The Sick Church, And The Cure

I am seeing the church like a person that has a serious wound. Instead of caring for the wound by cleaning it up, and applying salve (applying the word and repenting) dirt and dung are being rubbed into the wound. And when the doctor (Jesus the great physician) tries to have the nurse (those whom he sends to confront the sin), the church bites at the one who is trying to help it.
The most caring thing that could be done is confronting the festering wound, clean it up and put medicine on it to get rid of the infection. However, as this is done, there is going to be the backlash.
Paul said, “Girt ye up like men”, in other words we must be mature about this, in so doing HE will give us the supplies we need so that we lack nothing. We are in a battle.
Again, like Jesus said, there are tares among us. Leadership is SO afraid of making someone mad and causing them to leave the church. Instead of rooting out the tares so they do not produce seed, the tares take up most of the elder-ship time.
Paul told Timothy to build up the church by finding faithful men and equipping them to minister also. He also taught to rebuke sternly those who were in sin, and if they did not repent to cast them out. My observance is the opposite is happening. The ones who are not doing what they should are either coddled or their sin is overlooked. Thus allowing their seeds to spread like creeping Charlie. The little foxes spoil the vines, it is the little sins that not being dealt with grow up into bigger sins.
There are those who seek signs and wonders and healings and gifts. Why would God give those if we are not following his instruction book? He said “If you love me, keep my commandments”, and, “You praise me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me.”

We need to get back to the Bible, not the “studies show” philosophical and psychological mumbo jumbo that has invaded the church in the last 45 years.

If you really want revival to come, it is going to take work, it is going to take prayer, and it is going to take fasting, and lots of it. It is going to take those who are doing the praying, fasting, and seeking after God to have revival start with them. It is going to take searching the heart for any wicked way, it is going to take confessing and rejecting the sin that so easily besets us. It is going to take repentance of both committed and omitted sin. As Keith Green once said, Lord bring revival, and let it start with me.

We also need grace to be preached as well. Jesus came preaching GRACE and TRUTH. There should be Holiness in our lives, as well as graciousness. There should NOT be a pendulum swing so far to the other side that condemnation for condemnations sake is thrown on the people. Real, loving preaching and teaching so that their hearts condemn them to the point of repentance and salvation because God is allowed to show us his Greatness.

If you truly want revival, then reading the following would make a good start!
http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=article&aid=579
It is a hard read, and a tough read, but if you do what he suggests, revival will start with you, and me, and those we know and care about.

Lord I do truly want to see revival, let it start with me, and my house!

We ARE Living In The Last Days

Genesis 6:5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

Genesis 11:6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

2 Peter 3:3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, 4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. 5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: 6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: 7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

We may not know the day nor the hour, but Jesus stated we would know the signs.  The three sets of verses above have something in common.  Each shows a paradigm shift.  A shift from man listening and depending on God to Man depending on man.  Man becoming his own god.  I could easily add the expulsion from the Garden, and it would fit.  However, I am dealing with God’s judgement on a generation who became so corrupt and self serving that God was forced to bring a sever judgement.

We are living in such a time.  As in Genesis 11 we have become one.  Anthropologists are telling us that languages are dying out.  One estimate is 1 language disappears every 2 weeks, and this will increase exponentially.  Most people around the world understand at least one of 5 major languages and English is becoming the language of the monetary system.   We have almost come full circle from Bable, and the whole world has had its focus on the land of Babylon (Iraq) for most of the last 10 years, the area where men came together to build instead of spreading out and subduing the earth as God told them to do.

The other two judgements came when man forgot God, did not acknowledge His authority and became gods to themselves.  We have now finally gotten to that point again.  Paul in 2 Timothy 3 builds upon what Peter laid out in the verses above:

1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. 2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, 4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; 5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. 6 For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, 7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 8 Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. 9 But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as their’s also was.

Reading the above, you would think that Paul sat through a recent Spy movie, or a modern college course.  This is what we live in today.  Here is the headline to a recent Danish newspaper editorial:

Obama greater than Jesus

GREATER THAN JESUS?  Their whole editorial brings the Deity of Christ into question.  In my last blogWhy Is The Church In Decline? Are We In The Great Falling Away? I presented the fact that the Western world is abandoning the belief that God exists, or the Great Falling Away that Jesus foretold would happen before he returned.

We indeed have witnessed in our lifetime a paradigm shift from believing in God to man deifying himself as the Danish newspaper that I quoted above confirms. The next thing that will happen will be the judgement we are bringing on ourselves for doing so.