Complacency

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Monday, June 26, 2017

“I know all the things you do.  I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance.  I know you don’t tolerate evil people.  You have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not.  You have discovered they are liars.  You have patiently suffered for me without quitting.  “But I have this complaint against you.  You don’t love me or each other as you did at first!  Look how far you have fallen!  Turn back to me and do the works you did at first.  If you don’t repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place among the churches.  Revelation 2:1-5^(NLT)

Complacency at any level just isn’t pretty.  It must have been a stinging, embarrassing moment when the church elders at Ephesus read this letter to the congregation.  It was one of seven letters Jesus dictated to the apostle John while he was being shown the future.  Mostly it was warnings to churches that had slipped off the serving trail.

Besides embarrassment, there had to be a wave of nausea rippling through the church as the gathered believers heard the warning that if they didn’t lose their complacent attitudes, their place of service in the Kingdom would be relocated to the unemployment line with other false prophets!  Jesus was saying, love me or leave me!  That is an either/or with no neutral choice!  In fact it is the choice against neutral!

This is a message any church can hear if we have enough sense to put our pride on hold and look past our former victories long enough to see how complacency, laziness, forgetfulness and just plain lack of caring have crept in and replaced what was once a passionate love for Christ.

If we can be objective enough to look at the clear handwriting on the wall (so to speak), we will see that most of the (so-called) “reasons” we have to explain why churches are falling apart these days is not a lack of programming, evil opposition, weak preaching, bad singing, too many choices, or indifference to God in the communities we serve.  The real reasons are unbelief in the pews, marked by unwillingness to tithe, serve, and give our time to the work of sharing the Gospel with lost people.  Joyfully serving Christ is the mark of first love in a believer; without that, how can we say we love Jesus?

Jesus told the believers at Ephesus they were at a cross-road, a tipping point, where their very existence as a church was at stake.  It was either return to first love of going all-out like they had at the start, or take the sign down from the door.

Complacency; not pretty and not honored in Heaven.

For You Today

There is a place to drop off the garment of complacency; it’s called an altar!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

NOTES

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[i] Title Image: Pixabay.com

Epitaph of the Church?

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Tuesday, March 16, 2015

"Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones represent the people of Israel. They are saying, ‘We have become old, dry bones—all hope is gone. Our nation is finished.’"   Ezekiel 37:11 (NLT)

On any average Sunday in Europe something less than 5% of the population attends worship.  Before we shake our heads in disbelief or pity for those poor heathens, we need to remember that roughly only 25% of Americans are in church as well.  And the average American church member only attends an average of 4 Sundays in 10.

Some of the more pessimistic pundits proclaim the epitaph of the church has been written and published; the more cynical and disbelieving call for a funeral.  Like Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones we are pronounced Dead on Arrival in the 21^st century.

I think not.

I think not for several reasons:

Reason #1

The church is not dead because it’s God’s church and there is nothing that is truly connected to God that can be pronounced dead.  If we seem a little dead on Sundays it may be because we have forgotten that.  We need to be reminded, and I think the lack of commitment to worship services and programs and Christian service is because we have opted for immersion in activities and behavior that is less than that which is best, that to which we are called.

Reason #2

Following on reason #1, God will not long tolerate His church acting dead.  And because of this malaise the church is in a lukewarm condition, neither on fire, nor totally apostate, but getting there.  We are much like what Jesus said about to the Laodicean Church in Revelation:

I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold.  I wish you were one or the other!  But since you are like lukewarm water, I will spit you out of my mouth.”  Revelation 3:15-16 (NLT)

Lukewarm is made up of hot and cold mixed together.  The cold may get a little warmer, but the hot cools off!  The worldly (sinful) mixture that has cooled off the church’s passion for righteousness and seeking God’s Kingdom as a first priority is what makes Jesus sick.  This is an appropriate metaphor because the phrase spit you out of my mouth is like the vomiting reflex following nausea.  I heard a sermon on this text one time where the preacher gave the title, You Make Me Sick.

If you think about this analogy of the lukewarm church, we understand why it’s too early to pronounce the church dead or doomed.  Jesus is not willing for his church to stay in a condition of making him nauseous.  He will do something with us to heat us up! 

Usually that heating involves something we used to call a woodshed experience; discipline to motivate and change our behavior.  A Good Shepherd will guide!

The guidance Jesus gives for each disciple is pretty simple:

 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness;  Matthew 6:33a (KJV)

For You Today

As you go about whatever you’re planning to do today, make sure everything is seen through the Kingdom lens – seek God’s direction and will in everything; be ready for the passion he places inside your heart to warm up yourself and others.

Don’t let the epitaph writers become prophets!

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[1] Title Image: By Bill W Ca at en.wikipedia, from Wikimedia Commons

Living in Twilight

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

“I advise you, O daughter, not to fret about your parents in your homeland far away.  Your royal husband delights in your beauty. Reverence him, for he is your lord.  Psalms 45:10-11 (TLB)

Ancient kings had a son or daughter marry the offspring of other kings largely to cement treaties between two rulers; not much romance in that, eh?  In this Psalm the Israelite king is offering advice to a foreign girl brought in to marry the prince.  His advice runs simple – cut the ties, your umbilical cord to the family of your birth; you now have a life here.  Throw your whole life into loving your husband-Prince; you won’t regret it!

Some would call this “spiritualizing the text,” but I don’t believe it’s a far leap to compare the bride of Psalm 45 with the church, the Bride of Christ ^{(Revelation 21:9)}.  And, to draw-out the comparison, God, the king is telling me, part of the church, to love, serve and honor Jesus the Prince.  Jesus reinforced this when he declared that following him must be so passionate that, your love and devotion to Christ would be so strong that your relationships with all other people look like you hate them ^{(Luke 14:26)}.

There are a couple of questions I hear, read and see worked out in real time today:

Is the church on the way out?  And if so, why?

There are no short or easy answers to these questions; there are only opinions. 

A growing segment of our culture says “Yes, the church, particularly as an institution, is on the way out…because the church is irrelevant and won’t see things the way they are.”  I have a knee-jerk to that kind of thinking which snorts-back:  The church (bride of Christ) sees things the way they ARE, and prays for the way things SHOULD BE.

But reality speaks louder still; a spiritually-anemic church has still-weaker prayers!

Or worse; a spiritually-anemic church has no prayer-life at all.  And so, we live in twilight, the end of the day; the sun is setting and we bask in the fading light of what used to be, while the encroaching darkness begins to take hold.

Nineteenth century Baptist theologian, Alexander MacLaren wrote:

There are many Christian people that have only religion enough to make them uncomfortable, only enough to make religion to them a system of regulations, negative and positive, the reasonableness and sweetness of which they but partially apprehend.  They must not do this because it is forbidden; they ought to do that because it is commanded.  They would much rather do the forbidden thing, and they have no wish to do the commanded thing, and so they live in twilight, and when they come beside a man who really has been walking in the light of Christ’s face, the language of his experience, though it be but a transcript of facts, sounds to them all unreal and fanatical….A languid Church breeds unbelief as surely as a decaying oak does fungus.[1]

What a picture – a languid (anemic, sickly, worldly) church, living in its self-created twilight, the very image of death.  Where did today’s culture get the idea the church is dying?  

Hmmmmmmmmm.

So…is the church done?  Is there no hope?

My short answer – done?  Maybe. 

Second short answer – Hope?  If we’re living in twilight, created by our lack of passion for Christ, but rather loving the old life we should have left behind:  political influence, stature, respect…the appearance of being right, and not enough commitment to do right….

Well…this leads to two more conclusions:

          1.      There’s no hope if we won’t turn to Christ and leave the old world behind.

          2.      There’s always hope for those who turn to Christ in faith and total trust, with commitment to leave the old life behind.  Always!

Today…for you

It’s Lent – what did you expect?  

Time to put off the old garments; let Christ build that “new creation” in you.

Title Photo:  http://onebigphoto.com/sun-dusk-at-great-ice-fall/

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[1] MacLaren, Alexander, Expositions of Holy Scripture: Old Testament, © 2006, Parsons Technology, Inc.