Discipleship as Plot Advancement

Good Afternoon!

It's Monday, already running towards Easter Sunday in 6 days.  With the early date, it has definitely snuck up on me very quickly, but I'm looking forward to a good week and a great Sunday.  I love preaching on Easter Sunday, and I'm excited about the way my talk has taken shape in the last couple of weeks, so do what you can to be there on Sunday, and to bring a friend or two along with you!

I think we finally managed to capture the sermon audio yesterday, so check back later today or tomorrow to see if I was actually able to get it up here on the site.  There will be a link for the page on the right sidebar of the blog.  We'll get the audio up here first, and then work on submitting it as a podcast in iTunes so you'll be able to subscribe to it there, and maybe pass along the info to friends or family you'd like to have exposed to the Gospel.

This week is the last post in a series on Discipleship using the metaphor of a story.  Next week I'll plan to flesh some of this out into a more practical form, to try to get us thinking about what we can do to make some of these things a reality in our church community. 

3.  Discipleship as Plot Advancement

If God has been telling a story from before the beginning of time, and if God really wants to shape our character to really represent his heart in the story, then the rubber meets the road of our lives when we begin to use our lives to advance the story that God is telling.  It's not sufficient for us to know where the story has been, we have been invited into the telling in order to influence where it is going from here.  Often our thoughts about making disciples have focused on the past, as if by memorizing and repeating some facts about the past, we might be able to repeat what has happened back there.

I don't think that's what God plans to do, however.  God has called us to develop our character in ways tat reflect his heart and his desire, and then he actually entrusts us with the advancement of his agenda, his plot, towards the future.  If we find ourselves sufficiently connected to the story of the past, and we have been able to truly find ourselves there; and if we have submitted the pen of our lives to the author in order for him to write our character his way, then God actually commits his Kingdom to us.  He enlists our gifts and talents in his service, and then unleashes us to be part of his Kingdom coming and his will being done on earth as it is in heaven.

There is nothing exciting about a story in which the plot just goes in circles, where the only ambition the characters possess is just to develop their character and then repeat the actions of history.  Stories like that are boring. We lose interest in them within a few pages.  But when we can see the ways the plot is advancing, and can see the steady unfolding of a greater design, then we really do enjoy the story.  I don't think it's any different with the story of God's advancing Kingdom in the world.  There is a steady unfolding of a greater design - sometimes we see glimpses of the bigger picture, but most often we are engaged in the slow and arduous task of just pushing the plot forward a little bit today, in our particular plot of ground.

We also find that we have been surrounded by other characters in the story - others who are working towards the same goal as we are.  They might come from unlikely places, or be extremely different in their personalities and characters, but God puts us around them.  He does this because to advance the plot will require more than just our energies, it will demand that we collaborate with others along the way.  It is this collaboration in the advance of the Kingdom plot that causes the church to come together in unity of purpose and mission.  This fellowship trickles down from the church as a whole to smaller "bands" of revolutionaries who conspire for good, for hope, for the Kingdom in their own unique ways. 

So, next week we'll explore some ways that we might make all of this happen.  I hope you'll come back and join me as the story continues...