A BROKEN, TRANSPARENT, AND TRULY APPEALING CHURCH

I hate false, unbiblical teaching, which poses as Biblical. I know that “hate” is a strong word, but I think that it is warranted here. Look at Paul’s reaction to those who had been preaching a false gospel:

·       But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:8-9; ESV)

Yesterday, online, I was deeply grieved to read several testimonies of people who had departed from the faith. How did this happen? They had all been assured by the teachers of their churches that they should experience evidences of the Holy Spirit guiding them. They should be able to hear His voice and experience His presence. However, they didn’t and concluded that they were something the matter with them. Years later, they confessed:

·       "One of the main issues I had with trying to believe for so many years was no voice, no feeling of presence, no nothing. My only options were people were pretending or fooling themselves.

·       Everyone else I was surrounded by always seemed to hear that voice [of God], and I never really did, which is why I struggled a lot as far as fearing that I was doing something wrong or sinning all the time. I so much wanted to just follow God and obey him and hear him, and I tried and tried over the years. Everyone always seemed so confident about what God was "calling" them to do… I never felt confident confirmation like everyone else always seemed to have. Not hearing him wasn't what made me lose faith, but after I did stop believing, I was able to look back and realize there's a reason I didn't hear him."

Both of these young ladies had ceased to believe and insisted, and even though they had wanted Christ, they are now no longer interested.

Please, before you dismiss these two accounts by concluding, “Well, evidently, they were never part of the elect and never really believers, please consider Jesus’ condemnation of false teaching:

·       Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.” (Luke 11:52)

Jesus didn’t question whether those “hindered” were actually part of the elect. For Him, it was enough that they had been hindered.

Or consider Paul’s lamentation:

·       For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach. (Titus 1:10-11)

Whatever their motive, these false teachers had misled many, even driving some away from the faith.

What had driven those women away? Disappointment, doubt, and the tormenting sense that there must be something the matter with them!

Please understand, I am not trying to say that God doesn’t intervene miraculously. He does. However, because of doubts and a large dose of spiritual insecurity, many speak as if God is always audibly talking to them, and that this should be the expectation for any Christian.

Well, doesn’t the Spirit guide us and shouldn’t we have a sense or experience of this? Not necessarily. God is able to infallibly lead us without having a sense of His leading. There are so many biblical examples of God infallibly leading even those who were enemies of God. He was able to bring pagan kings to march their armies against nations He wanted to chasten.

The martyr Stephen had explained to his executors:

·       “And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt; but God was with him and rescued him out of all his afflictions and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who made him ruler over Egypt and over all his household.” (Acts 7:9-10)

God leading the kings and the Pharaoh didn’t require them to hear the voice of God. Instead, our God is able to lead, even pagans, to perform the very service that He requires:

·       The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will. (Proverbs 21:1)

God had been leading Israel’s first king, Saul, to the Prophet Samuel who would anoint him king. However, Saul was aware of only one thing. He was pursuing his donkeys who had run off. Meanwhile, God informed Samuel:

·       “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have seen my people, because their cry has come to me.” (1 Samuel 9:15-16)

God was able to perfectly lead Saul to the exact place He intended without Saul having a clue about was really going on. This is why we are taught to trust in the Lord rather than to listen for His voice:

·       So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:6-7)

While God can provide miraculous reassurances, we mustn’t demand them like doubting Thomas who refused to believe unless Christ would appear to him. However, after Christ did appear to Thomas, He also reprimanded him:

·       Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)

Also, blessed are those who believe without hearing His voice. We are to trust in God’s leading without demanding evidence:

·       Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Some pastors attempt to validate their spirituality and authority by claiming that they hear God speak certain messages to them. While God can do this, a person who claims to be a prophet must also live up to the requirements of a prophet:

·       But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?’— when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. (Deuteronomy 18:20-22)

My prayer is that we would learn the lesson God had taught Paul. So that Paul wouldn’t become proud of virtue of his spiritual insights, God had afflicted Him and wouldn’t remove the affliction, despite Paul’s many prayers. Finally, Paul got the message – that he should boast in his weakness and infirmities and not in his spiritual successes:

·       But he [God] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

Perhaps if Christians would be more transparent about their weaknesses, the church might become a more hospitable place for the suffering and the weak.

What does it take to become more accepting of our brokenness and neediness? Faith! Simple believing that it is no longer about us but about the One who loves us (Gal. 2:20)!

I asked the two women (and many others) if there is anything that can now be said to make things better – anything that might bring them back to Christ. They both resolutely informed me that this ship has already sailed, and that they are now glad to be without the church.

The Distant Church

Church flight seems to be a growing reality. A recent Barna survey revealed that:

• Nearly six in ten (59%) of these young people who grow up in Christian churches end up walking away from either their faith or from the institutional church at some point in their first decade of adult life. Second, the unchurched segment among Millennials has increased in the last decade, from 44% to 52%, mirroring a larger cultural trend away from churchgoing among the nation’s population. Third, when asked what has helped their faith grow, “church” does not make even the top 10 factors. Instead, the most common drivers of spiritual growth, as identified by Millennials themselves, are prayer, family and friends, the Bible, having children, and their relationship with Jesus. 

Many are therefore asking the question, “How can we make church more relevant.” Perhaps, instead, we should be reaffirming the Bible’s teachings about the church. First of all, the church is central to our Lord’s purposes, and therefore, it should be central to ours. In some strange and transcendent sense, the church is His Body and workshop:

•  Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.  After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body… This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. (Eph. 5:28-32)

We are mysteriously connected to Christ and to one another, much as a husband is connected to his wife. The connection is so intimate, that when we love our spouse, it benefits us. This parallels the reality of love in the church. If this is so, we also need to strive to love the brethren. As the Lord grows us through marriage, He also does this through the mystical union of the church:

• Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Eph. 2:19-22)

While each one of us is a dwelling of the Spirit, it also seems that He corporately resides with His church in an intimate but mysterious union. However, we might not sense His Presence. Growth in His Body is a process:

• Speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (Eph. 4:15-16)

The growth comes from Christ, but it is also necessary for “each part” or member of the Body to do “its work.” If we are not serving one another in love, we will not grow as we ought, and church will seem irrelevant. Paul therefore prayed:

• That you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Eph. 3:17-19)

Paul’s prayer suggests that if we are not “rooted and established in love,” we will fail to perceive the extent of God’s love for us and to mature spiritually. Besides, church will remain a disappointment.

Christianity and relationship are inseparable – our relationship with one another and with God. Without relationship, there is no Christianity. We cannot love, learn, encourage, correct, and grow without it. We were made for relationship, and we find the foremost expression of relationship in the Body of Christ. It is also the foremost evangelistic vehicle:

• “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." (John 17:20-23)

According to Jesus, when we are properly connected to one another in His Body, this will impact not only us but also the surrounding world. They will see the truth of Christ. Perhaps oneness within the church is the missing element in much of our evangelistic efforts. Consequently, we must make Jesus’ prayer – His cry to the Father - our prayer. It is our unity, our love for one another, which speaks wisdom to all creation:

• His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Eph. 3:10; 1 Tim. 3:15)

The church and its oneness in love and wisdom is the light to this world. It is therefore not surprising that we are warned to not neglect congregating:

• And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds,  not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Heb. 10:24-25)

We cannot love one another in isolation. This requires contact and commitment, but this is not easy. It is nothing that we can do on our own. Love is that mythical island of treasure, but it is guarded by hungry crocodiles. It may seem inaccessible. Church had, for a long time, been a dissatisfying experience for me. I can only thank my God that He opened the door for me.