What ifs and the Big WHAT IF?

I was unpacking some of my books the last couple of weeks in All Saints' new church building, and as I unpacked the books I would often pause and thumb through some of the more familiar and favorite titles. As I did so I was struck again by a question Dwight Smith once posed to me and a room full of church planters, “What if?” Now there are a lot of “what if” questions that are possible in this world. As the father of a near fourteen-year-old boy, I have heard a number of them over the years, and the rate at which they come seems to rise exponentially with his age. Parents are used to the compendium of “what if” questions. Sometimes they are verbal and sometimes they are the askance glance of a small child preparing to do that which they know is forbidden, as if to be asking the very cosmos, along with Mom and/or Dad, “What if I touch that which you have told me not to touch?” What if I had never met my wife Lee (not a good scenario), what if we had never had our son, E.J. ( I can't imagine the world without him), what if I had decided to be a golf rules official rather than attend seminary, or what if I had taken that one easier course instead of the Comparative European Politics course which caused my graduated GPA to drop to 3.74999 to just miss the 3.75 summa cum laude honor. Or how about a bigger what if? What if I had spent more time having fun in college and just a little less time worried about my GPA and still graduated with the same magna cum laude honor which, as it turns out, hasn't really made much of an impact on the rest of my life... go figure. Yeah what ifs are all around us... but the what if that Dwight was talking about was a much bigger one. It is the what if that is actually a great source of assurance for me in my walk with Christ.

What Dwight was asking was for us to simply stop for just a moment and think of the world we live in for just a moment through this single lens, “What if it's true.” “What if Jesus really is who He says He is?” “What if Jesus really has done what He says He has done.” “What IF Jesus can do what He says He can do?” Now before any of us answer any or all of these questions we need to be careful about our answer, because our answer ought to also be reflected in our lives. Because if we say that Jesus IS who he says He is, has DONE what He says He has done, and CAN DO what He says He can do, then the way we interact with the world around us should be characterized by that belief. If Jesus is who He says He is then He is the living Son of God, He is both God and Man, and He has loved humanity with such a love that to truly consider the breadth and depth of that love is to stand in awe. If Jesus really has done what He says He has done then He is THE Savior and there really is no other way to salvation, He really is the ONLY way to the Father. And if Jesus really can do what He says He can do, then even now He stands with outstretched arms for a lost and hurting world ready to receive all who turn to Him. If Dwight's “what if” is true, then there is hope without end, love without limits, grace and mercy and compassion in vast abundance waiting to be poured out if we will simply ask.

This is the big “what if,” because as a Christian I do believe that Jesus is all those things and because I do I face each day, even when I am down, with the knowledge that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. Which is important in general, but what really gets me is this: because Jesus IS who He says He is, HAS done what He says He has done and CAN DO what He says He can do, I know that He is Emmanuel--- GOD WITH ME. Jesus is with ME. And when I consider that all the what ifs pale in comparison. Because the final what if is this: what if His church started truly acting like we really believe these Jesus “what ifs?”

IHN
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