As we discussed last week, the Lord had the legal authority to bind the devil and take authority over the earth immediately after His resurrection. However, He did not do this for our sakes. He did not bind the devil because He did not want it to be easy for us. The more difficult the training, the greater the results.
The church age basically has the purpose of training those who will reign with Christ in the age to come. It is also important for man's history to be allowed to unfold—to allow sin to run its full course so its ultimate fruit can be revealed and understood for the rest of eternity. Likewise, it is also important for the maturing fruit of the Spirit in the church to be tested by the maturing fruit of sin.
Reggie White once told me that his high school football coaches used to physically beat him up every day, but did not touch any of the other players. One day he thought he could not take it anymore and went to the head coach to complain. When he asked why they picked on him every day but did not even touch the other players, the coach replied it was because they asked the parents if they could do this to their children, and Reggie's mother was the only one who gave them permission! Some may have considered this harsh, or even cruel, but Reggie's mother was a wise woman. Only a couple of Reggie's teammates were able to play college football, and none of the others went on to the professional level. Reggie not only went on to the professional level, but was an All-Pro, a record thirteen times. Reggie is widely acknowledged as one of the best to have ever played the game. He credited this accomplishment to his tough training.
It was also said that Solomon used to chaff under the discipline he endured, while it seemed that his brothers were hardly disciplined at all. However, his brothers were not being prepared to be the king. The difficulties we go through in life are commensurate with our calling, as we are told in Hebrews 12:5-8:
For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.
It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
Reggie's mother loved him enough and had the wisdom to give him the toughest training possible. Our Father in heaven loves us enough to make it tough on us. As the author of Hebrews continues in verse 11: "All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness."
Some of the toughest training in this life is normal, New Testament, church life. Many Christians and non-Christians have an idealism about what church should be like, and because it does not measure up to their ideal, they reject or abandon it. This, too, is a test. Church life, the way it is intended to be, will be one of the most fulfilling things we can experience in this life, but also one of the hardest. How can anything be so much like heaven at times, and then at times be so much like hell? Both marriage and church life will be like this until the hell has been removed from us.
No one is likely to experience real church life without times of hurt, disappointment, or rejection. Those who overcome these by growing in love, patience, forgiveness, etc., can make huge strides forward in their spiritual lives. Those who allow hurt, frustrations, or disappointments to dictate their courses will likely go from defeat to defeat, shipwreck to shipwreck, until they resolve to be overcomers instead of being overcome by these things.
When you hear people say things like: "I'm burned out on the church," or complain about how they were hurt by the church, it is an excuse to no longer be a part of a vital local church. This is the beginning of a life that is at best being neutralized and turning toward ultimate defeat and failure. There is a limit to how mature we can become without a true and vital local church life with all of its irritations and frustrations.
Granted, in general, the church is far from what it is called to be, or will be. However, it will get to its destined glory. Those who abandon the church, thinking that they will come back when the church "gets its act together," will be so far behind the church that they will not be able to catch up. Only those who have been through the maturing process of real church life will be able to fulfill their purpose on this earth, and in the times ahead, even survive. You may think this is an extreme statement, but it is biblical, which we will address briefly. This is one of the most critical issues facing every believer at this time.
Before considering our own needs, we should consider the Lord's. The church is His bride, and those who truly love Him want Him to have a bride that He is worthy to have. The true friends of the Bridegroom are those devoted to helping the bride make herself ready. The true friends of the Bridegroom are not just devoted to being fulfilled themselves, but in seeing the King's pleasure. The true friends of the Bridegroom will be utterly devoted to helping the church be prepared for the coming King.
Even if we have a good church life, we must excel more and more until the church is all that she is called to be. Many of those who cannot find a church that they fit into will not fit anywhere because of their requirement that everyone else change while they, too, are in need of changing. Change is needed by all, including the whole church. The church as we know it in the West will not survive much longer in its present state, and radical changes are coming. However, those who do not go through the process of changing will not fit in. The biggest thing that needs changing is often our attitudes.
One of the first things that great leaders do is get rid of problem-oriented people and replace them with solution-oriented people. Those who are always seeing what is wrong without also seeing the solutions to the problems will destroy the morale of any organization, including the church. This is why it is said that the first generation of Israel to leave Egypt died in the wilderness—because they grumbled and complained. These are stumbling blocks to faith, and as we are told in Matthew 13:41-43:
and will cast them into the furnace of fire; in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
"Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear."
A stumbling block is one of the worst things we could ever be, which is why the Lord also said that it would be better not to have even been born or to have a millstone tied around our neck and be cast into the sea than to cause even one of His little ones to stumble (see Matthew 18:6). Of the things on our list to avoid in life, being a stumbling block should be at the top.
Believe it or not, like it or not, the church is the main thing that the Lord is doing on the earth. The way is being prepared for His coming kingdom, but this is being done by the church and through the church. The Lord loves the whole world, and He is coming back to redeem and restore it to its original purpose as a paradise for all who live on, but the main thing He is returning for is His bride through which He will restore the earth.
The church is going through a metamorphosis which will last a few years. Metamorphosis is the process that a caterpillar goes through to become a butterfly. The church is about to go through this process and go from the worm that crawls upon the earth like the caterpillar and has to conform to contours of the earth, to being the beautiful creature it is called to be that soars high above the earth. The cocoon for this transformation is local church life. This cocoon may be confining, irritating, and frustrating, but it is also necessary.
We may want to help people out of their cocoons by trying to protect them from all of the frustrating and irritating aspects of real church life so that they only experience the wonderful parts of it, but that will not help them at all. The greatest struggle a butterfly will experience is getting free of the cocoon, but if you try to help it by cutting it out, it will die. The struggle it has to go through to get out of its cocoon strengthens it so it can flap those huge wings. The more difficult your local church life is, the stronger you will be, and the larger the wings that you will be able to have.
One of the most critical issues with every Christian on the planet is for them to find their place in the local church. There is a serious limit to true Christian maturity without a committed local church life, but soon it will be even more serious than that—it will determine who survives. We will address this in more detail next week.