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Go back to your oikos

"They replied, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, along with your entire household'" (Acts 16:31 NLT).

"Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 'Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?'" (John 4:28-29 NIV).

The Greek word for home is oikos.

Throughout the New Testament we see a repeating story that begins with an individual who believes and then immediately shares their new found faith with their own oikos. This is what created such momentum in the early church. People didn't leave their family, friends, and neighbors behind. Instead, they immediately "went back" to them and told them of their new life in Jesus.

In the modern church we often pull new believers out of their own oikos without a thought of the consequences. We mean well. We want them to join our church family and be part of what we're doing. But we forget that the Lord wants to use them to reach their whole family. By the time we get them all "cleaned-up" and "Christianized," they may have lost the connectivity and passion that would have been present at first.

The Samaritan woman that Jesus encountered at the well near the city of Sychar had to be the least likely evangelist for reaching that town. But Jesus had no problem releasing her for service. She had such a sense of urgency that she left her "water jar" at the well and ran back to her town to tell them the Good News.

How can we experience the momentum that occurred in the early church? I think one way is to release and commission people to go back to their own oikos until everyone has heard.

What stops momentum?

"And they spread among the Israelites a bad report" (Numbers 13:32 NIV).

In nature, the following factors affect momentum negatively:

• Inertia - The resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion. As Newton observed, "An object at rest tends to stay at rest."
• Friction - The resistive force acting between bodies that tends to oppose and damp out motion.

In the church, spiritual momentum can be negatively impacted too. We see a similarity between the physical and the spiritual laws of momentum.

Spiritual inertia can be seen in churches where the people have become comfortable and set in their ways. They are resistant to change. They want to sit in the same pews and sing the same songs from the same hymnals and listen to the same sermons and leave at the same time with the same people. In a fast paced and ever changing world, people don't want any change in their churches. They see the church as a static and safe place, rather than a dangerous, faith-provoking movement of God.

Even after their churches become stale and lifeless, they resist change for fear of losing that which is known. Like the Israelites, they would rather live in the past and return to the "Egypt" they know, than risk going into the promised land they don't know.

But fear alone doesn't entirely explain this spiritual inertia. Confusion is the other factor. Those resistant to change have often taken what was a movement of God in their generation and turned it into a monument. They confuse God's methods with His message. God's Word will never change, but His methods are new for every generation.

God doesn't do encores. Moses learned this when God told him to "strike the rock" to bring forth water the first time, but to "speak to the rock" in the second instance. Moses struck the rock both times. In the first, he was obedient, in the second he was not. God still gave the people water, but Moses never entered the promised land. God is on the move. He wants us to follow.

Spiritual friction is seen when a movement of God has already begun. This is an opposing force that damps out spiritual momentum. In nature, it is between bodies or objects. In churches, it is between people. Invariably, when a church begins to see God move, they will also notice an increase in people arguing and complaining about things. Their disagreement may or may not be with the direction of the church. Often, they just find themselves offended or hurt by someone in the church and they react by hurting back.

When Moses had to address the complaining of the Israelites, he and Aaron "fell facedown" before them. When the leadership of the church has to turn to address the bickering and relational friction of its members, the church loses momentum. 

The church is vulnerable to this opposing force for a couple of reasons. One, because we have not learned to become unoffendable like Jesus. We are like walking wounded, easily hurt and offended by the slightest word. And two, because there is an active and evil opponent in the world. Satan hates the church and will do everything possible to stop it. If he can't do it directly, then he'll stop it through manipulating us in our relationships. Spiritual friction is spiritual warfare.

I think WCC is experiencing a season of spiritual momentum right now. But I'm praying really hard against spiritual inertia and friction. I'm praying against fear of change and a tendency to build monuments out of the past movements. I'm praying against us being easily offended and manipulated by Satan.

If you sense that one or both of these factors that hinder momentum is affecting you, will you make it right? Will you trust God? Will you forgive your friend? Will you stay unified with God and with one another?

Will you join me in asking God to "shake" things up in our world?

Who can move the stone?

"And they asked each other, 'Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?'" (Mark 16:3 NIV).

"...I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me" (Acts 26:17-18 NIV).

A great amount of energy is expended when changing the velocity of an object at rest to an object in motion. The greater the mass, the greater the inertia. The stone that covered the tomb of Jesus was of great mass and rested in a carved out stone groove, sealing the grave. It would take incredible strength to move it.

When the women went to the Lord's tomb early on that first Easter morning, they worried along the way about how they would move the stone. They knew that they didn't have the strength to move it. They went hoping that someone would move it for them.

Someone did.

With resurrection power God raised Jesus from the dead and moved the stone of separation between God and man. God put into motion a movement that continues to gain momentum until this very day.

God didn't move the stone so Jesus could get out. He moved the stone so that the women could get in.

We still need God to move in order for people to come in to faith in Christ. As we desire our lost neighbors, acquaintances, relatives and friends to hear the gospel and believe, we must recognize that there is still that which keeps them out. There is a kind of stone in their lives that only God can move. Our best evangelistic efforts will fall short without God moving in their stony hearts.

"What does this mean for evangelism? It means quite simply that evangelism cannot possibly succeed. However clear and cogent we may be in presenting the gospel, we have no hope of convincing or converting anyone. Can you or I by our earnest talking break the power of Satan over a man's life? No. Can you or I give life to the spiritually dead? No. Our approach to evangelism is not realistic until we have faced this shattering fact and let it make its impact on us. Regarded as a human enterprise, evangelism is a hopeless task" (J. I. Packer).

I agree with Packer. But like the women who walked to the tomb, we can pray, "Who will roll away the stone?"

We can pray that God would move in people's hearts as Jesus instructed the apostle Paul when He commissioned him. We can pray, Lord, move to ...

• Open their spiritual eyes (because they are dead in their sin)
• Lead them into light (because they walk in cultural darkness)
• Free them from Satan's power (because they are enslaved and deceived)

Evangelism begins with prayer. Prayer plows the hard soil of human hearts to receive the seed of God's Word. Prayer rolls away the stone that separates the living from the dead. Prayer is not an evangelistic afterthought, it's a necessity!

After praying for God to move, we can run to tell the good news that God has moved the stone and that Jesus is risen!

Spiritual momentum

"After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly" (Acts 4:31 NIV).

p = m(v)

Do you remember this mathmatical equation describing momentum? It states that momentum (p) is equal to mass (m) multiplied times velocity (v). Mass is the amount of matter in a body. We sometimes describe it as weight. Velocity is the rate of change of position in both speed and direction.

In the first century, a small (little mass), relatively insignificant group of people (low velocity), began meeting together and going out into their community to preach the good news that Jesus had conquered death and people's sins would no longer be counted against those who trusted in Him. When Peter and John healed a crippled man in the name of Jesus and began to teach in the Jewish Temple, the Sanhedrin put them in prison. Upon release, they warned them not to preach anymore in that "name."

They said, "We need to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn these men to speak no longer to anyone in this name" (Acts 4:17 NIV).

Their warning should have worked. It should have stopped this fledgling movement in its tracks. They were the larger authority. They had not only the "weight" of local law on their side, they had the "weight" and "velocity" of Rome.

But when Peter and John returned to their little community of faith, they began to pray. As they prayed together with the other believers, they became unified in the Spirit (a unified direction) and velocity within that house began to grow. Rather than shrinking from the size of the threats from Rome and the Sanhedrin, they asked God to "consider their threats" and to "stretch forth" his hand to move in the name of Jesus.

God answered their prayer. He moved. The greater weight of the living God moved into that small community of believers and the house where they were meeting was "shaken." Like a tremor that moves through a train when the locomotive first begins to engage its mighty engine, so the Spirit of God shook the people of that house of faith and put into motion a spiritual movement that turned Rome and the world upside down.

The Spirit of God is still moving today. Regardless of the size of the problem that we may face as individuals or in our communities, our God is greater. The spiritual momentum that Jesus started 2,000 years ago is still growing and moving in our world today. He can overcome the spiritual inertia of our generation.

I'm asking God to shake us up afresh today. "Lord, stretch forth Your hand."