Do you want Jesus for what you want …
Or what He wants?
Author: Plumbline Faith
Simple Truths from a Lifetime of Service to the King of Kings
Real church with real community and real discipleship …
Must embrace tough love.
Because ultimately, you can’t have real community or real discipleship …
With people who only want what they want from God and others.
Eventually, you must let them go.
Otherwise, you’re not helping …
But enabling.
What’s the ultimate standard for truth, reality and morality?
Our perceptions and sensibilities …
Or God’s written revelation and sovereign will?
Herein lies the difference between popular existential ideologies that have deceived many “Christians” …
And authentic Biblical Christianity as God Himself defines it.
As goes the Church,
So goes the Nation.
Repent,
While there’s still time.
According to the New Testament, civil government is ordained by God …
Not to make us good, but to protect us from those who aren’t.
Your worse failings are redemptive if you let God use them to get your attention and bring you to repentance.
Alternatively, you can let them destroy you.
That’s why I seldom freak out when someone in our churches stumbles – many times I’ve seen it become a turning point for amazing redemptive transformation.
But whether for destruction or redemption, it’s always your choice.
That’s because spiritual health and maturity are not about perfection …
But how we deal with our imperfections.
Maybe that’s why true church as commanded in the New Testament is about participating one with another to mutually build up each other …
Rather than putting on performances.
Few are willing to do the hard work of actually being the church.
You know, an active community of believers who encourage and minister to one another …
When they gather together and throughout their daily lives.
Many, instead, are content to let others do “church” for them …
From an elevated stage each Sunday morning.
Be exceptional!
Dare to be the church as the New Testament actually commands it …
And leave that other stuff behind.
“Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” ~ Jesus
Those who use God’s blessings to pursue Satan’s temptings…
Suffer fates far worse than those who never knew His blessings at all.
Many “Christians” these days …
Want spectacle over obedience.
Which is why “worship” these days …
Has become spectacle rather than obedience.
Because I love Christ, I’ve opened my home and my life to those abused by people who use Christ to exploit others.
Because I love Christ, I’ve ministered to people in jail and the woods with whom polite society won’t dirty their lives.
Because I love Christ, I’ve loved His “ekklesia” rather than the man-centered institution often called the “church” these days.
Because I love Christ, I’m still willing to exceed my comfort zones.
Care to join me?
Loving God is not enough,
Because without repentance,
It’s not God you love …
But your own concept of Him.
Master the art of vague generalities, and you too can find fame and notoriety …
As a for-profit non-prophet.
Church in the New Testament is never about gathering to enter into God’s presence …
But about expressing His presence – hopefully already in you – one to another through the many different gifts He distributes among us so we can edify and strengthen each other.
Nor is it about having a “worship service” …
But about including congregational singing of God’s praises to encourage each other so we can live daily lives of sacrificial service and reverent obedience to Him, which is true worship.
It also is not about monopolizing monologue sermons by the one …
But about ministry by one another to motivate each other to love and good works.
So why do Christians accept anything less …
Each Sunday morning?
Being an adult means fully bearing the costs, and the consequences, of our own choices.
Unfortunately, many parents today don’t let that happen …
Then wonder why their “grown” kids are such failures at life.
Tragically, I frequently saw this when I went into our local jail …
Mostly among twenty-something “boys” from middle class families.
Even more tragically, the parents and their churches often continued – out of guilt – to enable their immaturity even when they got out.
It never turned out well.
Do them a favor:
Stop subsidizing their immaturity and let ’em fail!
Don’t enable them, but let them begin to experience the full, unmitigated consequences of their choices …
Even if it means they go homeless and risk destitution until they begin making mature decisions and start to grow up.
Being allowed to become homeless and nearly destitute will be a great shock to them – and they may initially stumble badly – but I’ve always seen it eventually turn out to be the best thing for them.
For the first time, they are forced to begin owning their own future and growing up.
As even Paul instructed the Thessalonian church, if someone doesn’t work, then don’t feed them. 2 Th. 3:10
These are not theoretical musings, but how our own churches over the years learned to help guys from the jail who needed to grow up …
Because in the long run, tough love is often the best love you can give.
A Christian can’t truly love the LGBTQ community …
Without opposing the deceptions that trap them in sin and bondage.
The modern “church” was born …
When narcissists discovered they could find position, prestige and power by putting on a good show each Sunday and calling it “worship.”
Haven’t we finally had enough?
And isn’t it time to return to what the New Testament actually commands for assembling together …
With ministry one to another for the mutual building up of each other?
It takes a community …
To make a disciple.
Perhaps that’s why pastor-centric, institutional spectator churches are so ineffective at actual discipleship …
And produce so many carnal “Christians” these days.
Perhaps that’s also why church, as actually commanded in the New Testament, instead is a simple and participatory community …
Where discipleship “naturally” happens as they gather together to mutually build up each other through ministry one to another out of the abundant, diverse gifts and abilities God distributes among us.
God is …
Therefore, I think.
Misplaced Loyalties:
Getting more upset about abuse, lies and cover-up being exposed in your beloved “church” and its leaders …
Than about the impact of that abuse on the victims.
God will not hold you blameless.
I’ve seen more carnal rubbish under claims of being “in the Spirit” than I care to remember.
In contrast, I’ve found that those who live lives of quiet humility and faithful obedience …
More often are the real deal.
Don’t be bashful:
We need to publicly ask those who publicly tell everyone how to do or be the church (of whatever stripe) …
If they themselves are part of one – in their own lives and hometowns – like they keep promoting to others.
You may be shocked at how often they aren’t.
But hey, that shouldn’t stop them from peddling their insistent ideas, books, blogs and conferences to unsuspecting audiences.
Right?
That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to study and publicly discuss ideas …
But we should at least have the integrity to disclose when we cross the line and start telling everyone “how to” when we ourselves don’t do.
🤔
You will never succeed …
Unless you’re willing to fail.
However, never risk more failure …
Than you can possibly survive.
Failures then become new opportunities …
Rather than total ruin.
If you’re not a disciple …
You’re not a Christian.
Because there is no “Christ” in “Christian” …
Without God’s rule.
Until you admit that “church” as you know it is not how the Bible actually shows and commands it …
You will remain stuck in your rut.
If we’re not about redemption, then what hope does anyone have?
This is my passion.
This is my cause.
But it ain’t neat and it ain’t tidy.
It’s raw and sometimes ugly.
Because if Jesus doesn’t work for the worst of us …
Then He works for none of us.
Plumbline Faith 