Category: The Church

Much of what we see today in our churches is not what God had planned when the church was called into existence.  Jesus said “I will build My church” and we have gone and done exactly what Paul said in Galatians 3:3 “Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?”  We have left God’s plan for the church and built our own empires instead.

The church was meant to first be in God’s presence, and then to go into all the world.  And we have gotten this all backwards.  We have gone and done all kinds of things and forgotten to first be with God.  Our churches are known by many things, including community service and many others, and this is not what God intended.  Jesus said to the church at Ephesus “I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance. I know that you cannot tolerate evildoers; you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them to be false.  I also know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of my name, and that you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.”

God intended us to be with Him first before we ever ran out into the world.  And He is again calling us to that role.  God want’s us to be known for and marked by His presence.  To be like Peter and John, when they were before the Sanhedrin “Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.”  The question before us is will we respond?

Sam Nunn, a former US senator, said “You have to pay the price.  You will find that everything in life extracts a price, and you will have to decide whether the price is worth the prize.”  And that is the choice before the church.  God is calling us to prepare the way for Him to restore the church to its proper place.  Our choice is whether we will make straight the path and follow Him or will we continue on our current course.  Every decision has a cost.  Will we pay now and play later, or play now and pay later.  Now is the time to prepare for God’s release.  If we don’t we will miss out on what God is doing now.  God will not force Himself on us.  Will we respond and open the door to Him and become the church He planned or continue to build according to our plans and purposes. We cannot have both.  The Spirit of God is moving seeking those who will respond to His call.  The decision is now ours to make.

In part one we began to look at the fact that the true church of scripture is largely missing in North America.  We have lost our identity and become an apathetic and powerless faith that changes little and stands for even less.  I looked at the reasons why I felt this had happened.

We don’t understand the Christian Cause

We don’t understand what Christianity Costs

We don’t understand how Christianity is Communicated

We looked at the fact that we really don’t understand what the Christian Cause really is.  That it is supposed to be a deep, dynamic, intimate and ever-deepening relationship with our God and that we have turned it into a list of rules and requirements, and rituals.

In part two we looked at the Cost involved with Christianity, and the fact the we have turned it into a free faith, promising comfort and ease and delivering nothing at all, and that Christianity cost Jesus absolutely everything and that it will cost us the same because a faith that costs little to nothing is worth little to nothing.

Lastly I want to look at why we are not becoming the church shown in scripture.

We don’t understand how Christianity is Communicated;

Thirdly we need to look at the way we share and display our faith.  Once we establish our faith in the forgiveness of our Saviour and surrender our lives to His leadership, we then need to share our faith.  We become Christians in a supernatural way, as we are born again by the Spirit of God, so we need to continue to live our faith in a supernatural way.  Paul stated this in Galatians 3:3  “Have you lost your senses? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?”  We struggle to live our faith out and be the people that God wishes, and yet we try to do it without the One who started our faith, redeemed us and without His help, we cannot be who God designed us to be.  The church in scripture is a supernatural church.   And we see evidence of this church still today in places like China, Africa, Argentina and the former Soviet Union.  And we can see that church here if we will change our lives and allow God to do in us what He needs to do.  Because scripture says that “Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever” we can be sure that the works that Jesus did in the bible He is still willing to do today, and because the bible teaches that “God is no respecter of persons” what He is willing to do with and through one person, He is willing to do in and through us.  It is only us that holds back the hand of God.

The bible states in Daniel 11:32 “those who know their God .. will do great exploits.”   Christianity is simply a relationship with God.  Knowing God and being known by Him.  Therefore according to scripture Christians should be “doing great exploits” and yet we simply do nothing.   Jesus said “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.”  Again we find that Christians are supposed to do great things.  The works that Jesus did, heal the sick, raise the dead, give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, we are supposed to be able to do.  Jesus Himself said we should.  And Jesus hasn’t changed.  Now Jesus didn’t do the miracles He did because He was God.  Otherwise they would be impossible for us to do.  Jesus was completely man, that was empowered by the Holy Spirit.  ACT 10:38  “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. ”  

And Jesus promised us that same power. Luke 24:49  “stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”  And in Acts on the day of Pentecost the disciples received that power, and proceeded to give it to everyone who called themselves Christians.  But as a church here today we are powerless.  We are the same as the people Paul talked about in 2 Timothy 3:5  “having a form of godliness but denying its power.”  

God gives us His power not for our gain but so that we will become witnesses to those around us, sharing with them what God has done in and for us.  But until we share the gospel fully we have not truly shared the gospel.  Paul states in Romans 15:18-19  “I dare not boast of anything else. I have brought the Gentiles to God by my message and by the way I lived before them. I have won them over by the miracles done through me as signs from God – all by the power of God’s Spirit. In this way, I have fully presented the Good News of Christ all the way from Jerusalem clear over into Illyricum.”  Unless we allow the power of God to flow through us we cannot fully proclaim the message God has given us, and we cannot become the church that God designed us to be.   We must fully know what Christianity truly is, and be fully and completely sold out to God, having Him as complete Lord of our lives, and properly display our faith to be the church of scripture.  Only then can we be who God calls us to be.  The decision is ours to make.  A wise man once said “you are as close to God as you choose to be”.  We have to decide how far we are willing to go. Vance Havner stated “I was born in the fires of revival, and I am not going to sit in the ashes.”  Only we can decide our destiny.

But many churches teach the power of God moving in our lives, but there are extremely few whose teachings unfold into reality.  For them it is a concept that they teach that was found in scriptures.  But this needs to become a reality in our lives.  If we are to be the Christians and the churches we were designs to be, then this is an extremely important part.  Without it we will never become what we are supposed to be.  We are called to be a supernatural people, moving and flowing with God and changing our world.  And this is what the heart of God yearns for. 2 Chronicles 16:9  “For the eyes of the Lord search back and forth across the whole earth, looking for people whose hearts are perfect toward him, so that he can show his great power in helping them. ” The Message version states “God is always on the alert, constantly on the lookout for people who are totally committed to him.”  God is actively searching for people that He can display His power in and through.  So if God is actively seeking looking then why don’t we see His power displayed in our lives and churches?  Why aren’t we the supernatural people that we are called to be?  I think that it is because our hearts are divided among so many things.  We compartmentalize God to a small piece of time on one day a week and live our lives the way we desire the rest of the time.  But God was never meant to be compartmentalized.

If we desire to be the people God called us to be it will require a major shift in our lives and behaviors.  Scripture teaches that God is a jealous God.  He is deeply passionate over us, and just like a husband is fiercely loyal and jealous over his wife, God is the same over us.  He will not share us with anyone or anything.  So we have to begin to look at our lives and evaluate what our destiny is worth to us.  Will we continue to compartmentalize God and live our lives the way we have been living, or will we undergo a radical change and commit ourselves completely and totally to Him and allow Him to show Himself strong?  That is what is required.  And the decision is ours and only ours to make.   But if we are willing to begin, God will show Himself in and through us like we never dreamed possible.  All it takes is for us to make up our mind and make a quality decision for God to begin.  He wants it more than we do, and if we will move an inch, He will move a mile.  Besides this is something we can never do without Him and He knows that.  So if we will make the decision, He will make up the difference.  Our destiny awaits us.

In part one of this post I began to look at the fact that the church of God, or at least the church described in scripture, is largely missing from our culture here in North America.  The church that the bible states that “the gates of hell will not prevail against”  the church that  overcomes and is victorious in Christ,  the church that is supernatural in nature.  The church that is portrayed for us in the New Testament.  The true church of God is missing from our culture.  The church we have is not the church that God has designed, nor the church that God had planned.  Often the church in North America has begun to deny the very truths of scripture that lay out for us the principles and guidelines of what God wanted when He designed the church.  Many churches have let go of the absolutes of scripture and have begun to subjectively decide what will be the truth that they believe in.  And I believe that this is caused by the fact that the true church is missing and those who would stand and declare the truth are being silenced and ignored because who declare the truth cannot back it up.  Theology has become the place of philosophy.  Something etherial to be discussed and talked about instead of something tangible that we should build our lives upon.

I began to look at three reasons I think the church has gone missing.

We don’t understand the Christian Cause

We don’t understand what Christianity Costs

We don’t understand how Christianity is Communicated

And I shared what the scriptures teach about what the Christian Cause truly is.  Simply a deep intimate love relationship with a Sovereign God, empowered by the Holy Spirit and lived out in relationships with other Christians.  We cannot separate one aspect of Christianity from the others and have a true understanding.  We cannot have a growing relationship with God without first coming to Him in repentance for our behaviours and receiving His forgiveness, and then living that life out with other Christians.  Scripture teaches that we cannot love God, whom we cannot see, unless we can love our brother whom we can see.  And we cannot have a relationship with God without being empowered by Him, cause without Him we can never measure up.  We need all three aspects of Christianity to be growing and deepening for our faith to be true.

But we also cannot be who God designed us to be as a church if We don’t understand what Christianity costs.

Our faith first of all cost Jesus everything.  The bible teaches that Jesus left the glory and splendor of heaven, became a simple man just like you and I, and as a man without sin, suffered and died in our place, descended into hell and on the third day rose again and ascended into heaven.   Christianity cost Jesus everything.  And yet when you look at the church today in North America we have a church pandering to the needs and wants of people, all of us selfishly trying to increase our comfort level, and if we can’t get what We want, we move on to find somewhere that we can.  Church today has become a place for us,  something no better than a social club, instead of a place where people come to meet God.  We have a church and a faith that costs us little to nothing and it is seen in our character and our actions.  Christians today cannot be told apart from non-Christians.  We look, taste and feel exactly the same and this is not what was to be.  The bible states in Acts 3:13  when Peter and John were arrested for preaching Jesus  that the Jewish council was“astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.”  Simply by what Peter and John shared with them and by their character and actions people knew these men had been with Jesus.  Can the same be said about the church as we know it.   The church in Acts cost the disciples everything as well.  Even the congregations had a cost to pay.  Christianity was never supposed to be a comfortable faith.  Jesus himself said “Count the cost”  The fact that we have made it a free faith of comfort and ease is an insult unto the author of our faith.  King David stated in scripture that he would not offer unto God a sacrifice that had cost him nothing.  And yet we offer unto God, when we offer something, a faith that is cost free.

Jesus did say that all who are weary and burdened should come to Him and receive rest for their souls.  But even this wasn’t without a cost.  Because He also said to learn from Him, then we would find rest.  We simply want to find the rest.  Unfortunately not everyone who says they are a Christian will enter into the kingdom of heaven.  Jesus Himself stated this in Matthew 7:21  “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”  Christianity has a cost.  Paul said in Romans 10:9  “For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ”  We have come to know Jesus as our Saviour, but scripture clearly states that we must come to know Him as Lord.  Lordship entails ownership.  We have to come to the place where Jesus owns us completely lock stock and barrel.  There simply is no other option.  Jesus didn’t ever deal in half measures.  Christianity will cost us everything.  Either Jesus is Lord of all, or He is not Lord at all.  Jesus said “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me;  and anyone who does not take his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me.”  So if we are to  be the church that God designed and desires the question is, will we count the cost.  And will we pay the cost.  Will we follow Jesus’ lead and follow Him.   Without it the church will remain missing.