Jason McKnight

On Tuesday night of last week, Susan and I sat in our favorite restaurant in Charlotte with her best friend and her husband, Susan and Jerel. It is quite confusing having two Susans, but small price to pay for a dear friendship. Susan and Jerel have planted a church in Huntersville, north of Charlotte. It’s been a fairly low-key, even difficult first 3 years. At about Christmas, however, God really confirmed their calling to this church. Almost immediately (as is always the way with the Lord), he brought along several folks to jump in and lighten the leadership load for Jerel and Susan. Right before Easter, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Not even forty, with three kids at home, and a church plant. We ate and enjoyed each other’s company, we shared the joys of ministry and its hard parts too.

We moved on to Ben & Jerry’s for some ice cream. Susan gave my Sue a cd of the worship music they do at their church, encouraging us to listen to track 5 first: “it is the song God used to get me through this dark valley.” As we jumped in our car to go, we turned on track 5: “You’re the God of this city, you’re the king of this people, you’re the Lord of this nation. You are. … Greater things have yet to come, greater things are still to be done in this city!” We were taken with it. This song that had dear Susan praising God for the greater things to come now ignited our imagination. I couldn’t wait to get back to Kinston to see if Kent could teach it to our gang …only to find out that God had already been there! The students at Erasing the Lines had adopted it as their theme song, and had been singing it all week: “you’re the God of this city.” (I love following God into things. This was yet another reminder that he is up to something, and he leads us along all the time.)

We heard and witnessed this past Sunday some of the greater things God is doing in Kinston. Things like Erasing the Lines (Thanks Amy for the chant—who is this King of Glory? The Lord strong and mighty); things like the report from Steve and Krista Milburn—Kinstonians whom God called to Thailand to serve him there; things like Anne Albritton’s testimony of how God showed her grace after years and years of living the law—thinking God sent Christ to die on the cross to open the way to heaven, as long as she could work her way into it!—to grasping that God sent Christ to die on the cross to bring us to himself. He does all the work. Greater things, indeed! We heard from Ephesians 2:1-10 all about how awesome God’s grace is. Do you remember the challenge from the end of the message, what I asked each of us to do over the next month? For the sake of you readers who weren’t there on Sunday, the challenge was that we would memorize together these 10 grace-oriented verses. We would put them in our heads and give them to the Spirit to use in our lives when he needs to use them! Are you up for it? Greater things have yet to come in our lives as we savor and digest more and more Scripture. It will nourish us. Greater things have yet to come as we live grace, as we erase the lines, as we sing songs of worship to God.

All the way home from Charlotte, as we listened to that song, I kept asking the Lord, “what are the greater things” you are going to do in our city? We’ve seen so many of them in the past several weeks – 3 major business announcements, for over $1 billion in investment, and 2,900 jobs. It’s really amazing. What if this is just the prelude? What if God’s plans for Kinston involve going from “strength to strength”? Building on a business renaissance, what if God also leads us into a renewing of our schools, a wholesale change in the poverty situation, the eradication of gangs, a growing unity among the body of Christ, the rebuilding of the social fabric of families and best of all, an awesome spiritual renewal, such that hundreds and thousands of people come to Christ. What if God’s plans for Kinston involved all of this? Greater things have yet to come… Wow!

I don’t mean to be radical, but I think God’s plans do include all of this. Only because he’s the God of Redemption, of Compassion, of Order, of Reconciliation, of New Beginnings. I can pretty well guarantee that the greater things he has in store for Kinston far outstrip our measly dreams and visions of the future. But here’s the rub: he waits for us. He partners with us. He uses the body of Christ to accomplish his work on earth. We pray, “on earth as it is in heaven” and rightly so. But do we realize that anything that is done on earth for the kingdom is done by you and me (in the power of the Holy Spirit, under the Lordship of Christ). He’s not about to send a skywriter to convert people, he’s not going to send angels to renew the schools. He’s going to use us in plain ways, in normal ways. One of my former pastors once said, “it’s the monotony of day to day living that fuliflls the vision.” Our day in and day out activity is how God will fulfill his greater things vision for Kinston.

So what do we do? As part of following Christ and living surrendered lives, we need to think together so that we Prepare the Way for what is coming. As John the Baptist introduced the public ministry of Jesus, Mark tells us that he was the “voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’” (Mark 1:3). We are John the Baptist – we are preparing the way for the Lord here and now, in this city and in the lives of folks we know. As a church, let us embrace our calling to prepare the way for the Lord. We’re going to talk a lot more about this concept over the coming months – as it relates to our outreach efforts, our capital stewardship campaign, our discipling of adults, youth and children. Will you begin praying, thinking and dreaming, “how can Grace prepare the way?” If God is really doing something amazing in this community right now, let us make sure that we are in the middle of it.

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