www.bible.com/1713/1jn.4.18.csb
So what do we know today? I feel like I’ve written about this recently, but I couldn’t find it. Perfect love, mature love, is fearless. Because when Daddy is with you, you aren’t afraid of risk.
So what do we have to fear? You might have heard recently about Kanye West. I too was cautiously optimistic that this conversion might actually be authentic. Here is someone from the celebrity scene that is now taking about Jesus in a good way. He is openly evangelizing. He is doing the work of the church. And the church, well, is being the church.
What I mean is, many churches are downplaying this conversion because he didn’t come from us. If this were a pastor from an unknown church who suddenly popped up on the national scene, the church would be far more accepting. But he’s not. He is like a Paul, someone who openly despised conservative values and was a popular rap artist singing what rap artists rap about until one day God got a hold of him.
I think the church needs to take this as a warning. This is what we need to fear. God picked Kanye because we weren’t getting the message out. Let that sink in. We’ve kept the gospel bottled up in church buildings and Christian lifestyle, so that if you are not like us, you cannot be us. It is a condition the church ought to be familiar with, as we have repeated the same cycle throughout history, until God calls a Paul, or a Martin Luther, or a Tyndale, or a Billy Sunday, or a Tim Tebow. Over and again, God has had to call someone outside the box because the gospel couldn’t get out of the box.
So if God is calling Kanye West to evangelize the lost, it’s because the church wasn’t reaching who He wanted to reach. For Paul, it was outreach to the Gentiles. For Martin Luther, it was outreach to the non-Latins. And so on, and so forth. If the church will not go, then God will call someone else to go. Be afraid Church that you have not lost your relevance.
Something to ponder on this Monday.
Meritt Musings 