No. 502 "The Church I Want, and the Church the Lord Delights In" October 4, 2026

No. 502 "The Church I Want, and the Church the Lord Delights In" October 4, 2026 The more we dream about a church, the more urgently one question needs to be asked. Not "How hard am I working?" but "Who is actually Lord of my life?" We call God "Lord," yet there are times we quietly treat Him as someone whose job is to accomplish our plans. There's nothing wrong with asking God for what we need — He hears us. But faith takes one more step beyond asking: "Lord, here's what I want. But what do You want me to do?" This question isn't a yardstick for measuring anyone else's faith. It's a question that brings me — the pastor — before the Lord first. Even in the midst of real zeal to build the church I'm dreaming of, I can lose sight of the will of Jesus, who is the true owner of the church. He has His own plan and purpose for building His church (Matthew 16:18–19). Paul put it this way: he planted, Apollos watered, but it was God who made it grow (1 Corinthians 3:6–7). Planting and watering are our part — but growth has always belonged to the Lord. Believers stumble too — all of us do. What matters isn't a record of never faltering, but the direction we turn when we do: back toward the Lord's grace. And the starting point of that road isn't our resolve — it's the cross of Christ. Jesus gave Himself first, so that we could be saved. We aren't people who earn salvation through sacrifice. We're people who, because we've already been saved by grace, are learning how to give ourselves for others. The Spirit shapes us through the Word and through community, opening the hand that once gripped only its own will, so it can reach out to care for a neighbor. Discipleship is the process of walking together so that grace soaks into our daily habits and relationships. That's exactly why the picture of the church I want to build matters less than the question of who the Lord is shaping me to become. So "who is Lord?" isn't a question we ask once and move past. It's a place we have to return to every time we make a new plan, every time things don't go as we hoped. In fact, the moment we're most discouraged because our own will didn't happen — that's the most honest test of whether the Lord is truly Lord. Lord, before I dream of the church I want, let me live as one person in the church that pleases You. "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything — only God, who makes things grow." — 1 Corinthians 3:6–7