Sometimes you’ve got to call a timeout.
We can get so caught up in the fray that we forget our goal, our strategy, and our duty, and that makes it necessary to take a minute every now and then, call timeout, and remind ourselves to regroup and refocus. There’s a lot of good work being done in the church, but we’ve lost our focus a bit. Sure, we need to focus more on God, and we need to focus more on the lost, but we can’t forget to focus on each other as well.
So much of our work at Focus Press and so many of the blogs, sermons, publications, and podcasts in the church are focused on helping families find ways to help their children find the Lord, how to be more Christlike in our daily lives, and to help the church grow as close to being what God intends it to be as possible, and that’s a good thing. Of course, all of that can lead to intense debate over methods, principles, and interpretations, and that can even be a good thing. However, among all of the debate and all of the different works going on, we need to slow down from time to time and remember three key points about the church from the Scriptures.
We’re on the same team.
No, we’re not going to always agree on how to walk the Christian pathway. We’re going to interpret and apply certain Scriptures differently. Even if a brother is completely wrong on an issue (outside of salvation issues), we have to remember that we are all God’s family, His chosen race and royal priesthood. When we walk all over another Christian’s feelings but win the debate, God is not glorified. When we point out how wrong someone’s actions are without lovingly showing them why that matters and that we care about them, God is not glorified. When we avoid fellowship with or spread gossip about some preacher that so and so told us that rumor about, God is not glorified. When we discount the good work being done by brother so and so because we disagreed with him on something once, God is not glorified. When we have our ministry territory staked out and look to build that up at the expense of others, God is not glorified.
Make no mistake: God is never glorified when Christians trip each other up and hinder each other from the work out of selfishness or personal disputes. And, if we aren’t glorifying God, we’re failing to do what we were put here to do. Beyond that, and far worse, to do so takes away from God’s glory in favor of our own. All of these disputes make church about us, which is exactly what Paul wrote about in Philippians. Whatever was the nature of the dispute Euodia and Syntyche had, the answer was for them to find harmony in the Lord (4:2). We’ve been purchased by His blood, which means we bear His name and not our own. If I bear His name and you bear His name, we’re family and it’s my job to love you and not be a hindrance to you.
We’re fighting the same opponent.
Satan is still the same roaring lion he’s always been, and he’s still seeking for Christians to devour. Rather than fighting with each other or viewing each other negatively, we need to remember who the enemy really is. The enemy isn’t that Christian with whom you don’t see eye to eye, the enemy is the one who wants to use that division to drag both of you away from the Lord. If we spent our time hating Satan’s ways and resisting him (James 4:7) and realized how much havoc he plays in our lives when we don’t, we’d be a lot more empathetic towards those who are also dealing with him in their lives. These disputes aren’t limited to two Christians on different sides of the pew on Sunday, though. Church politics can lead preachers to envy each other or practice their fellowship with others based on who is “approved” by other preachers and who isn’t. If we really realized the evil in the world and that we’ve been called to fight it, those political turf wars would cease forever. Instead the backbiting, the gossip, and the “I’m not talking to you” or “I can’t be friends with you” attitudes that prevail in circles of preachers and among members is doing great damage to the church by taking our focus off of the real enemy.
If we could just call timeout in the midst of our strife or frustration with our church family or with those people we don’t want to support and remember who we’re really fighting against, our personal conflicts are given a context that makes them so much easier to handle. We might not get along with a brother or sister, and we might even have to part ways like Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15:39). We still must remember that no matter how much we disagree, we want to see that person in heaven more than any other feeling we have toward them. If people in the church are your enemies, you’ve forgotten who your real enemy is. Take a timeout and remember whom you’re fighting.
We have the same goals.
The three goals of every single Christian should be to glorify God, get to heaven, and take as many people with us as we can. Going back to Philippians, Paul spends a lot of time talking about joy, but as we read through the book we see that we can only feel that joy when we are unified as a church. What unifies us? The common goal of doing God’s will. That goal led Paul to say “to live is Christ and to die is gain” (1:21) and to count all of his earthly achievements as loss (3:7). It led Jesus to leave heaven, become a servant, and die for us (2:5-8). It led Timothy and Epaphroditus to making great personal sacrifices for the furtherance of the Gospel (2:22, 2:30).
Even when Paul was frustrated by the selfishness of some who were preaching the Gospel, he reminded himself and his readers that “Christ is preached; and in this I will rejoice, yes, and I will rejoice” (1:18). Among all of the church politics and the “who you know not what you know” culture that decides who we should listen to and who we shouldn’t, we need to rejoice that the Gospel is being preached. That’s the ultimate goal, and as long as that’s happening we need to rejoice in it.
Yes, we’re going to get back to the vital discussions of how we can glorify God most by our choices and how we should understand and apply His will in specific parts of our lives, but sometimes we just need a reminder. We need a timeout from all of that discussion to remember to keep it not just civil, but brotherly, to not just be mannerly, but loving. Remember whose we are, remember who we’re fighting, and remember our goal. Above all, love each other.
By Jack Wilkie