Quoting from my friend, Mark Batterson -
A few years ag I read a book by R. T. Kendall titled The Annointing. I memorized something he said because it's so true. "The greatest opposition to what God is doing today comes from those who were on the cutting edge of what God was doing yesterday."
If don't know Mark, you need to get to know him. His books are awesome. And this quote is a new favorite of mine. I pray that I will never be so enamored by the past as to forget that God is always doing anew thing.
Another great quote, "When your memories exceed your dreams, the end is near."
Matt, I'm probably getting bogged down in semantics here, but I take that quote with a great deal of caution. What God is doing, yesterday, today, and tomorrow is extending grace to sinners through the person of Jesus Christ. What God is doing yesterday, today, and tomorrow is the Gospel. The rest is just details. The minute we start equating the next church growth strategy or bestselling Christian book or hot speaker or whatever with what God is doing we are missing the point. God uses and may bless these things. But what He's ultimately doing really doesn't change from day to day or century to century.
I'm not insinuating that you or Mark or Kendall are saying anything different. It's just that there's always a temptation in our culture to hop on a trend and think it's as crucial to Christendom as the Cross. So I think there's a need to be careful whenever talking about the new things God is doing. Just my 2 cents.
Posted by: Matt Davis | January 26, 2009 at 05:33 PM
Matt (Davis),
Good point. It is important to understand God's work past, present, and future. The quote I referenced is more addressing the mindset that would lock God in the past and confine the church to methods that worked fifty or a hundred years ago, or more. There is an interesting tension here - holding on to those things that are timeless, while embracing the new things that God is doing among us.
Posted by: Matt Adams | January 26, 2009 at 06:10 PM