November 17th

When the Church Gets It Wrong

For I fear lest, when I come, I shall not find you such as I wish, and that I shall be found by you such as you do not wish; lest there be contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, Lbackbiting, whisperings, conceits, tumults. 2 Corinthians 12:20

Let's get one thing straight-Jesus is perfect, but His Church still sometimes messes up. The problem is when we keep messing up without thinking we're doing something wrong. One of the biggest ways that the Church can mess up is in thinking that it's all about us. It sounds like this, Well, the music was too loud/quiet/fast/slow/modern/old/etc. I didn't like the preaching and it wasn't helpful for me. I'll just try a different church next week.

Let me ask you, do we come to church for us? Do we come for others? Or do we come for the glory of God?

I was at a big church once, just sitting in the greenroom before the service, and in this greenroom, they had all of these monitors of the cameras that are in the sanctuary. Now, all these cameras were watching the people as they came in, so all of us in the room were just watching these people who had no idea they were on camera.

All of a sudden, this lady walks in and everybody in the backroom says, Watch her. Watch her right now. Watch this.

All the cameras in the sanctuary focused in on this gal as she walks in, and here's what she did. She walks into the sanctuary and she starts looking around. She's kind of scoping out the room, but not to find the most comfortable seat where the air isn't too cold or too hot, where the light is just right to see her Bible.

She didn't walk in with that; you could just see it in her countenance that she was praying about where God wants her to sit. Suddenly, she notices in the front right corner of the sanctuary this elderly lady sitting all by herself. And she goes out of her way in that corner of the sanctuary to walk down the aisle and over the pews and through the rows and down over here and plants herself down next to this elderly lady.

And everybody's watching. The cameras are zooming in as she does this. And it wasn't more than a couple of minutes before she had her arm around that elderly lady, praying for her, and the lady starts crying.

Listen, what those cameras caught wasn't recorded on tape, but I hope it is now forever recorded in your heart, that we are coming before the Lord with this heart of taking Him, His house, His Word, and His work most seriously.

And taking ourselves seriously? Please not so much.

Prayer Father God,

Thanks for the reminder that life isn't about me. Please soften my heart to live beyond myself, especially as I gather with my Christian family.

Amen