When we come before God, when we gather our families together to worship Him, we are doing something that we have been summoned to do. God speaks and we respond. We are to respond in the words He has given us, and with the heart He has given us. We do this submissively, and this means we must submit to His determination to have the kingdom of God advance as messily as it is doing. Remember that while God is perfect, He is no perfectionist. Look at how the gospel is progressing through the world!
But many times, those Christians who make a big deal out of submission are not zealous for His perfection, but rather zealous for their own private vision of what constitutes the ideal Christian state of affairs. This private vision can be manufactured out virtually any material—wood, hay, or stubble. Instead of seeing our final destiny as one of being conformed to the perfect man, the Lord Jesus, they see an immediate need for everyone to adopt their particular hobby horse.
But we do not want to be a Christ and kind of church. We do not want to be Christ and health care reform or Christ and economics or Christ and liturgical reform or Christ and anything else in the world. But is not Jesus Christ Lord of all things in the world? Yes, He is. He is even Lord of all of our little hobby horses, but we do not acquire wisdom just because we rock back and forth in His name. The fact that He does not blast us to smithereens for riding them is proof positive that He wants us to grow up into maturity. God’s perfections are manifested gradually, and this means that impatience is the sin of the revolutionary. Reform is necessary, but never revolution.
We cannot lurch into maturity. We can have no instant fixes. The kingdom of God is like yeast that works through the loaf, and not like instant anything. As Christopher Dawkins once said, the Christian church lives in the light of eternity and can therefore afford to be patient.