Incompletions

Full disclosure: This article is not about football, however I am going to use a football illustration. If you don’t like football, please keep reading. If you do like football, I hope you are willing to read an article that isn’t just about football.

An incompletion in football is when a quarterback attempts to throw a pass but that pass is not caught by a receiver on the quarterback’s team. So a quarterback may be 12/16 in passes for the game meaning that the quarterback threw 16 passes, 12 were completed, and 4 were incomplete.

The incompletion I want to talk about today has nothing to do with throwing a football. An incompletion is an integrity gap. An incompletion takes place when I don’t keep my word and even becomes worse when I don’t honor my word. An incompletion is a mess (small or big – still a mess) that a person makes because of a lack of integrity.

As we think about the plans God has for Community Reformed Church, we have to think about the incompletions in the life of Community Reformed Church. The incompletions at CRC are the sum total of all the integrity gaps that exist within the lives of those who are a part of CRC. It is nearly impossible for Community Reformed Church to live into God’s preferred future for us while ignoring the incompletions that exist within our church body. These incompletions often include places of unforgiveness, promises we have not kept, brokenness in relationships within the church body, things we’ve said about who we’ll be as a church but not lived out, etc.

God will not ignore our incompletions and neither can we if we desire to live into God’s preferred future. BECAUSE God’s preferred future involves growth in each of us, and so often the growth that needs to happen will happen as we seek to close our gaps in integrity. By seeking to honor our word by cleaning up the messes we’ve made, we put ourselves in places where we grow. Cleaning up a mess is some of the most difficult work we ever do. It means admitting fault, saying we’re sorry, and asking for forgiveness. But yet it also means, being forgiven, being set free from guilt, and no longer feeling separated from someone else in the church.

God’s preferred future for us is not simply about changing what we do, but instead it’s about changing/growing who we are.

Like any quarterback, none of us are perfect. We will all occasionally throw completions. We will all have gaps in our integrity. The goal is definitely perfection, but none of us will be perfect. The challenge comes in how we respond when our errant pass (integrity gap) affects another. Will we blame them? Will we act like nothing happened? Will we take responsibility for our mistake and grow through our willingness to live in restored relationships?

One direct result of working through our integrity gaps is that we grow in hope. Brokenness that has seemed insurmountable is seen to be surmountable. Feelings of separation begin to diminish and even disappear. Hope comes and grows.

Think about that truth as you consider God’s preferred future for Community Reformed Church. Do you have hope about what He has in store for you? Do you know it means growth in you? Will you do your part in addressing the incompletions in your life? Will you work to close the integrity gaps that you’ve created? You can be a means by which hope grows, not only in you, but in the people of CRC, and believe it or not, that hope will impact people far beyond our church body.