Hitting Our Stride
Continuing the Legacy of Chuck Colson
By Alan Terwilleger

Make no mistake. This has been a challenging year for us here at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, ever since our founder, mentor, brother, and our dear friend Chuck Colson went home to be with the Lord.

But even as we had to deal with the shock, our team here knew what Chuck would want us to do: Keep going. Keep teaching fellow believers how to defend the faith winsomely; keep building a movement of Christian organizations and individuals committed to advancing the Kingdom; keep inspiring people to live out what they believe.

So how’s that sequestration goin’ for ya?

The not-so-subtle secret across the land these days is that we’re all becoming quite cynical about government. Here we thought we had this big “hope-and-change-forward” thing ramping up, and it turns out instead we’re having to change our hopes and go backwards a bit as we’re forced to be a little more realistic about the limits of government and the irritatingly finite nature of wealth.

Government cut off from the Law of God becomes a law unto itself. Governments can become as narcissistic and self-serving as any human being. All governments want to do good, but that only begs two questions: Which good? and Good for whom?

Unless God defines the terms of the good, government will always assume that power and, sooner or later, it will take as the supreme good that of aggrandizing its own perks and privileges rather than preserving the wellbeing of the people it governs. Anything that challenges this hegemony – such as the Gospel of Jesus Christ – can expect to be vilified, curtailed, marginalized, or worse.

Over the centuries, Christians have learned a thing or two about the workings of government. The Christian worldview was a major contributor to the American Founding, but that worldview is receding, setting like the sun and leaving government to reinvent itself every four years or so. We should grieve at the loss of a Christian foundation for our nation, but we should also work hard to re-establish that basis. It is part of the Christian’s calling, especially because of our role as “we the people,” to seek the Lord’s good purposes and plans for civil government. Individually we may seem unlikely as servants of God for renewing our nation. However, as each of us looks to the face of our Lord Jesus, as we pray earnestly together and become equipped to live every aspect of our lives in the light of God’s truth, we will find new power to make all things new, including our culture and society.

It may be a hard road back, and there will be trials to endure as we seek to re-plant the flag of God’s truth in the public square. We must not run from such challenges, but within and through them. And we must not love our comforts so much that we compromise our convictions with respect to the role and limits of government. Love for God and neighbor requires that we make the most of every opportunity for advancing God’s truth, and that we refuse to give in to the forces of relativism, utilitarianism, and pragmatism.

Politics and government won’t save us, but they can make a bigger mess of things, even than we’re currently experiencing, as long as those who know the way of true goodness refuse to risk making that goodness known.

Constantine

“In this sign conquer.” So he did,
and persecution ended.
But peace from Christian leaders hid
the price of a world befriended.

Reposted from The Fellowship of Ailbe

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It was one of Chuck Colson’s favorite times of year: The annual Wilberforce Weekend conference: teaching, worship, fellowship, and the bestowal of the year’s William Wilberforce Award.

This year’s conference, “Making the Invisible Kingdom Visible,” is right around the corner, April 26th through 28th, right across the river from Washington, DC.

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Our evangelical culture has become so corrupted in the way we think about such ideas as “ministry” and “service” and the “glory of God” that we can easily come to believe that these are things others are called to do because they’re just too big or too involved for us.

But very often it’s the things we take most for granted that have the greatest power for advancing the rule of King Jesus.

When we are committed to living for the glory of God, every moment of time becomes fraught with potential for showing the resurrection life of Jesus to the watching world. The promises and glory of God are intended for the “here and now” of our lives – every day, in every situation, and not just when we’re doing something we might actually regard as “the Lord’s work.”

We can’t all be Bible teachers or ministers or missionaries. We can’t all start ministries for this, that, or the other particular type of work. We’re not all going to be writers or composers or big donors to the work of the Lord.

But we all live, and where we live we engage other people, many – perhaps most – of whom have no clue that Jesus is alive and making all things new. How will they ever come to know this? How will they ever glimpse the reality of the new world which is breaking like the dawn into this old, sinful arena, and driving back the darkness of sin? Paul insisted, probably with Habakkuk 2.14 in mind, that we have the potential in all our daily activities, in all the ways we use our time, talents, and tongues, to refract the power and light of the Kingdom of God into the murkiness of this unbelieving age (1 Cor. 10.31).

We need pastors who exemplify this way of life and equip us to live it as well. We need to seek the Lord’s mercy every day of our lives, so that we will be alert to the opportunities for proclaiming His Word and glorifying Him which He presents before us each day. All our time, abilities, resources, talents, relationships, roles, and responsibilities come to us by assignment from the Lord, as arenas and means whereby we might fulfill the calling for which He has sent us into this world.

Every moment of every day, you can shine the dawn of Christ into the clouds and confusion of someone’s life, bringing righteousness, peace, joy, and dignity into what are likely to be otherwise rather ordinary lives. Seek the Lord continually, and watch how He uses the little things, the “everydayness” of your life to light up the reality of His Kingdom life and power for others.

The Little Things
Shaver’s Fork, Cheat River

The river whispers ceaselessly.
Its murmured message goes unheard
for most of its journey to the sea.

But when at length it passes me
I listen, hoping for a word
of wisdom, or some insight free

of nonsense, pride, or vanity –
some thought I might employ to gird
my mind against mortality.

Its rushing ripples casually
express their views, without a word,
but clearly and convincingly:

“The little things,” it says to me,
“done faithfully and well, absurd
as it may seem, combine to be

the bigger things that finally
endure.” It is enough for me.

From T. M. Moore, Fault Lines

Frist published on the Fellowship of Ailbe