Our pews are full, but our heads are empty. Our spirits starve for truth. Perhaps these pews are full because our heads are empty, having been spoon-fed a gospel of convenience, ease and worldly accommodation. The hollow theology pouring forth from American pulpits today may have attracted quite a crowd, but for the most part these are little more than gatherings of rebels come to loot the honor of God as they relentlessly seek to conform Him to their will. The economy crumbles and every imaginable alarm is sounded. Our understanding of God’s nature collapses and barely anyone is left aware to notice. The scope and magnitude of this tragedy cannot be overstated. We’ve dismissed His holy Word. It now often serves merely as a prop or pretext; a place for us to yank comforting expressions out of context so that we might go about the business of building self-esteem through the perpetual redefinition of God and His will to accommodate our wicked inclinations. We’ve fled from His loving instruction. “Dogma” and “religion” have become mostly pejorative terms. At best, this has produced a state of perpetual spiritual infancy. At worst (and the worst here is sadly commonplace), we’ve seen heresy embraced and exalted by minds utterly devoid of the knowledge and wisdom His Spirit inspires and provides. We send our children to be “educated” in a system boldly operating under a formal declaration of war against our God and then comically feign puzzlement at the predictably catastrophic consequences. In order that the wolves might inadvertently ingest some tiny bit of spiritual goodness, so goes our logic, we freely feed them our children. Such is the level of distortion that has come to our view of evangelism. We’ve trampled His sacred name. We will do anything with it. We will wear it on our backs, our bumpers, our hats and even on our feet, as if figuratively treading upon His name just wasn’t blasphemous enough. We’ve mocked His sovereignty. We simply cannot abide the surrender of all glory to Him. As such, we tenaciously cling to “our share” of honor and power by reducing the sovereign, holy Lord of creation to the role of a helpless doorknocker begging hopefully for entry, powerless to open the door without our ascent and assistance. And we do all of these things in His name. . We are fools by fallen nature, and that natural inclination towards rebellion has been accommodated at every turn as we’ve come to conform to the world that we were commissioned to transform. Our seeker sensitivities have enabled the church-based cultivation of a rampaging horde of secular philosophies and lifestyles. The passion for soul sustaining truth that should define His people has been diluted to the point of dismissal. Our once burning desire to know and worship God with all of our minds, bodies and spirits has given way to a feeble parody of worship and life. Untethered to a perfect, sovereign and holy God, we must wither and fade. We are withering and our great fade continues to this very day. We are a people in peril. Our pride has had its way with us. We have forsaken our commission and forgotten our God. Most graciously, He has not returned the favor.
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 13:38:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015