This weekend is our semiannual opportunity to move our clocks and in this case spring forward. Now, living in Florida all our lives, Elaine and I prefer the sun so we like this as it is extra light. I understand that this is a matter of Congressional concern right now like they don't have more pressing issues to deal with, but I digress. So there are those who are pushing for DST to be year round and I'm ok with that personally.
So with that paragraph behind us, we can really discuss the topic of springing forward. Because a time change is not what I want to talk about today. You see just like in the time change scenario we will deal with this weekend there are times in our life when we need to spring forward.
What I mean by that we need to spring forward is that we need to get out of where we are and move forward. This can happen in any circumstance of life from personal to business to country to church. There are times when springing forward is the right thing to do. To get out of where we are which is actually not moving at all but stuck in the status quo.
The status quo is comfortable and easy to handle. It requires very little effort or even thought. Get up and go about your business then go back to bed and get up and do it all again the next day. No matter if it is you personally your business your country your church you can't rest on the status quo. So when does the status quo become the status quo? Merriman-Webster says that the status quo is "the current situation: the way things are". Of course, when we read that definition it doesn't seem bad, as a matter of fact it seems like a pretty good thing. It is, yet the status quo can also cause much concern and distraction from what is actually necessary to happen.
Someone has noted that the status quo isn’t all bad and that it needs to be addressed, and understood, in order to move forward. With that thought, the status quo can have a positive or even negative effect on our lives.
Let me put this into a perspective that might help us today in this blog. What has been the status quo for our nation has been one of stability. Differing views but a consistent broad basis of what is say right and wrong. That status quo we speak of here is not maybe as prevalent as it may have been in the past. Actually, it is being challenged and those challenges that might birth a new status quo not only change how we live but as is often the case go against Biblical truth.
The status quo in the church might seem to you that it cannot and will not change. That is God's desire, yet we also have to look backward as we look forward that the status quo remains Biblically sound. Scripture that is in the context of "God says" is not interpretive. It is what God says in the overarching power of His sovereignty.
To put it this way for our purposes today. Here is an example from 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 New King James Version-
9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites,
10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.
So simply put if you have ever done any of these things you will not inherit the kingdom of God. So God has said this to Paul for the people in Corinth and for us today. So is that what God's Word means? Actually, no it doesn't because we have to consider this in that overarching power of His sovereignty.
So Paul continued and in verse 11 he said-
11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
We know that salvation through Jesus Christ saves us by God's Grace from our sins. If those things have occurred in our life, they are covered by the blood of Jesus. Will there be those in the kingdom of God who were guilty of any of these things on Paul's list? Of course there will be but only because of Jesus and salvation through Him.
In God's Grace,
Elbert Nasworthy