Renewal Day 2023.
Like wild animals removed from their natural environments, are today’s Western believers overly domesticated and thereby innocuous? Have we allowed ourselves to be tamed under the control of the ruler of this world in order to fit in and not be too offensive?
Cory McKenna, the speaker at our 2023 Renewal Day and annual meeting, has a unique calling. As the founder of The Cross Current, his job is to equip the Church to normalize sharing the Gospel in our personal and community relationships.
Cory delivered exactly the wakeup call and rallying cry the church needs. If you don’t have time to listen to the entire thing, fast forward to 36:06 where he tells a story about domesticated tigers which are removed from their mothers at birth and raised around humans. They have no idea who they really are. But there’s a warning. If they see another tiger, they come alive. Watch out.
Before he became an evangelist, Cory was a domesticated believer. He’d never seen a true believer in action. All it took was seeing one and his life was changed.
We are called to make disciples and to practice the Great Commission. Am I truly a disciple if I am not actively working to make new disciples? Who is coming to the Lord as a result of what I am doing? If not, I have to ask what’s wrong.
Is the problem the lack of other on-fire believers as examples in my life? Maybe. But I suspect the problem is staring at me in the mirror. How well do I know the Lord? For that matter have I ever truly met Him? I mean actually allowed Him in? Or is it just a superficial feel good, say and do the right things kind of faith and go through the motions?
We are, as Cory states in his insightful presentation, built for battle. Are we avoiding the conflict and deliberately living as if it’s permanent peacetime?
God has a natural order for things. Not just in the animal kingdom. If the true life of the soul is lived in the spirit then should we not be devoted to bolder pursuit of the sanctified spirit that’s more in line with the Spirit of Christ? Yes. No question about that. So, why aren’t we taking that more seriously?