A few weeks ago, I had a not so "saved" moment. Someone pissed me off, and I was ready to cuss them out. I kept talking about the things about this person that irked me and went on and on and on about how unfair the person was.
In my eyes, I was a saint who was justified in feeling what she felt and speaking the way she did. Instead of having peace and a lot of contentment for "speaking my mind," my heart was deeply heavy.
I ignored the heaviness and continued to be nasty about the whole situation and continued to shift blame and that’s when I realized that the Pharisee in me was still alive and well.
Fast track to the current situation... We go to church on Sundays or on any other day and speak in hushed tones as we ask why people in that church are not getting saved. We wonder why so and so is still not married, why the lead worshiper had to wear that dress with those shoes.
Our greetings have turned to "praise the Lord, have you heard mama Nani was sent away from her home yesterday?" As if the questions are not bad enough, we come up with the probable cause, which ranges from the reverend or bishop not being anointed enough to the people in your church not praying enough. The word of God says that my house shall be called a house of prayer (Isaiah 56:7), but we have turned it into something else. The church is not a monument to saints; it is meant to be a place where the sick come and are healed, the lost come and are found. We, on the other hand, have turned it into a bad place. We kill people with our words, maim others with our actions, then quickly ask why they don’t come to church nowadays.
We have placed ourselves on pedestals and if people do not match up to our "spiritual standards" they are not saved enough.
(Matthew 15:21-28) tells the story of a Canaanite woman who came before Jesus and begged him to heal her severely possessed daughter. Jesus told her that it was not fair of Him to take the children’s bread and cast it to the dogs.
The lady answered by saying that even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table. The reason why, as Christians, we are still struggling with all this carnality is because we are still eating crumbs from the master’s table. We have not yet fully accepted the fact that by accepting Jesus Christ, we are now able to dine with the master. We are no longer estranged; we are the king's children.
We are so used to having other people teach us about God, which is beautiful, but we never give ourselves a chance to get to know Him for ourselves. We would rather attend a million prayer sessions and ask men of God to pray for us than pray for ourselves. These crumbs we eat from other people only last for a while. That is why on Sunday after the sermon we are all fired up, but come Wednesday the hellish part of us (flesh) begins to reign, because we cannot read the Bible for ourselves, nor pray for ourselves. We are constantly seeking crumbs under the table as we crawl on the floor hoping to find something, yet all we have to do is stand up, pull the seat back and sit at the table where the Master is willing to give us the whole bread, which is Himself.
The bread (Christ-the fullness of God) is what we all need. When you are truly after Jesus, there are things that will not move you. How you speak will change, how you speak about people will change, the Holy Spirit will convict you of things you would never have cared about before.
All this is amazing, but the most beautiful part is that the house of God goes back to being what He originally intended for it to be, a house of prayer. People will come from all walks of life and find him there. Prayers will be answered, healing will take place and true repentance will happen. Then your heart softens; you will be moved by compassion and love for people. It’s not a one-time affair; it is continuous.
To maintain the bread, the flesh has to die daily. It’s not pretty, but if as a church we want people to experience God, we need to allow Him to upset our "conventional ways", what we are used to, accept that the Pharisee (pretentious and hypocritical) part of us is still alive, and allow Him to deal with our hearts. We will remove ourselves from these pedestals and genuinely love one another because, whether we like it or not, we do need one another.That guy in church you can’t stand is probably a divine connection, so be nice.
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