This week, I found a post on our Facebook group. It was written by my wife as a reflection on a message from March, when we were working our way through the Easter Season – a special time of repentance.
I hope reading it is as much of a challenge to you as it was to me.
So… Erik said something this morning in the message that kinda made my mind linger on some thoughts… He brought up a song that Todd Agnew wrote- "My Jesus" and the song said something along that line that Jesus wouldn’t fit in our churches- He’d come in with dirty feet and would bring in the prostitutes and the sinners and who ever else… But that led me to think, as I looked among our church and thought of all the other churches I’ve been a part of or visited… "Where ARE the prostitutes… the drunks… the dirty… the homeless… the sick and diseased?? Where ARE they?" They’re not in our seats and we’re not OUT of our seats…
I think we’ve been too focused on ourselves… I’m sure some of us could stand and say, "I was the drunk" or "I was the whore" or "I was the diseased" but… we camp on OURSELVES and our past… PRAISE GOD we’ve been changed and redeemed… PRAISE GOD! REALLY!!!
But NOW what? Why aren’t we moving on?
Our church is too clean…
Even our praises can be redundant and stale when they’re not moving forward in the cause of Christ- loving the "ugly" …that "sin-sick" soul… We’re afraid to get involved or give of ourselves to these people who need Christ… or we’re just too busy. We’re afraid to get dirty and we’re just too comfortable in our busy-ness.
Our praises are nothing when we’re quenching the work of the Holy Spirit. Do we REALLY believe in the power of Christ??? Do we REALLY and GENUINLEY believe and TRUST in the power of His resurrection? Do we REALLY believe He can change these lives? Do we?
We often sit on our fat Baptist butts and let them walk on by…
and we want our church to be pretty…
We worry over nothing…
And we have all these worries and all these stresses and all these cares of the world- work, home, finances- you name it that get us so worked up and tense that we start missing our focus- Jesus Christ. And we wonder why things are so screwed up. And we then dwell on pettiness and harbor bitterness and anger… where is the Love Y’all?? Where is the fulness and love of Christ that is supposed to dwell so richly in us?
Maybe we’re not "growing" because… is our church really ready to? Are we really ready for God’s work to be done? Can He really trust us with the prostitutes and the drunks and the sinner and the diseased?
Can He?
We may be clean by appearance… but inside our hearts… inside our church… we need God to clean house… and we need to let our hands get dirty.
A great challenge from my wife and our worship director. I wonder how many of you actually finished reading. Did it affect you at all?
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