Where Is The Church?

"And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also." - Acts 17:6

Over the last several months I have been burdened by a single question, where is the Church?  The Church in the book of Acts is accused of turning the world upside down.  Sadly, the only thing that the Church could be accused of today is selling out.  We are such a far cry from what the Church is supposed to be as read in the book of Acts.

Have you ever heard another church member recalling a story that ended with one of these statements:

"That church split over the color of the carpet!" or "The deacons meeting ended in an actual fight!" or "She walked up and slapped the pastor across the face!" or "She actually flipped the pastor the middle finger in a business meeting!"

You might be thinking that those statements sound extreme and that something like that would never happen.  I can tell you from personal experience that these things do happen.  The last example of someone flipping the pastor the middle finger in a business meeting actually happened to me last year.  Many Christians could share stories with you that defy the imagination.  Let me emphatically say that church is not supposed to be this way!

All you have to do is look around the community that you live in and you will see people that are hurting, people that need someone to love them and care about them, people that need someone to show them Christ.  Where is the Church?  We have gotten so caught up in our theology, our programs, and ourselves that we have quit being the Church!  What will it take to break our hearts for people in our communities?  What happened to  Christians helping their neighbors with a need?  What happened to Christians donating their time to the food bank or homeless shelter?  What happened to Christians just showing a simple act of kindness so that they might show and reflect the love of Christ?  Now please don't misunderstand me, I am not saying that we should do all of these things in place of witnessing and sharing the Gospel of Christ with the lost.  We must do all these things in conjunction with witnessing and sharing the Gospel of Christ with the lost.

May God break our hearts for those in our community!  May God so burden our hearts and our souls that we will start being the Church by showing a radical love and compassion for those in our communities.  I am all for having the right theology and doctrine, but those things are worthless if it doesn't radically change our lives and compel us to show unbelievable compassion to those in our community.

‎"The knowledge that God has loved me to the uttermost, to the end of all my sin and meanness and selfishness and wrong, will send me forth into the world to love in the same way." - Oswald Chambers

Prayer For Today:

Heavenly Father, I pray that You would break my heart for those in my community!  Break my heart for their souls, their needs, and their burdens.  Help my to show them Christ's love in every way imaginable!  Give me a radical love and unbelievable compassion for those that are lost, those that are hurting, and those that just need to see that someone cares.  In Jesus name, Amen!

Forgetting Where We Came From

"Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." - Exodus 23:9



As I was reading through the book of Exodus the other day, the above verse really stood out to me.  I think that it reveals a fundamental problem that many churches and Christians have when it comes to the lost around them.  I'm afraid too many Christians today have forgotten where they came from.

The word oppress has many meanings, one of them means to put down.  This is the way that many lost people see us Christians.  They see us looking down our noses at them, making condescending statements about them, they see us condemning them rather than condemning their sin.  The Lord warned Moses and the children of Israel not to oppress a stranger.  He told them that they knew what it was like to be a stranger because of their time in bondage to the Egyptians.

As Christians, we must never forget where we came from!  We know the heart of a lost person, because we used to be one.  Before we trusted Christ as our Savior, we were strangers to Him, we were in bondage to our sin and to the world.  The Lord was reminding Israel of how they were treated by the Egyptians and was telling them not to treat strangers the same way.  Think back to your days as a lost person and remember how you felt, think about your burdens, think about your sorrows, and how you just simply needed someone to show you the love of Jesus Christ.  Please do not misunderstand what I saying, we cannot and must not overlook sin or turn a blind eye to it, but we must show those around us that we care.

During Pastors Conference at FBC Jacksonville Johnny Hunt made the following statement, "The longer I'm a part of God's family, the further removed I am from those for who Christ died."  That is such a sobering thought!  Too many Christians in our churches today have isolated themselves in a bubble from the world around them.  The result of this is that they have forgotten where they came from, they have forgotten the heart of a lost person, and they have become cold to the lost.

May God break our hearts and give us a consuming compassion for the stranger and the lost!  Have you forgotten who you were and where you came from before Christ saved you?

Prayer For Today:

Heavenly Father, may I never forget who I was and where I came from before You saved me!  Lord, break my heart for those who are lost and give me a consuming passion for those who are hurting and desperately need You!  Father, thank You for Your mercy and grace demonstrated toward me when You saved my unworthy and wretched soul!  As You have loved me, shown me mercy, shown Your grace to me, forgiven me, help me to do the same to those that are still in bondage to sin.  In Jesus name, Amen!

Have Pity

"Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me." - Job 19:21


 

It has been said that no one in all of Scripture, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, suffered like Job did.  It has also been said about Job's friends, that with friends like that, you don't need enemies.  What we read in Job 19:21 is one of the saddest statements made in Scripture.  Job is desperate as he cries out for his friends to have pity on him.  What stands out to me about this verse is the total lack of compassion and mercy shown by Job's supposed friends.

What about us today?  There are people in our churches today who are suffering.  Are we willing to show them mercy and compassion and really be there for our brothers and sisters in Christ when they need us?  There are also multitudes that are lost without Christ in our culture today.  Are we willing to speak the truth in love to them?  Are we also willing to show them mercy and compassion by showing them the love of Christ that they desperately need?  I'm so afraid that those in the church, as well as in the world, think that we see them only as a number.  "We have led this many to Christ this month.  We have given this much to missions this past year or we support this many missionaries."  You and I must be willing to invest ourselves into the lives of those who are in need, whether those needs be spiritual, physical, or emotional.  We must be willing to cry with others, to share their hurts, and cry out to the Lord on their behalf.

It seems to me today that way too many Christians are in the category of Job's supposed friends.  They are merciless, they are without compassion on those who are hurting and in need.  Too many times we spend so much time condemning others that we fail to show them Christ's love, mercy, or compassion.  Now I am not saying that we accept their sin and overlook it, I am saying that these people who are hurting need someone to just love them and show them Christ.

Will you show mercy, compassion, and the love of Christ to those that are hurting?  May God break our hearts especially for those that are lost in the world and desperately need Christ to save them before it is eternally too late!

Prayer For Today:

Heavenly Father. break my heart for those around me that are hurting and desperately need Your love!  Please forgive me for my failure to show Christ's love to these people.  Help me to show mercy and compassion to those in need, whether they be in the church or in the world.  May I make a difference in the life of someone else for Your honor and glory!  In Jesus name, Amen!

The Love Of God

"Then said the Lord unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of wine." - Hosea 3:1


I just wanted to share a quick thought on the love of God towards you and I.  Do we really comprehend the depth of God's love for us?  I personally think that we just throw around the phrase "God loves us" without fully understanding its implications and comprehending the reality of what those words communicate to us.

Here is what Charles Spurgeon said about the love of the Lord:

"Believer, look back through all thine experience, and think of the way whereby the Lord thy God has led thee in the wilderness, and how he hath fed and clothed thee every day—how he hath borne with thine ill manners—how he hath put up with all thy murmurings, and all thy longings after the flesh-pots of Egypt—how he has opened the rock to supply thee, and fed thee with manna that came down from heaven. Think of how his grace has been sufficient for thee in all thy troubles—how his blood has been a pardon to thee in all thy sins—how his rod and his staff have comforted thee."

Even as wonderful and beautiful as Spurgeon describes God's love for us, it still does not fully communicate to us truly the depth of His love for you and I.  When we take the time to meditate upon the Lord's love for us, it literally should overwhelm us.

Think about all of the ways that Christ has shown His love for us.  We all know that when Christ took our punishment that we deserved and died on the cross for our sins, He demonstrated the greatest act of love that there is.  Putting the cross aside for just a moment, think of all the other ways that Jesus has demonstrated His love for you.  If you were to start writing them down there would not be enough paper to contain them all.  In light of the reality and demonstration of Christ's love for us, why is it that we always question His love for us?

Just think about it, even though we murmur, complain, desire the things of the world, put our fleshly lusts first, and even many times turn our backs on the One who died for us, Christ still loves us.  WOW!  In spite of how miserably you and I fail Christ everyday and no matter how many times we put other things before Him, He still loves us!  This should literally melt our hearts and cause us to fall prostrate before Christ in repentance.

I would like to share one more quote with you from Charles Spurgeon about our response to this love.

"Surely as we meditate on “the love of the Lord,” our hearts burn within us, and we long to love him more."

Prayer For Today:

Heavenly Father, thank You so much for loving me, even though I am unworthy of Your love.  Help me today to meditate on the depth of Your love and what that truly means.  It is my prayer and desire that Your love for me would cause my heart to burn within me, that I would love You more and more.  In Jesus name, Amen!

It's Time To Move On

"Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." - Ephesians 4:31-32


Have you ever heard someone say, "I can't forgive them, you don't know what they have done to me" or "I'll forgive them, but I won't forget."  Maybe you have even said those very words yourself due to someone doing you wrong.  However, the world has no rewards for those who remain bitter and angrily focused on the past, and neither does God.

Are you still holding a grudge or bitter about something that happened in the past?  If so, most importantly, you are disobeying God's Word, but you are also just wasting your time.  Hatred, bitterness, and remaining angry over the past are not part of God's plan for our lives.

Since we all have that old sin nature, we are quick to anger and quick to blame someone else, but then we are slow to forgive and even slower to forget.  However, as Christians we are commanded by Jesus Christ Himself  in Matthew 5:43-48 to forgive those that wrong us, to love our enemies, to bless them that curse us, do good to them that hate us, and to pray for them that despitefully use and persecute us.  I remember a while back preaching on that very passage and I had a woman come up to me after the service to let me know what she thought about what I preached.  She told me that I couldn't say that until I had been in the person's shoes who had been wronged or hurt by someone else.  The only problem with her statement is that I was not the one telling her that she had to forgive this person who had done something terrible to a member of her family.  I was merely reading the words that Christ had spoken.  Jesus Christ is the one who says that we must forgive, no matter what.

Right about now you might be saying, "You don't know what they did, you don't know how terrible and heinous the thing was they did."  While that may be true, I don't fully understand the impact of what someone else has had to go through, it still doesn't change the words of our Lord.  Think about what Jesus Christ went through when He was crucified.  He was completely innocent of the crime He was accused of.  He was mocked, beaten so bad you could not recognize He was a man, He endured the agony of the cross, yet He said "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."  Jesus Christ was taking our place and the punishment that we deserved because of our sin and yet He asked the Father to forgive us for what we did to Him  WOW!!!

If Christ could forgive someone like me for putting Him on that cross because of my sin, then surely I can forgive someone when they wrong me, no matter what.  Now please don't misunderstand me, I am not saying that it is going to be easy to do this and to live this.  It is going to be the hardest thing that you will ever do.  This is one of those things that is so easy to preach and say, but it is so hard to do because of our sin nature.

Is there someone that you need to forgive?  Is there something you need to let go?  If so, forgive them, let it go, and then ask God to forgive you for your sin of holding on to that bitterness and hatred.  Life is short and eternity is fast approaching.  It's time to move on and show the love and forgiveness of Christ to others as He has shown it to us.

Prayer For Today:

Heavenly Father, forgive me for any hatred or bitterness that might be in my heart.  Forgive me for my disobedience to Your Word.  Thank you Lord for forgiving me even though I do not deserve it.  Help me to show the love and forgiveness of Christ to those around me.  In Jesus name, Amen!