It seems many in Christianity today want to be a leader FOR God and nobody wants to actually be a follower OF God. We don’t have time to stop and wait on God and actually hear His voice. We make up for it by spending more time doing “good” things to make us feel better. Then we spend our time continuously cleaning the outside of our appearances* to make us acceptable to other Christians who have been led to believe that following a set of agreed upon rules is the definition of “righteousness” and the only way to relate to each other. The problem today is that a real relationship with God is often considered secondary to being in the pew, being good (obeying the social norms of your particular congregation in your particular region as this varies greatly and most of the time have very little to do with “sins” in the bible except those cherry-picked for this specific purpose), and helping out at the church. I believe that the reason these yardsticks are employed as the measure of a “good Christian” is because they are easily verifiable and enforcable both by church leadership and by other Christians. The other big problem in using such yardsticks is that we no longer have to employ any spiritual vision to see each other, no spiritual ability to test our leaders or to look deeper and connect in a non-superficial way in order to understand what’s going on in the world around us- it all becomes just like the world we judge everything by what we see with our eyes. In a church home group not too long ago we were all given a 5 minute questionnaire that would then tell us what our spiritual gifts are. Are you kidding me? So a five minute Dr. Phil quiz will tell us our spiritual gifts? Let me tell you, we have a Living God, and He is REAL, and He does give His children spiritual gifts but we do NOT discover them on one size fits all bite sized printable material!!!! How spiritually lazy have we gotten? We have given up TRUE SPIRITUALITY and true spiritual gifts (or even the hope of them) for sound bite, one size fits all answers that are thoroughly inadequate in every way to an authentic relationship with Christ. When we adopt the world’s business models for churches and substitute bite sized, microwave answers (even biblical ones) for the Living word and direction of God then the world correctly sees that we have zero to offer them and indeed we are left empty and burned out. . The power of the gospel is not our behavior being 15% better than the world’s, or that we can memorize a tract, the power of the gospel is that there is a Living God who interacts with His children. The works mentality further serves to distract us from what is important by doing nonstop busy work in order to fill the void that should be filled not by well meaning works but by a much more spiritual mindset, existence, and vision. The world wants to know one thing from us- is HE real. It is born into the heart of every human to wonder. If I were talking to a girlfriend and said I was dating Brad Pitt, there would be follow up questions. If I then told my friend about Brad- his height, weight, birthday, favorite color, she wouldn’t believe me and rightfully so. She would want real, authentic details of the real person. We live in a jaded world, our only testimony is a LIVING God. A works based hybrid is not even an option in post ascension Christianity. Christ gave up too much in His life and blood to gain access to us and change EVERYTHING. Now the law is written in our hearts, now we worship in Spirit and in Truth, now the Spirit of the Living God resides in us and we are His temple, NOW every day we have access to a spiritual existence that those in the Old Testament, even men of faith only dreamed about and longed for! The ONLY thing we should boast about now is experiential knowledge of God. Christ would frustrate today’s Christian leaders just as much as the Pharisees. Our one size fits all, microwave answers and our business model churches have no relation to the Christ of the Bible who gave very hard answers, spurned many of the biblical rules and pinned all of His hopes on His father, the Living God. Christ did God’s will not through rote memorization of rules following but through hearing and obeying the Living Word of God.
I believe that we will never grow or have an effective testimony until we DE-EMPHASISE the outside appearances and works in order to emphasize the spiritual. * The spiritual aspects of relating to each other- looking to the inside of the cup and attempting to see each other through spiritual eyes and not in an attempt to make them more like us so that we are one size fits all Christians, we should love and respect each other and celebrate our differences and gifts. We have abandoned the spiritual aspect of what it means to be successful- we have lost our testimony with the world because even in our churches we judge success by numbers and people and money, and power. The power struggles in churches today bother me the most, as though God’s will on earth will be squelched if leaders don’t get their way. Such is not the way of faith.
The answer to this problem is to first STOP and then WAIT on God in order to go in the right direction. Follow Him whose thoughts are higher than ours and whose ways are a mystery to us. I believe for many in the churches today that is a big problem, because I think that in the silence of their heart they do not believe that He is real. I think in their minds they are constantly having to “cover” for Him in what they believe is His absence. They feel if they truly stop and wait for His word, His spirit, His movement, that it will never come, or they are simply not sure and are afraid to take the chance. Beloved, this is the best place to be. You have a chance at a new life. Stop and wait and see if He is real. If He is, then I promise your entire life will be changed forever, not just some of your behavior. If He is not real then you are wasting your time anyway and you should go and experience life differently than just repression for repression’s sake.
Stopping and waiting (finding God and His will and then following instead of doing it our own way) will be part 2 of the Return to Spirituality blog. It is the difference between experiencing the spiritual, the divine, and the miraculous and continuing with our business as usual.
*Mathew 25:27-28: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you too outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness”.
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