11 Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience.

As we talked about in church this morning we see that respect and love of God drive us to public persuasion of others. Mark Twain (I think), said that motivation wears off, but so do showers and this is why we take one every day. When we as Christians are constantly looking for the right motivation to grow the kingdom of God we prove our lack of conviction for what God has done.
Having respect for God means that we take on the mission of His son in reconciling others to God. We are called to be a church of reconciliation. But do we have the conviction of the mission?  Do we have a genuinely, deep rooted, conviction of what God has done?  The answer is no if we are in need of further man conceived motivation and tactics.
But, is it really that simple?  Well it is amazing what God did, but we so often lose sight of the truth. We see ourselves as reconciled to God, and we are thankful and perhaps through some ill-conceived selfishness we care only for our own well being.

16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a]The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.

I love how Paul reminds us that we have been committed to the message of God and we are charged with carrying that message forth to the world. We are not promised that the world will receive the message, in that the world still sees Christ from only a worldly point of view. But we have transitioned our perspective to see Christ as so much more than some teacher, religious leader, or historical figure.
We see Christ as God's hand extended and we see that He was willing to carry that message even to the cross on our behalf. Are we called to carry that message any less distance than He did?  I am not saying that we can offer ourselves as atonement for others, but I am saying that we certainly can offer the completeness of our lives as He did.
We have to find the conviction of the message of God. We have to return to the roots of our faith and find the joy of our salvation. Why do we go to church?  Is it to check some box or fulfill some ritual to the satisfaction of our conscience? I offer that we should go to church, and go into the world, out of fear and respect for God. We receive the gift and the gift in turn convicts us to act. The gift of Christ's love and forgiveness is attainable to any who extend an open hand to receive it. But, the gift is dangerous. The gift carries the weight of death. Our old creature dies and our new self rises from the ashes as warrior servants to the almighty God of the universe. We show our respect to Him by carrying forth His message on our armor and bringing reconciliation to the world.

Christmas Eve

I am sitting here in my office tonight, feeling the burden to start writing again for our church. I don't feel the burden for any reason other than to make sure that my heart, conviction and desire for the church is always clear to those who attend.
We are in the middle of a transitional period at the moment with our attendance, that was stagnate, beginning to fall steadily toward unsustainable attendance. I have to be honest, I am not sure why we have come to this point. It is easy to blame vision, energy, leadership and outside circumstance even though I am not sure that any of those things are the reason. We could blame the typical nature of organizational life/death as the reason in that perhaps we have just run our course and the time/season of our turmoil is just simply part of the process.
I have heard it mentioned that perhaps we are not anointed as a church, which, by its very mention would imply that I am not anointed. As much as I would like to rant against that possibility and run over scripture which refutes the very notion, perhaps there is something to that belief. If there are people who think we are not meant to thrive as a church because of a lack of God's anointing, then by that very insinuation, we are bound to fail under the weight of that speculation in the heart's of those in the church.
The fact remains, I believe in this church as emissaries of God. I believe that God desires for this church to somehow find its way through the forest in which it currently walks somewhat aimless and lost. I am not sure I am the leader to bring it through this wilderness, but I feel that God is not done with me here, or with us as an entity.  I am only writing this because I am often accused of being closed to emotion in expression of my heart. I hope this leaping off point, is a beginning to having those who call this their church home, for exposing all of you to the burden of my heart.