I must confess that I am confused at the state of our “churches” that we attend weekly in the states. What are we really going for? Friends, fellowship, worship, tradition, to check it off the good thing to do list, God, Jesus? What is it? I confess that for most of my life I went because I enjoyed the fellowship with my friends and family. I often was even annoyed when the sermon lasted longer than twenty minutes and when the worship music didn’t meet me where I was. Really it was all about me! I am learning more and more that God doesn’t care about all of these traditions we perform in “worship”. He just wants us to connect with Him. He desires intimacy with us. I know we cannot achieve this intimacy just by showing up on Sunday morning and following the order of worship in a bulletin. When was the last time you asked the Holy Spirit to lead you in worship? Maybe you do this at home, but most of us rarely do this in our churches. We rely so much on the worship leaders and preachers to connect with the Lord and deliver our worship to us. How lame!
I am on the edge of getting mad at the church, but really why am I getting mad when I am the church? Why am I not allowing the spirit of the risen king, the one part of Christ he left here on Earth, to lead me in worship? I’m not knocking hearing a word from a pastor, but that is just one man or woman’s perspective from the Lord. God is so huge that his Holy Spirit can minister to each one of us right where we are all at the same time, but we must give him the opportunity.
I used to be so scared of sitting down with God and asking him questions and I was often too impatient to wait for his response. It came down to the fact that if I really got face to face with God that he was going to ask me to live for him daily. Not just for church camp or work with youth, he wants it all! He’s going to challenge me to love that person I don’t really care for, or talk to the poor person on the street, or he may even call me to leave behind my life and follow him. I am coming to realize he doesn’t want a partial commitment, Jesus didn’t partially die for me and he didn’t partially die for some people and not the others. He sacrificed His whole life for ALL of the World, no one excluded. I must be willing to sacrifice my whole life for Christ or it’s all pointless, if I don’t I might as well give up on God and live a wordly life. Really it’s all or nothing, why are we not sacrificing more?
God is revolutionizing my teammates and my way of thinking and what hurts us the most is thinking of how dead we have been spiritually in the past and also thinking about our friends and family back home! I pray that God will revolutionize your way of thinking as well! How do we need to change? What do we need to sacrifice? How can we be worshiping God whole-heartedly in our churches? Who should we really be serving? Where are the poor? Are we serving them? How many non-Christians do I know? What good are we really doing for the kingdom of God? A change is needed! Please I beg of you sit down and allow God to speak to you about the change needed in America and the church. How are we being the body of Christ? There are too many people suffering in this world for us to continue spending our time thinking about building new buildings and creating cutting edge programs to draw the masses.
God please change us, every last one of us, we BEG for you to change us to truly be like your son, no more mediocrity, no more luke-warmness, IGNITE us with your spirit and power, use us O God, WE BEG YOU!!!
