What You See Is Not What You Get

Date Published: 06/14/2009

The Apostle Paul says, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7)

Jesus’ seed parables in Mark 4:26-32 remind us that farmers do not know how the sown seeds sprout and grow as they go through the rhythms of sleeping and rising. And just as the large mustard shrub springs from a tiny seed, the Kingdom of God is hidden among us in insignificance.

When God sends Samuel to anoint a king to replace Saul, God must remind him not to look on the outward appearance of Jesse’s seven promising, prominent sons, but to look as God looks, into the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7) That Jesse brings seven sons to Samuel, and no one seems to give any thought to the possibility of David who is out with the sheep, suggests that they thought this was the complete group. But David, who wasn’t even in the running – the youngest, relegated to sheep herding, insignificant, marginalized – was God’s choice to become the quintessential King of Israel.

I am reminded of how dependent I am on what I see in externals and how easily I miss the deeper realities. When I was doing junior high youth ministry, one kid from a church family kept bringing a particularly troublesome friend with him. More than once, I wanted to say, “Just leave your friend home so he doesn’t spoil things for others.” All though his adolescence, I never saw evidence that anything was getting through to him. But before I moved from that congregation, he became the leader of the lay youth ministry team and is today an elder in that congregation.

I have also experienced the bitter disappointment of someone I have championed and nurtured descending into personal disaster and destructively disrupting ministry, damaging the lives of others. Not wanting to be too specific here, I have been personally involved in the aftermath of sexual misconduct of several clergy colleagues, some of whom were close personal friends.

In the immediate present I would have to say I am struggling to attend to spiritual perception of the interior work God is doing in the lives of many people in and through the congregation I am serving, Central Christian Church in Dallas, Texas without getting discouraged by the external difficulties of maintaining and stimulating the external life of the congregation, which many people are working very hard to do.

This aspect of these passages could have been a whole second worship message out of the passages for this Sunday, in addition to the one I did prepare and present on being at home in the body and at home in the Lord. The problem with preaching is certainly not with finding something to say each week, but how to select from the wealth of insights in Scripture so not only I but also the people can listen to the voice of God.