We should honour what God has done for the Movement in the past, but we must never live there.
Whatever has been achieved for the glory of God through Elim in the first part of our life has been achieved for the glory of God only. God will not share that glory with anyone or anything. In the words of Isaiah 42:8-9: “I am the YHWH, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols. See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.”
If the reputation, standing or position of our churches, our denominations, our titles, our roles or our ministries ever become more important than the glory and honour of God’s name, then they have become idols.
During the Patristic era the Church refused to allow an image of Christ or a representation of Christianity itself to be placed in the Pantheon in Rome alongside the other gods. It became a place solely dedicated to Christian worship in the 7th century. The early Church wasn’t willing to share the glory of Christ with idols, and we shouldn’t be either.
Nothing deserves the glory of God except God himself. Elim wasn’t birthed to be a shrine or denomination; it was birthed as a Movement. That means we need to keep moving, pressing into what God has for us.
We can learn from the past and be inspired by it, but we should never live in it. To ignore it would be bad stewardship. To live in it would be idolatry, to learn from and grow out of it into what God has for us in the future is the best – and perhaps the only – way forward.
Honouring the past
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