Lack of faith is not a failure of logic; it’s a failure of imagination. Lack of faith is the inability or unwillingness to entertain thoughts of a God who is able to do ‘immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us’ (v. 20 NIV). Did you get that? God wants to empower your imagination! A pastor writes: ‘If we are going to have an eternal impact on our culture, we can’t just criticise it or copy it. We’ve got to create it. If we are going to reach our generation with the gospel, we can’t just appeal to logic. We’ve got to capture their imagination. And C.S. Lewis is a great example of both. Can you think of anyone more left-brain logical than Lewis? His theological writings, from Mere Christianity to The Problem of Pain, are as logical as logic can be. But Lewis combined left-brain logic with right-brain creativity. The Chronicles of Narnia continue to capture the imagination of new generations. The church ought to be the most creative place on the planet. And there are certainly pockets of ingenuity and imagination, but we’re nowhere near our creative potential.’ Perhaps this is because we have a false definition of faithfulness. Faithfulness is not doing it how it has always been done. It’s not preserving the status quo. No, we must never water down the gospel or promote biblical compromise for cultural relevancy. Bottom line: our message must never change, but our methods must change if we are to gather in the final harvest before the Lord of the harvest returns.

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.