State of the Church

State of the Church

January 29, 2012

First Baptist Church, Cornelia

Exodus 3

Walking by Faith Commitment Sunday - Week #4

Eric's Notes:  Bobby Ivey provided the biblical work for this sermon through his song Moses.  I hope to have a link to his performance on here soon.

Over the past several weeks we have been examining the spiritual initiative called Walking By Faith.  Theologically, we have stated God exists and the future, weaving God’s purposes into our lives – pulling us forward into the invisible future.  Missionally, we have stated our congregation exists to live out our full kingdom potential in God’s future.  Organizationally, we have stated the need to prepare ourselves so we may be ready when the opportunities of God’s future rise beneath us.

Walking by Faith does not mean we blind fold ourselves and simply start walking to see if God get us out of the house without hitting any furniture.  Instead, it means we assimilate all of our knowledge of the journey ahead, be honest about our true strengths and challenges, and prepare accordingly.

A few weeks ago – I used a story from Jennifer Pharr Davis’ book Becoming Odessa, to describe the point where we leave what we know and begin walking the unknown path before us.  This is walking by faith.  But there is more than just putting one step ahead of the other.  Jennifer spent months preparing to make those first steps on the Appalachian Trial – learning about wilderness survival, gathering the right materials for the journey.  Besides preparing, she also had one major understanding that helped her make her first steps of walking by faith. She had a destination.  While she didn’t know what would be around the next bend or over the next mountain – she stayed focused on her destination – Maine.  Each day – especially the terrible days full of snow or rain or cold she would repeat to herself the mantra – “This is another step closer to Maine.  This is another step closer to Maine.”

We begin our Walk of Faith with a clear destination in mind:  To be a congregation which says “Yes” to God:  in our lives, in our community, in our families and in our church structures.  This is our destination.  Our Maine.  Each step we make, each commitment we offer, each worship service we attend moves one step closer to this goal.  When we become a congregation willing to say “Yes,” to God, God’s ideal image of us – the image of his son Jesus – is formed and we make God smile.  Ours become spiritual sacrifices as we glorify God. When these things happened:  we will have a transformational impact in our community and in world; and the name of Jesus will be praised. 

Before we start on our pilgrimage of faith, we must face our present situation – our environment.

Our Reality

            First, our reality:

1.  The world has changed!  Sue Blair stated during both of our town meetings this fact about how we understand church and the world.  “If the 1950’s ever come back, we’ll be ready.”  We will have the worship style, the organizational structure, and the mindset to succeed.  Then, Sue would look over the crowd and say, “Well, folks, the 1950’s are not coming back.” 

            This is not a surprise to any of us.  We understand this fact rationally, but understanding it with our lives is quite a challenge.  We have two options when it comes to facing this new world.  We can resist it, fight it, and deny it.  Or we can welcome the challenges and opportunities it provides us. 

            The February 2012 edition of the business magazine Fast Company stated this fact for the business community in their cover article:  “Generation Flux.”  Rather than doing business in a world we understand, it argues we now live in a world control by the chaos theory – where no one knows the future.  5 years ago 3 huge companies controlled 64% of the smart phone business – today – 2 completely different companies are the top of this industry.  One of the key learnings the article makes about the future for industries and churches – is we don’t know what we don’t know. 

            As a church we have been very good at responding to the challenges of the 20^th century.  No one knows what the world will be like in 5 more years – but - I’m here to say, the best times for this church and Christianity are not behind us.  God is still at work.  While things of religion are being stripped away – God is opening up new, refreshing opportunities to experience and serve Jesus.

2.  The past weighs us down.

            As a congregation, the past still weighs us down – like weights upon our shoulders.  I discovered an amazing thing as I read through our 100 year celebration material in 1987.  At the very end of the booklet, we wrote excitedly about the future education building the church was beginning to dream of building.   For the past 25 years, we have invested our time, emotion, energy and finances in planning, building and paying off our Family Ministry Center.  Rather than seeking how God can use this building in new, creative ways to transform our community – we are still weighed down paying for it.  Honestly, at times it has consumed us. 

            At the beginning of the month, I wrote a letter to all the members of the church speaking about the importance of debt retirement to our ability to walk by faith.  Over the course of the next year, we hope to challenge all of us to give sacrificially to finally relieve this debt in order to utilize the potential of our great buildings for the kingdom of God

            This debt, though, is not the only weight from our past.  We also have hurts, scars and pain left over from past congregational conflicts.  To deny this reality is to cripple the opportunities our future holds.  Over the course of this next year, let us not just retire our financial debt, let us look to God to restore, redeem and heal the scars we carry from the past.  This does not happen accidentally – it happens through our intentionality.  We will spend time this year making space for God’s healing.     

Our Opportunity

            Our present situation as a congregation, though, is not defined by these 2 realities.  God has placed before us two great opportunities. 

1.  Our Kingdom Potential:

            As I stated a couple of weeks ago – it never hurts to hear it twice – the full kingdom potential for this congregation is great.  God has amazing things in store for us.  Use your imagine with me for a few moments:

            Imagine our facilities full every day with children and adults coming to know Jesus as they study and practice the arts – water colors, dance, chorus, pottery.

            Imagine our gym utilized every day with community sports teams and activates bringing families and the community together.

            Imagine Cornelia Elementary School transformed by the grace and sacrifices of our members – bringing healing and hope for families through Jesus.

            Imagine Matagalpa, Nicaragua recognizing the work and compassion of a small church in the NG Mountains for their community development work done in the name of Jesus.

            Imagine individuals sharing Jesus easily in their families and with their friends.  Imagine weekly baptisms.

            Imagine this sanctuary filled each week with the multiple generations worshipping Jesus.

            Imagine.

2.  Our People

            First Baptist Cornelia is not this building – it is you.  We are full of creative, innovative, compassion, dedicated, loyal, talented, passionate, missional and wonderful people.  We are full of people who love greatly – who accept others where they are, but love them too much to leave them there.  We are full of artists and athletes, mystics and theologians, servants and healers, missionaries and teachers.

            Imagine if we empowered this wealth of people potential for the sake of the Gospel.  Imagine if everyone here knew their spiritual gifts and dedicated their lives to living out their calling.  Imagine if our church structures called people out not only to keep the church working, but for the greater task of kingdom transformation.  Imagine…

Our potential and our people give us a vision of the opportunities God has place before us.  But we will never get there – the realities of the world will bring us down – unless we face the challenges of following Jesus.

Our Challenge

            In the 3^rd chapter of Exodus Moses faces his burning bush moment.  God calls him to speak on his behalf to the powerful of Egypt.  To do this - many realities must be addressed – he doesn’t speak well, he has a past that wants to track him down, and he really doesn’t want this burden.  But the opportunities are too great.  There’s no one else who can speak for the Hebrews to the halls of power. No one else, except Moses can get an audience with the Pharaoh.  No one could do the work of Moses – except Moses.  God knows the opportunities.  God challenges Moses to Give it up, let it go, lay it down. 

Sanctify Yourselves

Sanctify Yourselves

Joshua 3

FBC, Cornelia

January 22, 2012

Walk of Faith Series #3

Eric's notes:  I've been influenced by the work of Reggie McNeal for over 13 years in the areas of prayer and preparation.  I'm thankful for the opportunity to share some of these ideas here.  

In the late 1980’s the red-on-yellow K logo of Kodak was a signature brand synonymous in every corner of the planet with capturing, collecting and sharing images.  Kodak played a role in pretty much everyone's life in the 20th century because it was the company we entrusted our most treasured possession to — our memories.  In the late 1980’s, though, a competitor from across the ocean, Fuji film, began to challenge Kodak’s monopoly.   Over the last 2 decades both of these large companies have watched their core cash cow – 35 MM film – disappear.  Last Thursday, Kodak filed for chapter 11 Bankruptcy while Fujifilm now thrives.  The story of these two firms demonstrates the choices of confronting an unknown future.    

            By 1990 both Kodak and Fujifilm realized the writing on wall – the world was going digital.  35 MM cameras would be disappearing and digital cameras would be replacing them.  For the next 10 years both companies worked to milk as much money from their film divisions as possible – struggling to figure out what came next.  In 10 years Fujifilm’s profits from film went from 60% of their income to basically nothing. 

            Both companies confronted the same circumstances – but they differed greatly in how they choose to respond to the future.  According to the Economist - Kodak choose the easy route.  They depended on their marketing and branding to save them.  They predicted their strong brand identity would save them as it had for over 100 years - and hen they planned as much as they always had – to meet that prediction.  They worked just as hard as Fuji – they just worked at the wrong things for the changing culture. 

            Fuji on the other hand, chose the harder route of developing new products and new businesses.  The world was changing and they chose to prepare themselves for the opportunities this world might offer.  To build these new projects, Fujifilm began applying its technologies in new areas.  They sought new ways to use what they did well.  They didn’t know what the unknown future held – but they would be prepared with new products as that world emerged. 

            Over course of our lives - the world has changed completely for all of us here in this sanctuary.  The world as we knew it – the culture that shaped us – the institutions we trusted – are no longer the same.  Most of us grew up in a film oriented world – we placed film in the camera, took 12,24, or 36 pictures at a time, rolled in back into its canister, took it out, drove over to a drug store, gave it to a professional film developer, and days later – picked up the film, pulled the pictures out of the envelope – and finally saw the memories our cameras had captured.  Our children and grandchildren will never have these memories.  If they cannot run to the photographer after the picture has been taken to see instantly the memory that has been captured, they are disappointed. 

            Like Kodak and Fujifilm - We all face choices in how we adjust to this new world. 

            Like Kodak - our typical approach to the future involves Predicting and planning.  We attempt to predict what will happen in the future and then we plan accordingly.  This way we have more control over what happens.  We do this often in our businesses, family and church.  This approached worked well when the world was not changing as rapidly as it has been over the last few decades.  In our film oriented world – we knew what would be happening over the next 10 years because it was the same as the last 10 with just a few modifications.  We could predict and plan for how to respond.  But what happens when our film oriented world turns digital.  Our businesses lose their profit margins, our family members disperse around the world, and our churches fight to stay the same – and end up dying and declining. 

           

            A different and more biblical approach to the future involves prayer and preparation.  Approaching the future through prayer and preparation recognizes God as the Master Weaver residing in the future and weaving his purposes through our lives.  Prayer and preparation requires us to relinquish control over our lives and our church – learning how to walk by faith and not by sight.  Prayer and preparation acknowledges a world in drastic realignment where we cannot predict what will happen tomorrow – let along plan for it.  Instead, prayer and preparation seeks listen to the Spirit of God and prepare ourselves for what God has in store for us. 

            Let’s examine the 3^rd chapter of Joshua as a model for approaching the future God has in store for each of us and our church.  Over the last 2 weeks, we’ve examined the importance of walking by faith, not by sight into God’s future – striving the reach our full kingdom potential.  This chapter reveals how we do this. 

Scripture Lesson

            In Joshua 3, we find a wandering nation - the People of Israel - on the banks of the Jordan River.  It’s been 40 years since a scared, mass of former slave refugees walked across the Red Sea.  Over these 40 years in the desert – God has nurtured, matured and transformed these former slaves into a new nation – a new people – the People of God.  

            Joshua leads the Israelites down from their camp at Shittim in the desert into the wadis beside the Jordan River in expectation of their crossing into the Promised Land.  Between them and their future lies the Jordan River overflowing its banks - at its highest, harvest levels.  Getting to God’s future seems dangerous and not simply downright impossible.  The People of Israel stay 3 days beside the raging river – looking out across a new land – questioning how they could achieve God’s future, afraid of what might happen to them, but still excited, wanting what God has prepared for them.

            v. 2 tells us what happens next: 

2At the end of three days the officers went through the camp 3and commanded the people, ‘When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God being carried by the levitical priests, then you shall set out from your place.

Before the Israelites go into the Promised Land of their future they are instructed to:

1.  Wait til God moves. 

            Before they walk into the future ahead of them – they must wait for God to move.  The Ark of the Covenant represented the Presence of God for the People of Israel.  It usually sat in the holiest spot in the traveling tabernacle in the middle of God’s people.  Now as they prepare to walk into God’s future they must attune themselves to a new way of experiencing God’s presence.   “When you see the ark move – then you are to start moving.” 

            In our typical approach to the future - Waiting til God moves sounds like a cope out.  We tend to see waiting as inaction rather than an action.  “Let’s get started,” we say.  “Let’s plunge ahead.”  We would rather see Joshua testing the river’s depths and making for getting thousands of people over or through it.   

            Rather than inaction, though, waiting for God to move requires much action - Just a different kind of action.  It requires us to pay attention to God.  This requires attuning our senses to God’s ways.  This requires us to spend time in prayer, to spend time meditating and listening to scripture, to make worship a priority in our lives.  When we do these spiritually oriented things – we are prepared to notice when God moves.  Otherwise – we might be just sitting around camp – and miss the Presence of God passing us - missing the future God has in store for us. 

            This year as part of our Walking by Faith initiative – our church has been challenged to build spiritual disciplines into our lives.  We are challenged to read through the books of Luke and Acts, to make worship a priority in our lives, and to pray for FBC.  These spiritual actions are designed to attune us to the movement of God – as we wait til he moves. 

Follow … God’s New Paths

            After the People of Israel are instructed to wait til God moves – they are next told to Follow … God’s new paths.  Look at verses 3-4:

When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God being carried by the levitical priests, then you shall set out from your place. Follow it, 4so that you may know the way you should go, for you have not passed this way before.            Besides being attuned to the Presence of God moving – the People of Israel must have the courage to follow God’s Presence where it goes – into the unknown future. 

            These verses represent the whole principle of walking by faith, not by sight for me.  Remember – everyone in camp knows where they are headed – to this new future in the uncharted territory of the Promised Land.  They also know what lies between them – the Raging Jordan River.  They have not seen bridge builders out there building a bridge to get them safely across.  Joshua simply says – wait for God to move – then follow God’s new path.  Walk by faith – following the presence of God – because you have not passed this way before. 

            Think about why walking by faith is so important.  Over the course of the next several years – as the People of Israel make their way into their promised future – life will not always be easy. They will have to trust God in this new future.  In order to face the challenges of the future – the People of Israel needed to see what God could do when they trusted him.  What would happen whey the walked by faith and followed him. 

            As we listen and attune ourselves to God – eventually God tells us to follow him - To walk by faith – in God’s new paths because we have not passed this way before.  As we do – we are to:

3.  Expect … God to amaze us. 

            When we wait til God moves and follow God’s new paths, we can expect God to amaze us.  Look at verse 5

5Then Joshua said to the people, ‘Sanctify yourselves; for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.’

            As they People of Israel wait to follow God – Joshua instructs them to ritually purify themselves – consecrate themselves – make themselves spiritually ready – for the wonders they are about to experience.  So – over the next day – the People of Israel prepare themselves for the miracle God has in store for them by anointing their families with oil.  They organize themselves for a future they could not control.  They didn’t know what would happen, but they would be prepared when it did.

            In order for us to expect God to amaze us – we must sanctify – prepare - ourselves for God’s future as well.  While we do not know the future and we do not know where God will lead us – there are things we can do now to prepare ourselves for it. 

            For example – we do not know God’s future of FBC, but we do know we must retire our debt in order to be unencumbered to follow God where he leads.  When the debt of our Family Ministry Center is released from our necks – imagine how quickly we can follow God. 

            Another example – we do not know the future, but we do know, we must understand our identity as the People of God at FBC and understand the mission field of Cornelia, GA if we are ever to follow God.  That’s why a focused process of listening, discerning, and dreaming is so important to us.  It’s our way of sanctifying – preparing ourselves when God’s presence walks forward out into the world and we are called to follow! 

            In a world that changes quickly – God calls us to abandon our predict and plan approach to the future and choose to pray and prepare:  To wait, follow and expect! 

            I picture it this way:  Like a surfer waiting for the perfect wave.  When we lived on the coast of SC – I had several good friends who lived to surf.              I loved to watch them in the ocean.  These guys never planned a single wave. They never said, “I predict that movement of water 100 yards from here will be a 5 foot wave and I plan to ride it forward then cut backwards as I get to the shore.”  No, instead, my surfer friends who simply paddle out to the deeper water and wait.  Sitting on top of their boards til they saw just the right swell begin to rise.  Then they would start paddling and at just the right moment they would stand and ride the power of the wave with as much creativity as possible.  They never controlled the wave – they simply attempted to ride it. 

            Getting to the point of riding that wave, though, required much time and preparation.  Before they ever found themselves on the ocean, they had waxed their boards, practiced their stances, monitored the weather and tides and gotten into the water.  These steps of preparation – allowed them to be ready with the power of surf rose beneath them to amaze them. 

            You see – God wants to amaze us - in our lives and in our church.  To do so, God calls us to sanctify ourselves – so we may be ready when the opportunities of God’s future rise beneath us.   Amen!

Full Kingdom Potential

Here's the 2nd of my Walking By Faith Sermons.  The printed version is the different, though, than the proclaimed.  I made several changes along the way that morning.  Please be kind with any typos in the copy.  I do not have a dictated copied, although, eventually, these sermons will be on our church website (www.fbccornelia.org).  Thanks to George Bullard for the concept of Full Kingdom Potential.  I pulled a good bit from his book as I planned this sermon.  

Full Kingdom Potential

Matthew 13:31-32

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Walking By Faith Series #2

Marcus Dupree, from Philadelphia, Mississippi was the most highly recruited high school football players in the 1980’s.  During Senior year in1981 his coach was fielding over 100 calls a day from college scouts and head coaches who had all seen Marcus’ potential for success.  As a freshman in 1978, he ran a 4.4-second 40-yard dash, scored five touchdowns as wide receiver and seven more as a kickoff and punt returner, including a 75-yard kickoff return touchdown on his first play in high school.  Everyone wanted this kid to live out his potential at their school.

            Barry Switzer and Oklahoma University won the recruiting war.  They started him his freshman year and he led them to the Fiesta Bowl on New years day – only to lose.  Barry Switzer – true to his personality – blamed the loss on Dupree’s lack of passion and training.  By the next year, Dupree’s potential began to fade.  His stats fell.  He suffered a concussion.  Then he disappeared from the campus.  By the time he resurfaced in Mississippi – he had quick OU and faded from memory. 

            ESPN has created a movie about Marcus Dupree with the great title:  The best who never was.  This is what can happen to potential.

2 years ago as Marcia and I entered into a discernment process about God’s call to First Baptist Cornelia – this is word we kept hearing.  Potential.  A few comments went like this as I asked around about the church.

·         “First Baptist Cornelia is full of potential.  They have wonderful people who are ready to see where God leads.”

·         First Baptist Cornelia has incredible facilities.  They have the potential to be used for great ministry.

·         “First Baptist Cornelia has the potential of being the leading Baptist congregation in Northeast GA.”

            Potential does not guarantee a bright future – it only reminds us of what might be.

            The same is true for congregations.  God’s potential for First Baptist Cornelia does not guarantee a bright future – we still have a say in what will happen.  

            Walking by faith as a congregation means striving to reach our Full Kingdom Potential.  It means not settling for being known as the “Best that never was.”  Reaching our Full Kingdom Potential requires us to set faith oriented goals for ourselves as a congregation rather sight oriented goals that simply try to close the gap between where we are and where we want to be.   

            George Bullard is a Baptist congregational expert.  In his book Pursuing the Full Kingdom Potential of your Congregation he outlines sight oriented goals that keep us from reaching our kingdom potential.  These are things churches – like ours – can spend all of our time and energy trying to achieve to make us better organizations – more successful in the way our community measures successes – but have nothing to do with our full kingdom potential.

1. Church Growth:  Church growth is an outward expression of our desire as a congregation to attract as many people as possible into God’s kingdom and into our congregation through our worship services, evangelism practices, and discipleship programs.  At its worse – our desire for just church growth can form us into a self-serving, competitive driven congregation whose chief purpose is to win by often treating people as objects rather than persons of worth. 
2. Church Health:  Church health is an outward desire to close the gap between an emotionally unhealthy system to an emotionally healthy system – where member get along, have a good working programs, and a balance of purpose.  At its worse –focusing only on church health can lead a congregation to lose sight of God’s journey or destination of their congregation. 
3. Church Faithfulness:  Church faithfulness focuses on the past by centering a congregation’s attention on what the church has always done, always believed or forever refused to do.  At its worse – it becomes a reactive means of protecting the congregation from patterns of thought or action that do not fit our understanding of church.  Bullard says – faithfulness is often the rallying cry of aging, plateaued, or declining congregations.  
4. Church Success:  Church success focuses on the organizational or managerial success of a congregation rather than the spiritual.  At its worse – church success is only measured by meeting the budget, keeping the building looking good, offering good programs for members, and having no conflict. 

Church growth, health, faithfulness or success – are not goals as we strive to reach our full kingdom potential.  However, these are often the result.  When we strive to reach our full kingdom potential – people will want to join us, we will grow healthier, we will build on the strengths of our past, and we will see success in management of all that we do.  These results though – are not our purpose or our ultimate goal – they are God’s blessings for seeking the harder path – striving to reach our full kingdom potential. 

The Mustard Seed

            In our scripture passage today – we find a familiar parable of Jesus focused on potential. 

            Jesus stands before the crowds holding up a tiny seed – a mustard seed.  The crowd immediately would have recognized the seed and understood the context of Jesus’ words.  They would have associated that phrase – “Birds of the air come and make nests in its branches" - with stories about giant cedars, which were stories about the world’s great kingdoms. The cedar was a symbol of political power, so when you heard the phrase, "giant cedars in whose branches birds come and make their nests," you thought of empires – they thought of Rome.

            The mustard plant was quite different, though.  It didn’t grow into a mighty cedar.  It grew into a large scrub – maybe 6-9 feet at the largest.  The mustard seed with its tiny potential – grows into a large scrub.  But Jesus has more to say about its potential. 

            The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’

            When the tiny mustard seed is planted – it not becomes the largest of scrubs – it is transformed into a tree which allows the birds to rest and make their nests.  God’s kingdom seems small – insignificant in our sight oriented world oriented around the media and politics and power – but God transforms this small potential into something great. 

            This transformation occurs through our preparation.  In order for the see to grow – it must be planted.  It order for God to transform the scrub into a tree – it must be planted.  The kingdom of God comes as we prepare our hearts, lives and world. 

Full Kingdom Potential

            Reaching our full kingdom potential as a church and as a individuals occurs as we prepare for God’s Kingdom in our lives.  As we plant the seed of our potential and walk by faith into the future.

            How will we know that we are there?  What will our full kingdom potential look and feel like?  What will the great tree transformed from the small seed look like among us?

Comprehensive – Like the great redwoods on the California coast – the Full Kingdom Potential will be expansive.  It will influence all that we do as a congregation as it transforms our lives as Christians.  It will ask important questions such :  Why does First Baptist Cornelia exist?  What is our calling in the world?  What is our purpose?  How can we best achieve this mission?  To reach our full kingdom potential we will look at how we organize ourselves, how we fund ourselves, how we use our buildings, how we empower ourselves for ministry.  God will transform us from who have been to who God desires us to be!

Kingdom-Focused:  Like the challenge to walk by faith, not by sight – our full kingdom potential will reign of God as our focus rather than the realm of humankind.  We will spend time during the year learning more about what it means to seek to live out the Kingdom of God.  To be kingdom focused, though simply means – our priorities will center more on growing the Kingdom rather than growing our church. 

            Our Fall Festival last October was an example of a kingdom focused event.  9 area churches came together – pooling together resources to serve our community.  It wasn’t about us – it was connecting our community to Jesus.  Our full kingdom potential will expand our vision of the work of First Baptist and broaden our capacity to celebrate the world of the Holy Spirit. 

Divinely Formed:  Like clay in the potters hands, our full kingdom potential is shaped by the gracious love of our heavenly parent.  Our potential as a church comes not from our vision, our hopes, our gifts, our work – it comes from the work of the Holy Spirit among us – shaping us first as people and then as a church.  Our ideal destination or image as a church is not something we can achieve by closing the gap between where we are and where we want to be – it comes as we are shaped by Jesus.  Achieving our full kingdom potential occurs as all of us as a congregation grow spiritually through the spiritual disciplines.

To begin to allow ourselves and our church to be divinely formed – I am inviting everyone in our church to read through the books of Luke and Acts as many times or as slowly as needed in the coming year.  Join us on Wednesdays at Noon to study about what we are reading in our Brown Bag Bible Studies.  Make worship a priority this year.  When you have choices of what to do on Sunday – make worship a priority. 

When we begin to make  more space for the Spirit of God to move – we prepare ourselves and our church for God’s full kingdom potential. 

            In the end – our Full Kingdom Potential will always be just beyond our grasps because it is in the process of being revealed as we travel toward it. 

            In C.S. Lewis final book in the Chronicles of Narnia – The Last Battle – he describes potential which is further up and futher in.  After the children have made it out of Narnia into the Kingdom of Aslan, one of them describes it by say, “This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it until now.”  He goes one to say that the “further up and the further in you go the bigger everything gets.  The inside is larger than the outside.” 

            Lewis concludes with these words to the ongoing nature of our Full kingdom potential:

            ”And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they lived happily ever after.  But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.  All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia h ad only been the cover and the title page:  now at last they were beginning chapter 1 of the great story which no one on earth has read;  which goes on forever:  in which ever chapter is better than the one before.”

            From where we stand today – Our Full Kingdom Potential seems far and distant.  Something we are just now beginning to understand.  As we travel toward it – walking by faith, not by sight – where we stand tomorrow will give us a different perspective on our potential.  Our story will only continue to grow.  The closer we get to God’s future – the futher up and the futher in it will appear to be.  Our potential will always be in front of us – being weaved and ordered by our God who loves us and calls us to follow him – futher up and further in!  Amen