It’s frustrating when something isn’t fulfilling its potential.
A football team full of expensive new signings which fails to deliver results. A kitchen stocked with exotic ingredients that only gets used for the blandest of meals. A state-of-the-art computer whose owner isn’t even close to utilising all its many functions. Great cost has been incurred, great possibilities exist, but the potential simply isn’t being realised.
Something similar, I suspect, could be said of many of our churches. Great cost has certainly been incurred – we have a redemption purchased through the precious blood of Christ Himself (1 Peter 1v18). The resources at our disposal are vast. We have a message that is the very wisdom and power of God (1 Corinthians 1v24); a bond which unites us to one another and to Christ (John 17v20-23); and the indwelling presence of the very Holy Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 6v19).