Please, don't turn back - not yet. The Lord is ahead!

I have been pastoring for just under 30 years. I remember the call, or at least when I responded to the call. I had graduated from Moncton High School and went off to Loyalist College in Belleville Ontario to study police sciences. What I saw on campus at Loyalist was a sea of young people chasing after fulfillment, looking for hope, and drowning in despair. One image that still hangs in my memory is of a young student sitting on the steps in one of the stairwells - weeping. These are the people Jesus often noticed, I thought to myself. I could not help but also have the thought go through my head - 'she needs Jesus.' I withdrew from my program to go to Bible school and begin my journey of becoming a minister of the gospel.

All I have ever wanted to do was show people the Jesus that met me in my own despair, brokenness and hopelessness. I have sometimes gotten off track with this agenda - as have the churches I have pastored. For people to find Jesus, they will find Him in us. But we sometimes get too caught up in the ministry of the church that we forget we are the church called to do the ministry of Jesus. Sometimes we confuse the gathering together as our ministry as opposed to it simply being the space and time we set aside to encourage one another in our ministry of good works to be done in love as described in Hebrews 10:24-25.

Sometimes we get so focused on keeping the physical doors of a building open that we consequently close the doors of ministry.

Sometimes we get so focused on keeping the lights on that we do not realize when the light of Christ has left the building.

Sometimes we get so focused on study of the Scriptures that we forget to follow the Saviour revealed on its pages.

A.W. Tozer once stated: “A generation that knows only what God said will be followed by a generation that does not believe what God said.” This is the result of doing too much study with too little application.

I believe our call is to press into what can be through the ministry of Christ among us, not to the maintaining of what is, which may potentially be void of Christ in our midst.

I believe our call is to radiate and reflect the light of Christ, which is love, over and above maintaining the artificial lights of human effort.

I believe our call is to follow Jesus - to really follow Him - over and above determining or deriving absolute truth from His scriptures. To follow Jesus - to really follow Him - is far more challenging, however, than to simply learn about Him. This is what G. K. Chesteton was alluding to when he wrote: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried.”

When the way gets difficult, we find ourselves missing the comfortable, the known, and the controllable. Jesus says come follow me. Away from your comfortable, knowable, controllable.

If I may quote one of my favourite contemporary writers, Wendell Berry put it this way: “Always in the big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the Unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into.” It is so important, however, for us to step off into the wilderness - out of our comfortable, knowable, controllable.

God often calls His people out into the wilderness, a place away from the comfortable, knowable, and controllable to a place where they will need to rely on God - for everything. Why does God work in this way? We find an answer that gets right to the point in Deuteronomy 8, where God says to His people: “Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. . . Do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery . . . If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish.” Comfort, knowledge, and control are characteristics of the wide road which leads to destruction. The narrow road is off the beaten path, it is into the wilderness, or it is a stepping out of the boat in the midst of the storm. It is in these places we find ourselves in the presence of God.

I have always hoped for what I’ve been discussing to be true in my own life and in the midst of my ministry. But often I’ve found that once we start to tread off the beaten path (that wide road that leads to destruction), there are those - sometimes ourselves - who too soon become uncomfortable and begin to call us back to what we knew and what we know we can control. And so we return our focus to what was, and what we hope always will be. And the voice of Jesus which calls always 'Come, follow me' grows a little bit more distant, muffled by the noise of ministry done on the wide road of our own effort.

Sometimes we get so focused on the ministry within our own physical doors of our church buildings that we consequently close other doors of ministry the Lord had opened. We are okay with this as long as the lights are on here in our own building, even if the light of Christ has dimmed.

We continue to study the scriptures within the doors of our building under our lights, thinking that herein we find life, all the while refusing to follow Jesus and have life.

I remember when my friend Rus Wilson shared the following words from a song ('Clear the Stage' by Jimmy Needham) at a pastors conference I was at, and I share them here as perhaps you need to hear them as much as I did then:

Clear the stage and set the sound and lights ablaze

If that's the measure you must take to crush the idols

Jerk the pews & all the decorations, too

Until the congregations few, then have revival

Tell your friends that this is where the party ends

Until you're broken for your sins, you can't be social

Then seek the Lord & wait for what He has in store

And know that great is your reward so just be hopeful

Take a break from all the plans that you have made

And sit at home alone and wait for God to whisper

Beg Him please to open up His mouth and speak

And pray for real upon your knees until they blister

Shine the light on every corner of your life

Until the pride and lust and lies are in the open

Then read the Word and put to test the things you've heard

Until your heart and soul are stirred and rocked and broken

We must not worship something that's not even worth it

Clear the stage, make some space for the One who deserves it

This is a shift from maintaining what is to seeking what might be with Christ among us.

This is a shift from the artificial light of human effort to a reflecting the light of Christ among us, which is love.

This is a shift from rehearsing truths learned about God in Scripture to following Jesus in life, day by day.

I believe Jesus is inviting us to step out of the boat, in faith, to show Himself in the storm of our current times. I truly believe He is. And I hope we will. As much as when I was at Loyalist College, so too we today are among a sea of people chasing after fulfillment, looking for hope, drowning in despair. Some of these people are our own children and grandchildren, and at the least our neighbors - who need Jesus.

I ask that we not step back onto the beaten path, that wide road of comfort found in what is known and controllable. I ask that we not step out of the wilderness in the wrong direction - one way leading back to Egypt, the other to the promised land; I believe we are still closer to Egypt than we are to the promised land and our Lord has much to teach us yet before leaving the wilderness. Or, let me put it this way, just because the waters are raging around us does not mean it is time to get back in the boat.

Dag Hammarskjöld encourages us with these words: “When the morning’s freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles give under the strain, the climb seems endless, and suddenly nothing will go quite as you wish it is then that you must not hesitate.”

Please, don’t turn back - not yet. The Lord is ahead.