2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.a The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!”
Philippians 3:13 – 14 “Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have laid hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize of God’s heavenly calling in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 4:31-32 “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, outcry and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and tender-hearted to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.”
When I was fifteen, we moved from a big old farm house to a small one. But there was a problem. My dad carefully planned the move and lined up family friends to help us…he just neglected to inform my mom or us kids. We went to school that morning as usual; but when we got off the school bus that night, we found out that during the day, the friends had shown up and had packed up EVERYTHING in the house and had sent it over to our new place. When I say they packed everything, I mean literally EVERYTHING, including our garbage and a number of things that we intended to give away or to get rid of. Because we moved from a large house down to a small one, much of our stuff wound up in boxes in a store room and in the detached garage next to the house. For months we had to wade through those boxes to find the things we really needed. We finally got rid of a lot of things two years later when a tornado came through and shredded the garage and its contents. That disaster certainly simplified things, but I don’t recommend it as a way of sorting things out!
The big problem with that move was that Dad didn’t give the rest of the family time to sort things out or to pack things. This mean that we wound up with all kinds of garbage, the kind of stuff one accumulates in 19 years in a big old farm house. And we neither wanted most of that stuff or needed it. Our friends were trying to be helpful, but they saddled us with our garbage, whether we wanted it or not.
Fast forward several years. Bob and I had served one term in Saboba and had then come to the U.S. so that I could do my Master’s degree in Public Health. Our first term in Saboba was quite difficult. We had very little to work with, and when we had been there a year, a small tribal war broke out. But the worst part was the lack of compassion from those who were our bosses. By the time we left in June 1996, we had been badly hurt by these people. When we returned to Ghana in 1998, we worked at a different clinic and then at a Catholic hospital in northern Ghana. In the meantime, the hospital at Saboba lost its doctor and community leaders begged us to come back. We weren’t very sure we wanted to come back. We loved the people of Saboba, but the same supervisors who had given us a tough time were still in authority.
When we prayed, God told us He wanted us to return to Saboba, BUT there were conditions! The only way we could return to Saboba was if we were able to conquer our bitterness from the way we had been treated the first time. God told us that if we didn’t get rid of our bitterness, He couldn’t use us.
We returned to Saboba in February 2004, and for several months we had to confess Ephesians 4:31-32 several times a day as well as putting on the armor of God several times a day. Ever since that experience, we have continued to practice reciting those verses whenever we have found ourselves in a situation in which we have been tempted to become bitter.
What is the point of these stories? Your church is moving into a new building. That is wonderful! But the question is this: What are you taking into the new building? Are you only taking the furnishings and the musical instruments, or are you carrying bitterness and resentment into the new place?
Our constant prayer for the AG Hospital, Saboba is that it will be a place of God’s praise, a place of God’s glory, a place of health, a place of help, a place of hope, a place of healing, and a place of Shalom. This is our prayer for you as you move into your new building. But if you don’t leave all the bitterness and resentment and personality conflicts behind, you will contaminate your new building.
God’s question for each of us is this: What kind of garbage are you carrying with you? To God, those of us who are hauling around bitterness and resentment are just as stinky as somebody who is dragging around a Hefty bag full of rotting garbage. If you were moving into a new home, you wouldn’t bring garbage from your old house with you. Why bring emotional/mental/spiritual garbage into your new church? You want your new church to be so full of the Holy Spirit that if someone sets a toe on the church property, they will be overcome by the Holy Spirit. You don’t want anything to grieve the Holy Spirit or to obstruct Him from moving.
Prayer: Father God, help us to get rid of all our garbage! Let this new church mark a new beginning for everybody in the congregation. And let Your Holy Spirit have full control in this church. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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