Level Ground

Tuesday, April 2, 2002

When I meet people who went to elementary or high school with my wife, they tell me she was shy. I didn't know her then, but I have found that very hard to accept. From the time I met her at a Christian college, she was vivacious and outgoing and confident. I've asked her about this seeming contradiction. She says that both descriptions are accurate. In her secondary school years, Karen lived in the country with parents who gave her a lot of love and courtesy and spiritual wealth, but who didn't have much what our world calls wealth. So, she lived in a home without the conveniences many of her friends in town would consider basic. She didn't have money to spend on clothes or makeup - so she felt a little self-conscious in a campus world that was so much about the way you dress and the "stuff" you have. But when she got to a Christian college, suddenly everything changed. She told me, "For the first time, the playing field was level."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Level Ground."

That's exactly the way God intended for it to be in His family, in His church - a level playing field where all that external junk the world judges people by just doesn't matter. It's the kind of environment in which people can blossom and unleash all the beauty and giftedness God has planted in them.

In Galatians 3:26-28, our word for today from the Word of God, the Lord says, "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus ... There is neither Jew nor Greek (that's racial differences), slave nor free (that's class differences), male nor female (that's discrimination based on gender), for you are all one in Christ Jesus." I wonder if your church feels like that kind of place, your youth group, your Christian group. That's how it's supposed to feel!

The culture of money and power and fashion and social groupings is supposed to stop at the door of the Church of Jesus Christ. I hope it does at yours. None of that stuff matters to Jesus. The world has its "power elite" and its "insiders and outsiders." Don't let that cancer infect your church. People need to come into a group of Christians and feel level ground - a warm, sincere welcome, no matter how they look, what they have, or what their background. Anything less is a shameful contradiction of everything Jesus is about - grace . . . unconditional love. Remember, "Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7).

Years ago in a large, fashionable church, two people came down the aisle to give their lives to Christ - one was the governor of the state, the other a maid. The pastor said it all when he said, "The ground is level at the cross." And maybe only at the cross. It may be that you have spent most of your life feeling like you were on the bottom - the outsider. Maybe even Christians have let Jesus down in how they've treated you. But I want to invite you this very day to come to the cross where Jesus - the Son of God - thought you were worth dying for. He knows all about you - and He loves you. And He's waiting to welcome you into His family -- and one day into His heaven, if you'll give yourself to Him today.