I had a friend who always seemed to be caught in doubt. Just when he thought he knew what he believed something would cause him to lose his grip. He just kept wavering. There was no confidence or certainty in God’s Word and as a result, he had no hold on what was true. In my own life, I went through a season when I looked outside of Scripture for answers and followed after ideas about the Lord that just weren’t true. In the moment they were attractive and appealing because they fit my own wants and way of life. They allowed me to remain comfortable rather than submit and surrender. In our world, there are many competing ideas and viewpoints that come from without and within. If we don’t have a hold on what really is true we can easily be tossed around in many different directions, fooled by what is false, and become completely unsteady and unstable as a result. One solution to this: grow up!
In Ephesians 4 Paul speaks of why the Lord gave different gifts and offices to the Church body. They are for the equipping of the saints (vs. 13) “…until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ.” So, we have this body of believers to grow in our trust in the Lord, our knowledge of Jesus, and to look more and more like Him. Paul then says in vs. 14, “As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” We need to grow up. Those are Paul’s words not mine. If you don’t know what to trust, if you’re constantly wavering between different ideas, and unsure or uncertain of who Jesus is the reasoning is because you’ve lost sight of the truth of God’s Word and you’re not plugged in, connected, learning from, and serving with others who do know Jesus and who have a hold on what is true.
We have such a gift in the local church which is what Paul is pointing to. In the church, is how we grow in maturity to become more like Christ and we learn how to stand strong in the midst of a sea of ideas and a life filled with unsettling circumstances. In the church we can hold to the Word that is spoken to us in love, we can hold to others who are following after Jesus, but ultimately we can hold to Jesus knowing that in holding to Him we are, as Paul says in vs. 16, “held together.” Let Jesus hold you together by His Word and make you to stand strong.
Holding On With You, Pastor Rudy