The call for the church is to always press in to more of God even when this means letting go of the very forms and formulations that got us to where we are. We always want to settle down into the structures and rituals we have designed for ourselves—our religious ways—rather than go after a deeper relationship. This is a tendency and temptation that we must be aware of no matter where we are in our journey and no matter how non-traditional (or traditional) our church expressions currently are.
Ruth Burrows puts it this way:
I cannot understand a love that is not always wanting to know more of the beloved so that it may love the more. `Who are you, Lord?' should surely be the constant urging of our hearts. But is it so? It seems more likely that we are afraid to get to know more, as though if we did so our building would collapse. This is because we are putting our security not in the unfailing God but in our meagre conceptions of him, in the formulations, neat, satisfying, water-tight which we have contrived. Many of us see the church and the faith, as we call it, like an insulated, armoured, electrified carriage in which we can sit secure behind curtain windows as we hurtle through the dark forests. We don’t have to see the frightening forms outside, don’t have to see the abyss into which we might drop, don’t have to see the poor beggars and forsaken ones crying in the night. We can hurtle along safely to heaven. How different from the reality! `Do not think I have come to bring peace but a sword. I have come to cast fire on the earth.' The true experience of faith is more that of an assault on Everest with its effort, its perils, its frightening decisions.
Can we relate to holding to our religious buildings (figuratively speaking) in order to avoid the current adventure of stepping out and pressing deeper into the heart and adventure of walking with Jesus? Do we possess the courage to press on to all that He has for us when the ledge we have arrived on is quite comfortable indeed?
