The Church is Lost

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When I watch what churches around me and those online are doing, I can't help but say that the church is lost. I'm not being self-righteous. I'm just comparing the modern church with the Acts church and the things that Jesus did. Yup, the modern church is doing a lot of good things, as Martha chose what was good. But they can't bring themselves to choose what is better. Mary chose what was better and she wasn't doing much. He simply sat at Jesus' feet relishing his words.

Only a few good works are really important to God. A lot of good works church is doing today are just like the shelters that Peter wanted to build when Jesus was transfigured before them. When he saw God at work powerfully (transfiguration) his first tendency was to do something for God. That's the church's tendency. But God told him to just listen to Jesus, the Son in whom He was well pleased.

We need to stop everything we're doing and listen well. Drop everything and be still---to know that HE is GOD. Jesus pleased the Father so much because he listened well and made sure he did nothing except what the Father told him. Nothing more, nothing less. Only a few things mattered to the Father. That's why we see Jesus doing only a few things in his ministry. Church is different---anything that looks good, effective and loved by the people (and gathers a big crowd), it does.

Sometimes I see fellowships look nothing less than a disco party, and pastors who think they're radical approve, saying we should innovate to be relevant. To be relevant, we need to manifest Jesus. Period.

Jesus didn't hold concerts, non-stop worship, ask for solicitations (or begged for money), construct huge and costly church buildings or put up denominations. He didn't have programs and activities as we have them today---literary, sports or music fests---or the like. Martha and Peter would've enjoyed these things. But not Jesus.

Jesus just did 4 basic, simple things---spent quality time with the Father, evangelized, discipled, and did signs and wonders. He did these things without fanfare, promotions, gimmicks or gross expenditures. He did everything simple but he did them all supernaturally. He didn't do them to attract people and grow a membership. People came to him desperately of their own volition and that grew the number of believers. This is one sign that you are effective in God's Kingdom---when people come to you because they see Jesus, not your programs or whatever else will benefit them. It means the Father is drawing them to you. It means the Father is doing ministry with you.

But if you pursue after people, doing things to attract them, you're lost. It's all your own effort and ways and the Father is not with you. The moment you go after people, you lose it. And that's where church is today. Most churches are enjoying numerical and financial growth due to their hard efforts at going after people. They appear successful. And small desperate churches applaud and imitate them. But it's all nothing but empire building, not Kingdom building.

"Every plant that the Father has not planted will be pulled out by the roots."

It's all for the small, ambitious emperor on top of the hierarchy who wants glory for himself. All he thinks of is how his denomination can be great. Empires go after peoples to turn them into subjects, doing slave work, building storehouses and paying tributes and taxes. Just like what Pharaoh was to the Israelites. A denomination wants you "saved" because it wants to use you for it's own designs. Have you noticed how they feel sad if you get saved through other denominations? They feel you're lost if you don't join them.

God's Kingdom help souls, to free them and give them abundant life, turning them into Kingdom people totally different from people of this world--strangers and aliens here. Ironically, you often find in church those who are the most enslaved, narrow-minded, stressed out and oppressed people who know nothing about Kingdom Life but know only about their denominations. People so accustomed to the systems of the world. So much so that they see genuine Kingdom things as eerie and cultic.

Church lives for only one thing---more membership. All it talks about and spends money for is to grow its membership. It wants to be on top of the list of who's the biggest church of all. And they tap people in its membership for this, training them to attract more people to their church. Jesus pointed people to the Kingdom, church points them to their denomination.

I was fascinated to see Jesus hiding away from the crowd. Once, a big crowd was looking for him but he just went away. He also discouraged a lot of folks from following him. The good shepherd leaves behind the 99 sheep in search of the one lost sheep, but that's sheep. Jesus was willing to look for lost sheep but not pursue after wolves, especially wolves in sheep's clothing. Jesus didn't go after the crowd. The crowd MUST go to him and desperately pursue him. That is Kingdom principle in evangelism the church knows nothing of.

Why would Jesus pursue after the crowd which later had him brought to Pilate together with the religious teachers and had him crucified? He wouldn't do that. He loved them but he wasn't stupid. They even exchanged him for Barabbas who was a notorious criminal. They were still loved (otherwise, Jesus wouldn't have done the miracles he did for them) but they had to go to Jesus and pursue him hard. Jesus would easily welcome them, but they had to do it the hard way. That's very important to God. The church shouldn't go after the crowd (though it should love the crowd, share them the Gospel, and welcome them if they come) but church should look for sheep.

God so loved the world that He gave his only Son to save them. But Jesus would not pray for them. He said:

I pray for them (disciples). I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. [Jn.17.9]

Notice how Jesus would speak to the crowd only in strange, hard to grasp parables and yet explain them all to the disciples in private---when the crowd had gone. That's a vital principle. The Good Shepherd seeks after genuine sheep, true believers he could call his own (he calls them by name and they know him), not the crowd, although they were always welcome. We should be good shepherds like the Good Shepherd.

It's also strange that God would give the secrets of the Kingdom only to his disciples, but not to the crowd. "To those on the outside (the crowd) everything is said in parables," [Mk. 4.11]. Didn't God want everyone to be saved? Then why would he withhold insight or wisdom from the crowd? Well, the answer is, it's all up to you. If you choose to remain in the crowd, you get nothing. Jesus wouldn't lure you to join him by favoring you with spiritual insight, to please you. Pastors today might do that, but not Jesus. Join Jesus, and pursue him hard, and get everything in the Kingdom! See now?

You won't understand anything if you remain outside. But once you desire to be in, just ask for wisdom and God will immediately grant it, without finding fault. God's wisdom and the crowd just don't mix.

Entering the Kingdom is made simple by what Jesus did on the cross, but it's not cheap. God wants to see in your heart that you really love Jesus and want to join him with all your life and with all you have.

The problem with church is, it absorbs the crowd and gives them positions in church and licenses and titles and degrees, especially if these people are moneyed or if they are desperate for recognition and embrace the crowd culture and its system. And yet, church ignores genuine sheep. No, it hates them.

If you go against crowd culture it hates you. Genuine sheep stay out of the crowd culture and the crowd hates sheep culture. Church will love wolves dressed up like sheep, but genuine sheep it will hate and persecute. It will require you to pursue after wolves in sheep's clothing. But if you seek after genuine sheep, woe to you!

If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. [Jn. 15.9]

When I watch what a church is doing, all I see is a rocking chair that does a lot of movements but covers no distance. It drowns itself with a lot of things to do for God, they even evangelize, and yet you see the increase of pride and arrogance, prejudice, extra marital sex, extra marital pregnancy, broken marriages and families, rotten characters, division, unruly kids, teens disobedient to parents, rebelliousness, etc. right in the church committed by active members. They justify all this by saying they're normal, there's no perfect church and God accepts you as you are. If you notice these things, they say you're just over-reacting and judgmental.

How can the blind lead the blind? How can the lost lead the lost? How can a church steeped deep in the world and sin lead people out?

They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity--for "people are slaves to whatever has mastered them." [2 Pet.2.19]

Normal? In Christ and in the bible, "normal" is the glorious, radiant church of Jesus Christ mentioned in Ephesians 5, without spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. That is the standard. That is normal. We dare not get any less. The Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit [Romans 14]. That's what's "normal" to God. Anything unlike this is abnormal in God's eyes. The more we see how the church is lost when it starts saying dead things are normal in church.

A lost church (if not dead) keeps saying there is no perfect church. Well, there is, in the bible. The glorious church of Jesus. And in God's eyes, that is the only recognized church. By God's enabling grace, we have to pursue that. "Pursue" is very important to God. God will not come to where we are and support what we are doing. We have to go to him and join him in what he is doing. The father didn't go after the prodigal son. The prodigal son had to wake up and realize his grave error and go back to his father. The same with the older son. He "slaved" himself  for so many years doing his father's business.

The church is called to be unique, even separate. We are called to be holy, set apart for God, at the same time we are in the world and mingling with people of this world, our life and character testimony serving as living bibles to it. We are called to be strangers and aliens here. But this is where church has been failing miserably. We're anything but strangers in this world. In fact, church can very well serve as efficient tourist guide for the world.

"Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you." [2 Cor. 6.17]

Instead, church is absorbed by the world. Rather than being radically different and separate, it tries hard to mimic and entertain it, as if saying, "Hey world! Look! What you have, we also have! What you do, we also do! We even do it better!" I was a bit upset by Christians and pastors who greeted me "Happy Valentines" yesterday on Messenger. I can't imagine Jesus doing that, using a pagan thing to express so-called "God's love." God is love but Valentines or Cupid has nothing to do with it. And a lot of them also call Jesus' resurrection as "Easter Sunday," replacing Resurrection with Easter. And they call that normal. They can't see anything wrong with that. Blind guides. The church is lost.

The church knows nothing about giving up everything in this world. What it knows is getting, grabbing and accumulating. See how churches possess lots of huge properties and accumulate them and build lots of buildings they call "church." It's the main reason they evangelize and do missions---to get more members and get more money from them so they can build a bigger empire, make it worldwide. Everything is global, and church jumped in the bandwagon, for wrong reasons.

They do no want to give up anything. They just want to possess things, as many as possible. In fact, church is some kind of a bank. It accumulates money instead of give it away to anyone who has need. The Acts church gave away food and money to any who had need [Acts 2.45]. Their Lord and Savior gave away a lot of things and gave money to the poor. He never kept money like a bank and never accumulated properties. He emptied himself. He went here empty, did ministry with nothing but basic needs, and left with nothing. I mean no material possessions. He gave and gave and gave. I don't recall Jesus collecting an offering from the people for his church projects or ministry. His supporters were his close-in disciples, not the crowd. But church is not like that. It needs to possess a lot. And it asks from the crowd.

Well, we give free light meals to the poor now and then, what we call feeding program. And we sometimes give gifts at Christmas. We also donate some during catastrophes. But that's just a small percentage of what the church really owns. Have you seen the vast properties church denominations have? Jesus wants us to give them all up so church can give to anyone who has need. What the church gives to the poor is but a tiny portion of its vast wealth. Jesus wants us to give like the poor widow who gave all out of her poverty.

We send to missions for what? So we can have broader denominational influence. It's not for the Kingdom; it's for our little empires. And what do we do with the people in our missionary outreach? With the kind of spiritual condition we have, I'm not sure. The Pharisees also traveled overseas for missionary outreach but they only produced converts twice as evil as they were.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are. [Matt. 23.15]

The blind will only lead the blind and they both fall into the poop pit. A church seriously sick with spiritual woes and evil, remaining unrepentant, will only contaminate people they "evangelize" and spread the contagion worldwide. Its ministry does not build God's Kingdom on earth. It builds Satan's empire.

Present MOVE: Seeing the UNSEEN in real time.