The Unaffordable Luxury

It was the summer of ’93. For the previous hour I had been standing before a group of 40 high school and college age young people, reading from God’s Word…weeping and reading some more. This was my fifth summer as a director with the Continental Singers and Orchestra. I often joke that, no matter how well a pastor knows his congregation, he doesn’t have to live with them on a bus for three months at a time. Each summer I would travel with a new group around the country and the world singing about God’s love through His Son, Jesus Christ. But this summer something had gone very wrong.

It started with small things; an unkind word, a thoughtless action. But over time it had grown. Cliques, camps, the in-crowd, those on the outside, until our reason for being had somehow been lost and forgotten. And yet each night we would present a two hour program about how knowing Jesus had changed our lives.

As I and my leadership team attempted to deal with each issue…each heart, we were met with surprising resistance. Rationalizing, justification, blaming others and finger pointing. My heart began to sink. Maybe it was time to cancel the tour and send everyone home. As I prayed for guidance, I asked God for special wisdom. We were meeting the next morning. After that I would know what to do. I couldn’t sleep the night before, I was so grieved. I spent the whole night pouring over God’s Word which spoke so clearly and directly to these issues.

When the group met the next morning I said, “You know, according to Matthew 5:23-24 if we are presenting our gift at the altar and remember that our brother has something against us, the Bible says we should leave our gift at the altar and not even attempt to worship until we have reconciled with them. The fact is, unless we are right with one another, our worship is worthless and even offensive to God. And if we can’t even love our brothers, how are we ever going to love our enemies?”

“But I’m sorry to say it’s even worse than that,” I went on. “According to 1 John 4:20 the one who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he hasn’t seen. That means that if we refuse to love each other, then we’d better shut up about our Christianity, because according to this passage, it doesn’t exist. The bottom line is, we can’t afford the luxury of unresolved relationships.”

There is something about the Word of God that tends to cut through all the smokescreens and clutter, and gets right to the heart of the matter. I cried a lot that day. We all did. But slowly hearts began to break…and open. For another two hours one by one group members cried and shared and prayed. No blaming or finger pointing. Some confessed their faults. Others asked forgiveness.

Things weren’t healed overnight. But slowly, and sometimes painfully, we began to learn how to die to ourselves; how to seek the last place and to serve; how to yield our rights and any personal advantage; how to wash one another’s feet; how to become less and less, that He might become greater and greater; how to let God break us, so that He might better use us. We saw 400 people make decisions for Christ that summer.