Part One:
Have you ever had one of those moments,
where a sound wakes you up at 2:30 am, and your brain goes, “Oh
good, you're awake. Considering you're up, I've been thinking about a
few things.”
It's 3 am, and I have finally
surrendered to entertaining my thoughts, after much arguing with my brain. I realize that my sleep for the night is over.
I am a deep thinker. I probably should
have been born in a submarine, I love to ponder and analyze and go
deep, especially in the areas of God, His Word, and His people.
Recently I have had many thoughts weighing heavily on my heart. I
have attempted a few times to put it down in writing, and struggled,
considering I am awake and my brain is intent on sharing its
contents, I am going to make another attempt at it.
To say I have been around the block, a
few times, where Christianity is concerned, is an under-statement. I
have been exposed to various forms of Christianity and doing church
in my life, from very traditional to very non-traditional, and in
various nations, from a mud hut in Africa to a Cathedral in Europe.
One of my greatest passions is, and will always remain, The Church.
His Church, the body of Christ. As much as I want to be an
evangelist, and make an effort in that area, and love the lost, I
cant seem to escape The Church. More often than not, even in a
secular place of work, I find myself being drawn towards Christians
who need encouragement and help. It happens without me having to try,
its just a God thing that He does because its how He created me to
be, and I have learnt that it is futile to try to get away from that.
On the flip side, as passionate as I am
about church, it has also probably been the greatest source of my
wounds and pain since becoming a Christian. To the degree that I sat down, the other day, metaphorically with my head in my hands, and wondered if I had been
living my life in vain? [truthfully it was more lying on the curled up on the floor sobbing my eyes out]. Looking at the state the church has been in,
and is currently in, and looking at the wounds I have experienced and seen others experience. I was so disheartened and wondered if I had been deceived and living
a lie? I had reached a point, after many traumatic years where I was
all set on Christ, and passionate about him. but the church. I honestly didn't want anything to do with the
church. I felt the church was looking more and more like a Bridezilla
than the Bride of Christ. Depressing, isn't it? And truly I was
depressed because of it.
The good news is this, Christ doesn't
look at the church and then at His wounds and wonder if it was worth
it. He looks at the Church, regardless of the state, and is
overwhelmed with love for His Bride. With a compassionate,
unconditional, all consuming till death type of love. Yes literally,
till death, taking on the worst punishment ever so that we could be
reconciled to Him, as His beloved, His bride. So that the church
could be born out of it.
Problems in the church are nothing new.
If we were to believe that the church was ever perfect, then majority
of the new testament would not exist. So many of the letters in the
new testament include bringing correction to a church or the church
for an area it had fallen into error in. Even the book of Revelation, its all end time symbolic/prophetic stuff but includes a
lengthy 7 church encouragement and rebuke session. So I think
we are deceiving ourselves if we don't see our weaknesses and flaws.
Because if we don't see them, then we cant do anything about them.
You cant repent of something that you pretend doesn't exist. And
without repentance there is no forgiveness and there is no time of
refreshing to follow.
So in the next few blogs I am going to
be real, about my experiences with church life, in general, not
specific, not to be critical and condemning, but because I know there
is so much beauty that can be in the Bride, so much more for us, and
we are missing out on a huge portion of that because of our blind
spots. We, as a body, as the church are worth so much. We are His
beloved, bought with a blood price, His treasure, His prized
possession. We as the church are part of the great mystery, His
masterpiece and master-plan.
Ephesians 3:10-11New International Version (NIV)
10 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, 11 according
to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our
Lord.
As good as it is to be focused on
bringing the lost into the kingdom, and this is VERY important, and
part of the reason we exist, we also need to be concerned about the
state of the church, because the lost, once saved by God, need a
place to be a part of. A place where they will go grow in their
relationship with God, and with His body. We cant be undoing the good of
evangelism with the state the church is in. I know, lets hold it all in
tension because truthfully God is the one who saves, not us. And God
is capable of discipleship without us, but He has also chosen us, to
be his body.
I believe one of the areas we are
struggling as a Church, globally, is that we are a generation who is
disconnected. Technology definitely plays a role in this. And if you
look in the world, the world is even pointing this out as a weak
point in our generation, in this age. We are so hung up on our
phones, and social media and chats etc, that we are missing out on
life. We are with people but we aren't really with them, usually we
are on our phones, etc even in their presence. Sitting down and
connecting with someone is replaced with a few quick text messages.
Also, particularly in the western
culture, we are simply too busy to make room for others. It never
ceased to amaze me in Albania, that no matter how busy people were,
they would make the time for you. It was a nation where relationship
was priority, because of its culture. Near the end of my stay there I
was starting to see that change, especially in the church, but it
wasn't always like that. With technology and the pace of life, we are
becoming a generation that is disconnected and struggling to form
natural healthy relationships. There is a lack of intimacy because we cant connect.
This causes a conflict and a rise in
rejection. God created us for relationship. Right in the very
beginning, He created Adam to be in relationship with Himself. But He
looked on Adam and said, “it is not good for man to be alone.”
Adam wasn't truly alone, He had God. But we are created in the image
of God. God has relationship with His own kind, Himself. The Godhead
three in one. We too are created to have relationship with our own
kind, because of being like him. God knew this, and pointed it out,
saying it wasn't good to be alone.
So if we are a generation who are
disconnected, we are going against what we are God created to be, and
it results in depression, rejection and striving. We might not
realize how much it has infiltrated the church, but it has. When a
person is going through a difficult time, it's so easy to drop a fix
all line, like “I'll be praying for you.” rather than walk the
person through the difficult time and we do this because often we
don't have the time. Its the equivalent of sending a quick text
message instead of connecting over a cup of coffee or a meal. We do
this too. When we see the person our emotions surge and we hug like
long lost friends and make promises to meet/see a movie/hang out/
have dinner/get together for coffee, and then we walk away, get lost
in our business and forget, till we see the person again. Even if
that is 6 months or a year down the line. We don't feel disconnected
because maybe we viewed their social media page, so we don't realize
we actually haven't connected with the person. Or because we saw them
at church, so that counts as relationship. Or because we dropped them
a text message. But our relationships are getting shallower and
shallower, because we are loosing the ability to connect. Now its not
about HOW much time you spend together or what you do together, its
about actually connecting with the person. Intimacy. There are some
friendships from my past that had such a deep connect that I could
bump into the person years later and pick up as if no time has
passed. Friendships now days are not like that any more. Even when we
see each other, especially in a church situation, our eyes are
darting around to see who else we need to remember to greet while our
minds are focused on many different things we need to do. Our
intimacy is being seriously effected.
They used to say no man is an island,
but technology and being busy, has essentially put each person onto
an island, but we don't realize how isolated we are because we still
get our notifications and we are still functioning.
Now there is nothing wrong with
functioning, [more on this later], and we are seeing much good come
out of the modern church, especially on behalf of the poor and
oppressed. This church era is addressing human atrocities like
trafficking and sex slaves and prostitution like non before has. It
truly is putting its energy into good causes.
But we cant loose sight of one of the
fundamentals. God sent Jesus to the cross for the sake of
reconciliation of relationship. To reconcile the relationship between
man and God, to reconcile man to himself [when we are not who we are
created to be there is a conflict within ourselves and we lack peace
etc], and to reconcile man to man. Relationship. It was part of his
plan right from the beginning, and He has given His all so that we
can walk in the depth of it again. Don't loose out on the fullness of
what His sacrifice was for because we are sampling only part of it,
or because we have become adapted to our culture and times around us.
part two coming soon.....
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