Several hundred Northwest Baptists will gather in our annual meeting on Nov. 13-14, 2018, at the Great Wolf Lodge near Chehalis, WA. As we prepare to gather, worship, and celebrate what God is doing in and through us, consider the following “meditation:”
The only person present in every epoch and on each Bible page is God Himself. Every scene in Scripture is dominated by His presence. From Eden to the Flood, from Abraham to Moses to Gideon to Peter, Paul and Mary, God alone dominates history’s script.
And yet, from the beginning God created human beings as His “imagers” on the earth. Because every person is created in the image of God, and tasked with representing Him, every person has his or her “day” to serve and glorify God. Many of God’s imagers fail to image Him fully because of sinful self-destruction and gross unbelief, and we all fall short of glorifying God fully because of sin. Some of God’s imagers have their day cut short, chopped off before their lives lift off. The evils of child-killing and the bloodshed of war destroy many souls created by God to image Him in the subduing and governing of all earthly creation.
But those who know the God in whose image they are made have the miraculous possibility of making the day in which they live, a small speck of time in the large swath of human history, a day that will count for all of eternity. Indeed, those who know God in their day will know God from their day forward, for all eternity. That makes the day in which we live, and the opportunity it affords, stupendous beyond the imagination of our feeble minds.
Consider this – the child in your church who comes to faith will mature into an imager of God whose prayers are heard by heaven! That child who is led by you to love Jesus is a child who will never be alone. Never will that child be orphaned or abandoned in the world. That child will one day be launched as a missionary missile to teach school, or image God in business or politics or constructing houses or raising children of their own who will live to His glory. And no matter what next week brings, or the years beyond that, a child who knows Jesus will enjoy all of eternity with God and the hosts of heaven in a “forever family.”
The student in college who is seeking life’s purpose and meaning is led down the path to knowing God by a Jesus-follower, and is surprised by the joy of meeting the God in whose image they are made. Through your ministry and witness their life becomes anchored on the Truth they never knew existed.
Families in your town are desperately trying, or barely trying, to provide spiritual and moral guidance to their children. Most are doing the best they can with what little they know. Then the church steps into their lives, and the truth of Christ enters their thinking, and faithful witness is lived in their presence, and love for neighbor (and love for enemy) is experienced deeply, and in a moment, or in the course of time, they are reborn. Their family is created anew. Peace and joy and the blessing of God enter their home. Marriages are saved. Children are rescued from a misspent life. All because a church, or a believer … you … lived for Christ in your day.
In the Northwest there are many people seizing the opportunity presented by God in this day. Northwest Baptists are gathering for worship and Bible study on Sunday, and serving in schools and on jobsites throughout the week. One church is teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) in a Buddhist temple, and they share the Gospel of Jesus Christ as they teach ESL! Others are fully participating in community celebrations so that they can “rub elbows” with their neighbors, build friendships, and share the living hope of Jesus. Prisoners are visited. The hungry are fed. The lost are led home. Almost 2,000 people followed Jesus in believer’s baptism through the ministry of our churches last year. Churches are striving, struggling to live and love and share the good news of Christ in their day.
So as messengers gather from our Northwest Baptist churches, we do so with gratitude to God for what He is doing. We gather in the knowledge that together we strive to make the most of our day. And we gather in the firm belief our day is a good day to serve the Lord in the Northwest.