Author: Tom Sanders

Putting on a show

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Our world is changing almost every night. Every day we are confronted with new changes and new directions. What used to take decades to happen now seems to happen overnight. I am always amazed at the speed our world is moving in and how fast life is changing.

Into that world we have the church. The bride of Christ which is scripturally meant to bring and release the life of God into the world we live in and to be the message of God that He desires to know and be known by us. And we have a church that doesn’t change. The methods and manners we used to convey the life of God to the world don’t work and haven’t worked for many years. We struggle to bring the life of God into our lives let alone our congregations. And the world is taking notice. Statistically the world desires to know God. The interest in spiritual matters has never been higher. The interest in the church is at an all time low. Our world, and unfortunately a great many people who call themselves Christians want nothing to do with the church.

Recently I have been struggling with this idea, because the church that I love dearly isn’t living up to it’s God given potential. People are walking away from the church in droves. Some estimates are over 1,000,000 people walk away from our churches every year. The church has always been God’s method of reaching into the world. There has been only one plan. It started with the children of Israel being called to bring the nations of the world to knowing the God they served and has continued on to the New Testament church. We have a message. God wants to be known.

I think that people are walking away because we have been actors on a stage. It sounds terrible, but I think it is true. We believe in Jesus. We surrender our lives to Him. We receive His gift of an intimate relationship with Him. And we sit still and talk about the amazing bible verses we read, or the powerful sermon we heard. We say we believe that God moves today and that Jesus wants to touch peoples lives today. When we read verses like John 14:12 “ I tell you the truth: whoever believes in Me will be able to do what I have done, but they will do even greater things, because I will return to be with the Father.” (Voice) we believe that God can use us to release His life and power on the earth today. And we have as much affect as a wet noodle trying to cut bread.

The people around us hear the message we say, and see the lives that we live and don’t want what we have. Because it isn’t real. It for the most part is an act. Something we say but don’t live out. And people are leaving churches and want nothing to do with them. I feel it is time for the church and the people of God to be who God called them to be. We don’t need another worship CD. And we don’t need another teaching. We do need however the life and power of God to be in us, so that it can move through us.

I was reading recently and something I read gripped my heart and soul. Wolfgang Simson wrote“We need to change from being powerful actors to people who act powerfully.” For to long the church has lived below her potential and acted as though nothing was wrong. We have accepted the reality of the world we live in and made excuses for the life and power of God not being released in us. We don’t need to pursue manifestations and signs which have turned many people against the church. We need the life and power of God simply being in us. People need to see Jesus. We have a lost and broken world all around us which God desperately loves. We have a church which offers rules, regulations, judgements and criticisms and little else. We attempt to offer a community which sings and listens to someone talk, but with little to no life, and definitely no power. Time for the church to awaken to the world around us, and seek hard after the heart of God. Time to stop putting on an act and allow God to change us into His image, and to empower us. And it is time to take Jesus out into our world. It was never meant to be a religious exercise, but an outflow of an inward condition which release life and power that changes and transforms people and brings God to His people.

Let your light shine

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“Let your light shine in front of men.” Matthew 5:16 NLV  It has been the source of many sermons and studies calling Christians everywhere to stand up and share their faith.  We have all encountered people who jump in and share and push and prop people to listen to them and often pressure people to believe with them.  We have all even seen people walking around carrying a bible big enough to choke a mule trying to engage people in conversation hoping to convince them that they need to believe what we believe.

Unfortunately this has caused people to write us off a religious nuts who run around pressuring people to believe with us.  And so we try harder to share, because we know it is what God wants us to do, or we simply go quiet and hide.  Neither option is worth it.  God does want us to share with people about who He is, but He doesn’t want us running around badgering people doing everything we can to convince people that what they believe is wrong and what we believe is right. 

Evangelism is a biblical requirement for us a Christians.  It is something that we are all called to do.  Jesus said “Go and make disciples”.  We have a mission while here on earth and it is the same as Jesus had.  Jesus said His mission was ” For the Son of Man[a] came to seek and save those who are lost” Luke 19:10 NLT and He stated that He was passing on His mission to us ” As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you..” John 20:21 NLT.  So evangelism is a requirement for us if we wish to follow Jesus.  But badgering people with doctrine isn’t working, and isn’t evangelism.

Jesus went all around Israel and shared of the goodness of God with people.  He allowed His light to shine before everyone He encountered.  But His light was His salvation as many people profess today.  It had nothing to do with the cross because the cross hadn’t happened yet.  It had everything to do with His relationship with the Father.  “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:4-5 NIV.  In Him (Jesus) was life.  And this life was the life of God.  His connection to the Father.  The life and power of God flowing in and through Him.  And that life was the light of men.  It puts an interesting change to evangelism.  Do you have the life of God flowing in you?  Are all you offering people is a doctine they need to choose to believe or are we sharing with people something that we have in us that is transforming us and making us different.  If we don’t have God’s life, we have no light to share with others. 

” you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.”  1 Peter 2:9-10 MSG  Time for us as followers of Christ to get plugged in to Him and allow His life to fill us.  Then we can let our light shine and talk about the transformation that God is doing in us.  It will completely revolutionize our evangelism if we do it the way Jesus did.

When God serves us

1392627-hubble-telescope-images-of-planetsIt is an amazing phenomena that we have in North America that we try to serve a God who serves us.  I find it amazing the amount of people who have expectations that God needs to fill.  It isn’t a new concept either.  There have been people for many decades that treat God like a genie in the sky.  Just say the right prayers, have the right amount of faith, and God is obligated to move and fulfill our expectations.

It sounds a little ridiculous I know, but there are whole doctrines being taught today in churches which in essence teach this very concept.  We see it when people leave churches because God didn’t answer their prayers.   Someone didn’t get healed.  Someone they cared about passed away.  We see it when God begins to move in our lives and we disregard what God wants to do because He didn’t follow our plan.

The biggest concern I have with this idea is when we try to obligate God into doing things our way, and we do it in so many many ways, we shrink God down until He is beneath us.  We remove Him from being supreme, sovereign creator, to being, I hate to say it, a butler required to do what we wish.  One of the greatest tragedies we have in churches today is the fact that God has become so, so very small in our lives.

We do what we want, when we want, and expect that God simply will bless us.  We set our schedules and plans, and create our programs and turn our eyes to heaven and say, “look at what we have accomplished, come and place your seal of approval on it.”  I know we don’t consciously think this way, but our actions demonstrate this very thought.  We don’t just plan our churches this way.  We live our lives this way.  Just look at our budgets and schedules and the time we have for the lost around us and it doesn’t take much searching to see that we are serving a really small God, reduced to following our plan, and using our wisdom.

And then we turn to the world and say, “Come and follow God with me.” and wonder why no one wants what we have.  I believe it is time for us as Christians to re-evaluate our view of God.  Is your God to small.  Have we diminished Him so that He has to follow us?

I believe in a God who spoke the entire universe into being.  A God who planned me and you from before creation happened.  A God who knew He was going to have to enter our world and die in our place before He said let it be.  A God who holds the entire universe in the palm of His hand and sustains it with the power of His word.  I believe in a God who is so deeply in love with us that He freely chose to enter our world and open the door again to knowing Him and His abiding presence to us, and who calls each of us by name to accept His invitation.  I believe that we are called to serve a God who exists outside time, who knows the beginning from the end.

I believe we need to see God again as He is, that we are called to follow Him.  Not just in word, and by going to church when we feel the need.  But to be a people who come to know Him as He is.  To be so captivating by the awesome and terrible presence of God again.  The that so many people who have encountered Him have immediately fallen on their face and worshiped.

We, as Christians, have lost the awesome, powerful, majestic nature of God in our lives and substituted it for something of worthless value.  I believe that God is again moving on the hearts and lives of His people, calling us to again know Him for who He really is.  To again know and walk in the power of His abiding presence.  To follow and walk with the One who simply said “Let it be..” and it was.  It is my prayer for all of us that like David we could “magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together!“ Psalms 34:3 NLT 

It is time for us to stop diminishing God and begin to magnify Him.  To open our eyes and hearts to the majesty of who He is once again.  We serve an amazing, incredible, awesome, powerful God who desires us to know Him.  Will we remain as we are, or will we begin again to magnify God and see Him as He truly is?