That is, a believer made a wrong move or set of moves that bring him or her up short on the evangelical measuring stick, and it is the supposed job of the good church folk to beat that person up with judgment.
Misspent circumstances could very well turn into God's greatest moment, for therein lies his most exclusive ability: transformation.
The Bible records David's affair with Bathsheba, the death of the child born of that out-of-wedlock union, and the death of Bathsheba's husband at the direction of David. That is quite the set of misspent circumstances by one we would certainly call a church guy.
Yet... David and Bathsheba then marry and the next child is Solomon, the builder of God's temple and the wisest man ever to live. Isn't this transformation? If we were onlookers in the church of that day, might we be busy disapproving?
I caution us as evangelicals to rethink our church instincts. We read in Isaiah 45:
But doom to you who fight your Maker--you're a pot at odds with the potter!
Does clay talk back to the potter: "What are you doing? What clumsy fingers!"
Would a sperm say to a father, 'Who gave you permission to use me to make a baby?'
Or a fetus to a mother, 'Why have you cooped me up in this belly?'
Thus God, the Holy of Israel, Israel's [and our] Maker, says: "Do you question who or what I am making? Are you telling me what I can or cannot do?"When we decide a believer has somehow misspent his or her circumstances and now fall out of our sphere of evangelical approval, I fear we become the clay talking back to the Potter.
Years ago, just such an evangelical, 'high up' in his church, told me that God cannot use divorced people.
We need only look around to see the lie in those words. God transforms continually, using every circumstance and every person to suit his agenda. To deny this is to be spiritually autistic--a huge absence of love demonstrated toward God himself. When we do not love what God is making out of a situation--but rather question it with our silly judgment--how foolish and tragically out of sync we must appear to God.
When the church clay ceases talking back to the Church Potter, the outside world will take notice of our love and fascination with all things God-transformed and may even peek inside to see what all this Love is up to. Then we will have stepped into our true calling: demonstrating God's love toward our own brokenness, as well as toward the brokenness of all others.
I am the most broken of pots.
Dear Potter: Help me watch in reverent awe as you transform others--and me.Comments are welcome at feedyourstrength@gmail.com.
