it is, then it must offer something more than what can be achieved by mere humanity. That is to say, having Christ as my Saviour changes everything on such a profound level that there must be a better alternative to stoicism for stoicism has no hope, it perseveres but expects nothing, Christianity on the other hand offers hope, Christianity offers the ability to be more than a conquer.
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