The Victory Belongs to God
Congratulations to the Boston Celtics on their recent NBA championship! The team battled through an 82-game season and then followed that with four rounds of best-of-seven playoffs. At the end of the long journey, they hoisted the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy. As we consider their victory, let’s think about some steps to their success: talented players, quality coaching, and effective training. Now, consider all the details necessary to achieve those steps – almost innumerable. Each detail contributes to the team’s success, and a single missed detail might change the season’s trajectory.
Let’s consider the church. We often think like an NBA team. While our goals are different, we believe our success hinges on completing every detail. Just the Celtics, we the need right players, leaders, and preparation. Add some right steps in the right order, and then, voila! Success awaits. Yet, as a church, we know this approach does not work. There is no secret formula for church success (despite the many advertisements I receive that want me to think otherwise). Actually, our success hinges upon God’s intervention. We need God’s help.
Let’s consider a story from the life of Samuel. While serving as Israel’s final judge and before anointing Saul as the first king, Samuel leads the people through a massive repentance. They abandon their false gods and commit themselves to the one true God, the Lord God. The Israelites gathered at Mizpah to fast and confess. Their enemy, the Philistines, seized upon their vulnerability and launched an offensive. Realizing their own feebleness, the people sought help from Samuel: “Do not stop crying out to the Lord our God for us, that he may rescue us from the hand of the Philistines” (1 Samuel 7.8). We read in the next verse, [Samuel] cried out to the Lord on Israel’s behalf, and the Lord answered him.
How would you expect help for the Israelites to arrive? Perhaps they would receive supernatural strength, or perhaps they would gain access to a powerful weapon. Nothing like this occurred. Rather, the Lord God intervened directly through seemingly natural means – thunder. That day the Lord thundered with loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into a such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites (1 Samuel 7.10). God intervenes through the natural phenomenon of a thunderstorm, and the violence of the storm so frightens the Philistines that they are easily routed by God’s people. The Israelites experience victory through their own hands, but the victory was fully reliant on God’s power.
Such pattern repeat again and again through the scripture. People experience victory through their own efforts. But (and very importantly), that victory comes through God’s power. Thus, as we reflect upon this truth for ourselves, we realize that our efforts have some role in success. The church, as God’s people, are the agents of success, but such success is fully contingent on God’s invention. Our efforts alone are useless. Without God, we accomplish nothing. With God, the miraculous can happen. The challenge for the church is to remember success comes through God’s power. Sure, our efforts play an important role, but they are the not an essential role. And certainly, we should ready ourselves to be God’s tool. Ultimately, though, we find ourselves needing the grace of God. We need God’s unmerited favor.
When the church embraces victory as coming through God’s grace, we experience great freedom. No longer does achievement hinge upon our own effort. Unlike the Dallas Mavericks who lost the NBA champion series, we are not left staring at ourselves asking the question: “How do I solve this problem?” Rather, we have the luxury of saying, I need only to be faithful. The victory comes when God’s sees fit.
