The Greatest Challenge for Christians
This post was first shared on my free Substack.
I’ve been thinking about challenging myself, and recently I’ve written about challenging myself with my electric guitar, leading our church youth in worship, how I read, how I write, how we worship, in my marriage, in my preaching, and finding my preaching voice. I also explored distinguishing my preaching voice: (1) being a layman, (2) being a reader, and (3) being a creative. I then shared three reasons why I challenge myself by writing prayer poems.
What is greatest challenge in the Christian life? I’m not sure there is one single answer, but this is at least one of the greatest challenges:
17 … I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, 19 and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19)
I see several challenges here:
To be rooted and firmly established in love, as the foundation of your faith
To comprehend with all the saints the full scope and dimensions of God’s love,
To know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge — to feel it emotionally in your heart and not just intellectually in your head, to experience and personally encounter it, and
To be filled with the fullness of God, so much so that your faith is played out in real life.
Point four is actually the culmination—perhaps even one of the ultimate goals—of points 1–3: to have the love of Christ take hold of me so that it impacts everything about me—from how I love my wife and kids, to how I do my work, to how I engage in ministry. I pray that we would not lose sight of this challenge and that the Spirit would help us meet it and live it out.
More: Life in the Family of God: Two Marks of Christian Community