Pray KNCSB

Who am I to call the church to repentance? Am I usurping the role of the Holy Spirit? To the first question I answer: I am a follower of Jesus Christ who loves the church because the church is the bride of Christ. But does this simple fact give me any right to issue the clarion call of returning to the Lord? To the second question I answer: not really. I have long given up on the idea of persuading anyone of anything. I am only a family member who deeply loves the family, calling us together to go on further along the road of repentance and trust. Perhaps in the wake of repentance the Holy Spirit of God would deign visit us in power and healing.

Repentance ought to be a very familiar practice in our lives. When Jesus announced the availability of the kingdom of God to all people he put forth two ways to see and enter the kingdom: Repentance and trust or belief (Mark 1:14-15). Now repentance and trust are not once in a lifetime kinds of actions. Rather they are constant conditions we ought to find ourselves in order to see and enter the kingdom or will of God as little children and long for it on earth as it is in heaven. Faith or life with God, and repentance, letting ourselves be found wanting and returning to God in our want, demand constant vigil and decisions to belong.

I have already spoken of pluralism as a challenge in the church. The second “ism” that demands our repentance I want us to consider together is materialism. Some of the most attractive elements of our faith are material. Jesus was born of flesh, he ate real bread, he built real homes of brick and mortar, he was baptized in real water, he lived with real people who lived off a material land, he died on a cross made from wooden material, and was buried in a tomb hewn from real rock wrapped in materials made by real hands. The apostles saw him and handled him before and after the resurrection. Our faith is part of the material order.

But materialism is of a different sort of thing. Materialism is scrupulous obsession with material things. It’s built on a disordered desire to horde, to own, to possess things to the detriment of living in the presence of the Holy Spirit. As John Stott says, it “smothers the spiritual life.” Storing up earthy treasures, hoarding what eventually moth will devour, and coveting more and more of the material world until we become distracted from and forgetful of the fact that this world is not our home, we are just passing through.

Thus we live complicated lifestyles stressed beyond our capabilities to cope. Simplicity is for simpletons, we think. Generosity and contentment are only for the filthy rich. Never satisfied with what we have, wanting more because more wants more we reject our circumstances, neglect the example of our Lord and injunction of Paul to be content in whatever state we find ourselves in. We borrow, we sweat, and we claw our way to the top Mountain Riches to find the same discontentment with life that the chase after materialism never gave in the valleys of life.

If living in “godliness with contentment [is not] great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6) to us then materialism’s mesmerizing pull has undermined our trust in God. We must return or repent of our ways (that is change our minds or the way we think about materialism). If memory serves, everyone enters this life with nothing and exits it with nothing. Wise and patient Job had it right: Naked he came and naked he will leave this world. Stott adds this poetic thought: “In other words, life on earth is a brief pilgrimage between two moments of nakedness.”

So in my call to repentance to myself, to my spiritual family, I am calling for light travel. The kind that does not beset us and weigh us down, the kind that speaks the soft words of Jesus to Martha: you are weighed down with too many material burdens.

What then is the point of tongue lashing our preoccupation with materialism? When the Holy Spirit comes down on us in revival, materialism will be stripped away. Let’s hold it lightly while we have it. Let’s let it slip away from us willingly. Let’s begin now by repenting of holding it too dear and too close to our chest. When the Holy Spirit came down upon our dear apostles and disciples early in the church’s life, they took material things and gave them away to those in need. The example is set. Must we wait until Holy Spirit comes again to do what we already know we must and have a mandate to do? Let’s change our minds!

Changing our minds with regards to materialism requires deep conviction from God. Human nature is given to want more even when we have enough. Being willing to loosen our hold on our materialistic existence may open the floodgate of generosity and begin a movement of the Holy Spirit to eliminate poverty, heal the sick, and permit us the luxury of time to pursue no more the greenback but the prisoner’s welfare, to eliminate the widow’s loneliness, and to set sin-captive souls free. Let the revival begin in my heart. Amen.