Ordinary & Extraordinary
I run with Word people and Spirit people. Lutheran people and Pentecostal/Charismatic people. Piper, Driscoll, Begg people and Wimber, Deere, MacNutt people. I love them both, but they don't seem to love each other sometimes. Sometimes I feel separated, like I'm living in two camps, but I have yet to see how you can possibly separate them.
One group lives and breathes, and expects nothing more than the ordinary. God has given the Word and Sacrament. God has promised to bless and benefit us through these means of grace. It is finished. What more needs to be said.
Another group lives and breathes for more. Their prayer is always, "More!" They want the extraordinary. They will settle for nothing less than an experience with the living and powerful God.
One group looks at the other group and says, "Fanatics, enthusiasts, over-emotional." Another group looks at the other group and says, "Boring, dead, ritualists."
We don't need compromise or to strike some middle ground between the two. We need both of them. We need to recognize that life now is a walk by faith and not by sight. We need to be able to collapse in to the "day in--day out" promises of God found in his Holy Spirit inspired Word and his supernatural Sacraments. We also need to affirm everything extraordinary that the ordinary affirms. I pray, "More!" while I read. I ask for more power, more of God's presence, more experience of forgiveness when I eat and drink. I pray for revival, renewal, individual and corporate repentance because God says to. It is not that the "ordinary" is not enough. It is that the "ordinary" affirms and feeds faith, so that, in the sovereignty of God, the extraordinary will come.
One group lives and breathes, and expects nothing more than the ordinary. God has given the Word and Sacrament. God has promised to bless and benefit us through these means of grace. It is finished. What more needs to be said.
Another group lives and breathes for more. Their prayer is always, "More!" They want the extraordinary. They will settle for nothing less than an experience with the living and powerful God.
One group looks at the other group and says, "Fanatics, enthusiasts, over-emotional." Another group looks at the other group and says, "Boring, dead, ritualists."
We don't need compromise or to strike some middle ground between the two. We need both of them. We need to recognize that life now is a walk by faith and not by sight. We need to be able to collapse in to the "day in--day out" promises of God found in his Holy Spirit inspired Word and his supernatural Sacraments. We also need to affirm everything extraordinary that the ordinary affirms. I pray, "More!" while I read. I ask for more power, more of God's presence, more experience of forgiveness when I eat and drink. I pray for revival, renewal, individual and corporate repentance because God says to. It is not that the "ordinary" is not enough. It is that the "ordinary" affirms and feeds faith, so that, in the sovereignty of God, the extraordinary will come.
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