For close to two years the Lord has been dealing in my heart about a return to the pursuit of holiness and the lack thereof in the life of Christians on the grand scale. Infighting, divisions, gossiping, slander, and power struggles are all fruits that reveal a root that could not be tapped for the commodity of holiness. Just as a diseased root is a silent creeper that quietly kills a tree, so our unholy root will eventually be the death of many churches and denominations.
As people clamor for more relevance in a younger generation and lament the loss of fellowship in the older, the personal calling we have been given to a pursuit of holiness has given way to the voice of those crying about the sky falling on our churches for a void of relevance. Seminars are offered, sermons are preached, lessons are taught, all for the purpose of seeking to revive that which has yet to have even had life.
Prayer has become a good luck charm seeking a material blessing instead of a holy pleading for the presence of God. Ministries have become territories to be protected instead of lives to be shared and desires to be sacrificed. As we gain more stuff we lose our sense of the God who in His nearness is quite distant (Jeremiah 23:23-34).
Recent days have seen a practice of ‘sex-talk’ from the pulpit in order to captivate a younger audience. Preacher’s have shed “holy jargon” and adopted “street talk” so that seekers can understand – all in an effort to get more to attend. Church divisions are at an all time high. Music wars (of whom both the young and the old are guilty) continue to rule the day and a generational clash of epoch proportion looms large at the intersection of yesteryear and tomorrow. All the while we fail to notice the One who is not present during our worship, a sure indicator of self-worship as opposed to God-worship, for worship can only occur if the One worshiped is the One known (John 4:21-24).
I suppose there are many reasons why this has occurred. I will mention two. First, the Pastor has become more interested in filling the Fellowship Hall with chatter instead of filling the Pulpit with vigor. He has abandoned the desk in the study for the coffee table in the living room, and in doing so, has allowed his heart to grow quite timid in the face of opposition instead of being flamed with passion and courage that is ignited by prayer and Scripture.
Second, the congregation has come to enjoy the desserts of sweet anecdotes of therapy and abhor the main course of the exposition of Scripture. Therefore our churches have become quite obese and lazy instead of being equipped to run the race of ministry. That is both the fault of the one serving the meal and the one demanding the meal.
When a pursuit of holiness is regained and the root is restored to health, we will see the restored root through a healthy fruit. No longer will the 15 minutes between Bible Study and Worship be filled with complaining and lamenting, but there will be an awesome sense of the presence of God. When God is present in our worship, there will be a profound sense of the Holy One. In His presence, chatter will be stopped, gossip will be rejected, the sinner will feel quite uncomfortable, and the saved will be awed. God often captures the attention of the masses not by a booming voice, but by His silence. Perhaps His silence is our lecture.
His is often a still-small voice that cannot be heard over the chatter of the mocker. Why does God use a still small voice with His children? So they will be close enough to hear. Where the voice of God is not heard, there is an indication of the distance between the mouth of God and the ear of a man. Whose voice you seek this Sunday will determine whose voice you hear. My sheep hear my voice (John 10:27). Holiness is not so much of a practice, as it is an awareness of a presence: His.
No comments:
Post a Comment