I am sitting on a plane from Kathmandu, Nepal to Delhi, India right now. We will then fly from Delhi to Hyderabad to start our India ministry month. We are only one month into our Race and God has already shown me so much. I knew that the lives of believers in other parts of the world would be different than our lives in America, but I had no idea that other believers were actually living out the book of Acts day in and day out. It is pretty amazing to witness and it has convicted me to write this blog about how far the modern American church has moved from the church God calls us to be.
For starters, let's talk about what the word church actually means. When Jesus talks about the church, He is referring to the unified body of His followers all over the world. In America, we tend to only use the word church to describe a building with a name and a denomination slapped on the front of it to signify disunity over petty doctrinal and dogmatic differences. We are so intent on proving ourselves right and proving others wrong we completely forget that Jesus commanded us to love one another. We let our pride get in the way of our heart. Jesus has called us to be disciples not Sunday church goers with a need to "one-up" the church down the street. When He asks us to die to ourselves, He is asking us to lay down our pride and our need to be right all the time so that we may love like He does.
Next, let's talk about who we tend to think God is in America. In the bible (You know that book we like to cherry pick verses from to suit our idea of who we think God should be?), God states repeatedly that He has always been the same and He will always be the same. For some reason in America we really don't like believing that. We like to put God in a little box and tell ourselves that He doesn't work now in the same ways He did in biblical times. For some reason we don't believe that miracles, healings, signs, and wonders happen anymore. That stuff was just around for the first century, right? How could we ever possibly operate in the gifts of the Spirit when we rarely even acknowledge that the Holy Spirit exists? I'm not saying that we don't have any churches utilizing our God-given power, I'm just saying those churches are few and far between. Jesus flat out told us that He was sending us the Holy Spirit when He was gone and that we would be able to do the same things He did and greater when we utilize that Spirit. We have the same spirit that rose Jesus from the dead living inside of us. That's freakin Awesome! God gave us His Spirit to not only counsel us, but to also empower us to move in mighty ways for His glory.
Time to talk about evangelism. Jesus spent His earthly ministry healing people, casting out demons, and performing miracles in every town he walked into. In the early church, they operated in the same way. We were all given that same power when we accepted Jesus. Is it too much to ask that we use that power to heal people, make their lives better, and in the process bring them into the kingdom? I can honestly tell you from experience that showing people how much their Father loves them through the gifts of the Spirit is a way more effective evangelism tool than handing out tracks, putting stickers on our cars, and pointing out all of the places in peoples lives where they are sinning. It's way easier and way more fun to heal them or give them a word of knowledge and introduce them to my friend Jesus who loves them. He will take over from there. The Holy Spirit will convict them of the places in their lives that He wants to change. He will definitely use the community of believers to speak through, but I don't see why we feel like we need to jump the gun and attack the lost folks who haven't even met Jesus yet. I have a hard time believing that anybody has ever been led to the kingdom through someone else's moral outrage.
Persecution is the next topic I would like to discuss. Jesus did say "Blessed are those who are persecuted in my name." This does not mean that every time some atheist wins some stupid court battle and puts his/her atheist "I believe in nothing" plaque up in town square next to the Ten Commandments plaque, we need to run to Fox News and cry about how persecuted we are in America. This is just silly. If you would like to learn what Jesus was talking about when He spoke about persecution, hop a plane to Nepal, or India, or the Middle East, or China, or virtually anywhere else in the world that isn't the Bible Belt. The believers I have spent the last month with live in constant fear of being beaten, disowned by family, run out of town, and sometimes even imprisoned for their faith. In a lot of other places people are still killed for Jesus. How we ever started thinking that we have the right to utter the phrase persecution in America is completely beyond me. Our God is way greater than some stupid plaque anyway.
The last thing I would like to mention is spiritual warfare. This is something that is very tangible in Nepal and a lot of the other countries we will be going to this year. I mentioned in my last blog that a teenage girl manifested a demon right in the middle of our church service one Saturday morning a couple weeks ago. What I don't think I mentioned was that us white folks were the only people in the room who even flinched when that happened. The Nepali folks deal with witch doctors, demon manifestations and many other outward displays by the enemy all the time because the prevalent religions in Nepal are based on outward demonic displays by their violent gods. That's not to say that the enemy is doing any less work in America though. Our false gods just come in the form of money, "power", sex, self image, drugs, medicine, psychology, and many many other things that convince us that we don't need God. (I'm not saying that we should never go see a doctor when we get sick. I just think He would like it if we thought of Him first.) Most Americans (including most Christians) don't believe in the supernatural, so why would the enemy screw that up with a bunch of outward manifestations? "The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he doesn't exist." I have no idea who originally said that, but truer words have never been spoken. Our enemy is real, he is always attacking, and he is not human. The good news is that Jesus won the war on the cross. Let's accept that victory and plunder the gates of hell.
Last night I was laying in bed, listening to United Pursuit, and just soaking when all of this flooded my mind. Truthfully, I really didn't want to write another blog pointing out the shortcomings I see in western Christianity, but God wouldn't let me fall asleep until I agreed to write this while we travel today. As soon as I agreed, I passed right out, so I guess this is obedience. I pray that this doesn't sound like I'm pointing my finger at any specific person or group of people. I used the words "we", "us", and "our" intentionally in this post because I am an American Christian and I feel convicted to step back and look at how I view my role in advancing the kingdom as well. We live in the most influential nation in the world. Imagine what the world would look like if we approached our faith in the way God called us to in the gospels and in the book of Acts. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. Love Y'all!!!
