CORE – Part 1: Unwavering Conviction

Over the past couple of weeks I have been asking myself and God some pretty hard questions. We’ve gone ’round & ’round but when I boil it down to one central issue that I’ve been asking God about is: “What does it take to build a church that is doing what God wants and is experiencing God-blessed results.” In this time of reflection and prayer, God is helping me to see that there are certain attributes that are at the core of every healthy, growing church.

These attributes–or attitudes–aren’t a five-step program or a “How to do Church.” These are deep down in the very DNA of the healthiest churches. These attributes aren’t head knowledge, either. They actually determine what these churches do and how they do them. And the result is that unchurched and unbelieving men, women and children are coming to Christ in numbers and power that are so unbelievably impossible that it must be God Himself behind it all.

One of the attributes that these healthy, growing churches have engrained is an unwavering conviction that God wants to do great works through us.

Let’s face it: God loves doing miracles. Most of us would love to see God work in marvelous ways. And we wonder if He’ll ever do something spectacular in or even near our lives so we can see first hand how great God is.

But if we look at the miracles that are in the Bible, we find out that almost every time God involved a human being in the working of those great works. God can do (and has done) miracles without our involvement, but it’s very rare.

Here’s the rub: We have to make ourselves available to God. I don’t know why God has chosen to work in this way, but He has. Too often we sit around waiting for God to do the miraculous when all the while He is waiting for us to get in on the game.

We have the ability to put God off. We can put Him on hold. If we choose, we can make other things priorities. When we do we miss out on the great things God has planned. We miss out on seeing and experiencing and participating in God’s great works.

That’s a sad thing. And the biggest problem is that we never know how sad it is because we never know just what we missed out on. We never see the lives we could have touched. We never see the families that we could have healed. We never see the power of God expressed in unbelievable ways. And so we never quite realize we have missed out.

BUT…when we make ourselves available God opens doors and possibilities that we could have never imagined. This only happens when you adopt an unwavering conviction that God wants to do great works through you.