What is Missing?
- Feb 18
- 3 min read
As many of you know who read my blogs and Facebook posts, you know that I like simple and honest. Looking at life today with all the options, plans, and schemes, it just makes my head hurt. About 20 years or so ago, I started to process some things that I found frustrating and pointless, and that is when I started to ask, “What is missing?” At that time, I was in full time ministry, working at a Church, and feeling like the ministry was so routine, so mundane, that I thought perhaps my time is up in leading people spiritually.
Then I started to ask about everything I believed and started with the idea that God was a only a theology to me, a topic of study. I also looked at the theology that Seminary taught me, most of it just got me into the weeds, so I chucked all of it. (One of the big mistakes Seminary students make after they’re schooling, they preach theology.) Some theology is essential, but a lot of it was produced by overzealous theologians who over think everything. I threw out most theology and started over with the Bible. It is then that I started to ask the question, “What is missing?” I recently wrote a Facebook post about this.
One of my signature questions that I ask myself is, “What is missing?” I have used this question to approach almost everything. It may seem negative at first, but this helps me to focus on discovering more of what I don’t know, or what I have overlooked. Often, we accept things the way they are because we don’t pursue any change. Many times, we overlook the missing piece of God’s will, His test of trials, His foreknowledge of circumstances, and our unwillingness to trust Him. I found a missing piece in me around an obsession and fear of failure. That fear prompted me to ask, “What is missing?” What I discovered was my trust in God had been replaced by fear. “What is missing” is a question to discover, a tool to find answers. ~Larry Kutzler, Facebook Post
Observation
What is missing, as you can tell, became an important diagnostic tool for me as I investigated what I really believed. What I also discovered was that God had become a theological object that I could write about, speak about, and pontificate about … only to realize that it wasn’t the kind of relationship He, nor I, really wanted. So, out with the old and in with the new, as they say. The old wineskins of thought and practice was out, and I started to ask, “What is missing?” I realized what was missing was a simple faith with honest answers. I needed to pursue God, with new wineskins, and a fresh outlook at who He really is aside from all the theology I had come to know Him by. Today, what is missing in many Churches is the that sense God is real, He is present, and He is willing to make Himself known to us in ways that supersedes all the typical religiosity that we have been taught about Him.
Keeping God close is simple, you give Him space in your life, and He will give you space in His. Simple, isn’t it?
Challenging the Culture with Truth … Larry Kutzler