Thursday, May 20, 2010

What's Wrong?

I wrote the following as a lead in to a teaching we'll be filming next week, but after reading it again, I thought I should post it as a stand alone blog entry.

Psalm 90:16, “Let Your work appear to Your servants, and Your glory to their children.”

We live in an age when even those within the house of God seem to have great difficulty in acknowledging the miracle working power of the God they serve. Believers of every denomination have taken it upon themselves to twist and interpret the Bible in such a way that they no longer believe in a God of miracles, a God who still speaks to His children, a God who is intimately involved in their lives, a God who is there when we are hurting, a God who is gracious when we repent, and a God who is active in the world.

We read the book of Acts, we read the exploits of the Apostles by the power of the Holy Spirit, we read the promises of Jesus telling us that greater things will we do in His name, then yawning, we shake our heads and say, ‘nope, not anymore! It was a misprint, God did not mean that, Jesus worded it differently in the original Hebrew, nope, God doesn’t do that anymore.’

We have not, because we ask not, and we ask not because nefarious agents of the enemy have talked us into believing that even if we ask we will never receive because God has boarded up the heavens, and He no longer does anything more than watch us run to and fro like purposeless insects.

We no longer pray to see the power of God in our churches, we no longer yearn to feel the flow of the Holy Spirit in our congregations, we no longer desire to see God’s work appear to His servants, instead we have become an inert mass of apathetic souls, looking to God as our ATM, desiring nothing more of Him than to give us a new house, or that boat we’ve had our eye on for so long.

We neglect to seek the greater things of God, because we are consumed with the lesser things of the world. We neglect to seek the Kingdom of God, because we are too busy with trying to build our own kingdoms here on earth. We deceive sincere Christians that God no longer does these things, because we ourselves are too lazy, too caught up in the world, too focused on other things to press in and seek the face of God, to be on our faces before Him and ask until we receive.

It’s amazing to me that some people still wonder why there is such a dramatic decline in church attendance, why so many people are walking away from their houses of worship, and why countless souls have resigned themselves to the status quo.

Souls are leaving the churches, because there is no power in the churches! People are walking away from their houses of worship because they can get better entertainment for far less than ten percent of their income elsewhere!

Sincere Christians, honest Christians, don’t go to church to be entertained, they don’t go to church to have their sins glossed over and their lifestyle justified, they go to church to be challenged, they go to church to hear the Word of God preached with authority, they go to church to see the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in power and practice.

In our never ending quest to be relevant, to attract the world with watered down messages of self empowerment, we neglected to notice that we have become the world we were trying to bring to Jesus in the first place.

Rather than Lord and King, Jesus has become a great teacher of morality for many professing believers. He has been relegated to the ranks of perhaps a prophet, who did good works, and taught good things, but it would be too controversial to call Him the Son of God, the Word made flesh, the only way to God, and the only path to salvation. That’s just divisive, we’re all embracing, we can’t tell people there’s only one way to heaven, what will they think of us. And so, with each passing year, with each graduating class of seminarians the gospel gets just a little more irrelevant, just a little more watered down, just a little less authoritative.

Now Jesus is one of many paths leading to the same destination, and this coming from the lips and pens of those who profess to be preachers and evangelists, men who claim that they are in communion and fellowship with God.

What have we become, and why have we become it?

We have become whitewashed tombs, we have become clanging cymbals, we have become powerless, impotent regurgitators of self help pabulum, which does nothing to help the spiritual man, hoping all the while that no one notices we never mention Jesus, the cross, salvation or repentance.

Why have we become this? Why is the church in such a spiritually crippled state? Because we stopped asking, we stopped crying out; we stopped pleading with God to let His works appear to His servants, and His glory to their children. We let sin fester; we let the disease spread because dealing with it is too time consuming and might cut into our time on the golf links, and no one ever made the payments on their palatial estate by confronting sin. Big givers get a pass, because they’re the big givers, and it’s as though we have been transported back to the middle ages when you could buy any indulgence if the price was right.

We have lowered the standard, we have redefined God, we have made repentance taboo within God’s own house, and continually deceive ourselves into believing that there is nothing more.

“We have attained all the spiritual things that are afforded us! Yep, might as well get comfortable and take a nap. It’s only downhill from here.”

This is the mindset of those who refuse to try God and see if He will not answer, who refuse to knock for fear that God will actually open, because they don’t know what they would do if they were proven wrong after so many years.

In a nutshell, this is what is wrong with much of the church today, and my prayer is that the trying times that are soon to descend upon this nation will serve to wake some of them up, and bring them to their knees at the foot of the cross.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.

3 comments:

Gospel Of The Kingdom Of God said...

Michael,

We are the house of God, we are the church, our bodies are the temple of God, and the kingdom of God is within us, IF so be that the Spirit of Christ dwells inside the body of the believer.

1st Peter 2:5
"you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."

Romans 8:9
"But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His."

The problem is you have a multitude of believer's inside of buildings made by man who have not been fully converted to Christ. They have not been born of water and the Spirit (born again), as was the case in the first century church. The apostles made sure every believer of Christ was baptized in water and filled with the Holy Spirit. The true gospel (good news) of the kingdom of God and how to enter into it is not preached, therefore you have an untold number of people believing they are receiving the salvation of their souls because they prayed a prayer, or asked Jesus into their heart (unbiblical), or even baptized in water but never receiving the Holy Spirit due to false teaching (This was me until Sept.07, Acts 19:1-7)

The Lord is going to send out His true apostles and prophets in these last days and we will see the glory and power of Almighty God once again in His church, His body, and the bride of Christ will be unspotted and unblemished, made ready for the return of the Bridegroom.

Acts 17:24
"God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands."

1 Cor. 3:16
"Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?"

In Christ,
Tyrone

Anonymous said...

There are no moral absolutes in the organized church today. I was talking to an 85 year old man, who said he was a Christian & asked what where church taught about sexual sin, specifically homosexual or lesbian relationships.I thought maybe this was a nother fellowship we could try.I told him we used to go to church all time, but couldn't find one that was Biblically sound. He said theere was a guy at there3 church who was always finding the wrong in everything , then proceded to tell me about the woman , who had been there pastor, who ws a lesbian. This is a church of Christ church. He said he doesn't let what goes on or others do bother him.Lisa

Anonymous said...

Let me start off by saying that I firmly believe in all of God's Word being true and that He truly is the same yesterday, today and forever. I must say this hit me in a different way since I know He still works miracles and heals today. I had been praying and believing for healing for my son for about a year. I had total faith that he would be healed but instead God decided to take him home instead. I realize that in one aspect that is his healing, but when God knew I was believing for much more and it didn't happen I was deeply hurt. This has had a tremendous impact on not only myself but 3 very close friends who have a great deal of questions because of other circumstances associated with this. This has not changed my faith in His power, goodness or any other aspect of who God is. On the other hand it is easier to understand why the church and the world thinks Him powerless when they see people of faith praying constantly and it seems to change nothing.