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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There’s nothing entertaining …
About authentic worship.
Because authentic worship, as the New Testament actually defines it, means living lives of sacrificial service and reverent obedience.
Maybe this explains why real worship among many “Christians” and “churches” these days …
Is so rare.
So last Sunday, were you part of:
The Jesus Show (“church” on a stage) …
Or the Body of Christ (ministry one to another)?
Revivals come and revivals go …
But true repentance lasts forever.
When people say “worship” today …
They mean reverent music.
When the New Testament says “worship” …
It means living our lives in reverent obedience and sacrificial service to God.
There’s nothing wrong with music.
It has its place, when done as the New Testament actually says …
But not as a substitute or new definition for true worship.
That was never God’s intent.
“Worship” has been reduced from its Biblical meaning of living lives in obeisance (humble submission) and obedience to God …
To music that makes us feel good.
Although music can be a good thing …
Somehow, I think we lost our way.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion …
But not to a Christ of their own perception.
He created and defines us …
And not us Him.
Jesus never said we’re saved by asking Him into our heart …
But by surrendering to His Kingdom rule and doing His Father’s will.
That’s called repentance.
Those who proclaim anything less …
Are preaching a lie.
How we measure “church” success:
Ministry by one man to fifty each Sunday morning …
That’s nice.
Ministry by one man to hundreds …
Now you’re talkin’!
Ministry by one man to thousands …
Mega success!!
How the New Testament measures church success:
Ministry one to another.
The me-centered, contrived intensity that many call “worship” these days …
Is an affront to God’s holiness.
In the New Testament, true worship is living lives of obeisance (humble submission) and obedience to Him, as He mandates …
Rather than projecting our own carnality onto Him to feed our own soulish needs.
Let’s return to the true God of Scripture with authentic worship …
As actually defined and commanded by Him.
Because when we relate to God on His terms rather than ours …
Amazing things of eternal significance will start happening in your own life and those around you.
It’s ironic how some think that elevating Christ as the Living Word …
Means discounting His written Word of Scripture.
Is Christ divided?
He’s all or nothing …
Because there is no pick-and-choose Jesus.
A “relationship” with a purely subjective Jesus, apart from His plenary authority of Scripture as His written Word …
Leads to inauthentic faith.
Likewise, “truth” based on the plenary authority of Scripture without Jesus alive in us …
Also leads to an inauthentic faith.
Each extreme – born of an endless cycle of reaction to the other – chronicles two tragic trends of Church history.
Unfortunately, we still see these extremes played out today.
Authentic faith embraces the fulness of Christ:
Both His Person …
And what He has revealed in His written Word of Scripture.
Nonetheless, where my subjective perception of Him differs from His written self-disclosure, objective precepts and propositional truths of Scripture …
I must yield to Scripture.
There can be no maturity in Christ or functional communities of believers apart from these essentials.
Plumbline Faith 