The Sad/Lukewarm state of the “church”…

True Christianity is Dangerous Christianity! Transforming lives as we boldly proclaim the Gospel throughout the World!

In 2006 I had a dream in which God told me how displeased he was with the “church”. I posted this in one of my previous blog posts. After reading Jonathan Edward’s True Christianity edited by John Piper I have come to the following conclusion and I have posted some inserts from the book itself.
John Piper describes Edwards: Though he is sometimes presented as a hardboiled person who relished belting out damnation’s, a careful study of the historical record & Edward’s writings shows that he was in fact a Christian man devoted to the cultivation of saving faith in spiritually fickle people”. When I read this I started to cry, because as many don’t understand me or where my heart is this describes me in a nutshell. I love God’s people, I love my Savior beyond words I do not want you to be fooled into thinking that you are saved only to find yourself left behind or worse in Hell. I love you too much to not cry out to you to repent and walk in the ways of our Lord.
There are many faiths but only ONE saving faith, that of repentance & belief in Christ Jesus as Messiah. Non committal Christianity seems to thrive in the current day. The christian faith is not merely a one time confession of Christ & occasional church attendance. If we would reach heaven, if we would truly live by faith we must be personally transformed by God in such way that we pursue Him, however imperfectly, on a consistent basis. We need to back up our “profession” (our verbal commitment) to God by our lives, thus showing ourselves to be truly saved (See 1 John 1).
The bible deals extensively with the unredeemed and the redeemed. But the scriptures also recognizes a 3rd group. This group mirrors the half-hearted, the lukewarm, interested but non-committal nominal christian who professes true faith but shows little evidence of it (nominal refers to “name” that is, a faith in name only). To this group the voices of scripture also devote much attention. The prophets call Israel to stop wandering from God; Jesus Christ tells deeply frightening stories about those who pursue Him half-heartedly (Matt 13:1-23). Revelation informs us that at the last judgment , the Lord will spew the lukewarm from His mouth (Rev 3:16). In these and many other instances, the scripture warns the nominal christian of clear and present danger. We are not merely dealing with earthly situations here on the matter of True Christianity, we ate confronting matters of eternal consequence. The lukewarm faith is alive and well in our evangelical churches. The state of maturity of many christians is quite low and many churches are failing to educate their people in the basics of Christianity. According to a poll done by D. Michael Lindsay & George Gallup revealed the beliefs among a significant number of people who claim to be evangelical. According to Lindsay & Gallup, of those claiming to be born again: 33% were pro-choice, 26% believe in astrology and 20% believe in reincarnation. Many of these people are likely in evangelical churches that ostensibly teach biblical doctrine, yet they hold views on various spiritual & moral subjects that directly conflict with the biblical witness. If their beliefs conflict with true christianity, it is likely that their lives conflict as well.
In todays church a concern for numbers over a concern for personal faith makes it easy for nominalism to creep into the church. When churches concentrate so much on bringing people in, they can lose sight of building people up. This kind of atmosphere can make it easy for people to adopt a half-hearted faith, a christianity that may ne NO christinaity at ALL! The concern “will it work?” has overshadowed “it is true?” or “biblically sound”.
Where is church discipline and the essential display of the church’s commitment to holiness before the Lord (Matt 18:20)???
Certain corners of evangelism have shifted away from staunch doctrinal stances. They have instead accommodated postmodernism and have moved from teaching the absolute truths of scripture. They give great weight to personal experience & emphasize that as the world has changed, so the church & the church’s gospel must change. Hell and SIN are not preached anymore because these sermons are not well received by the very sinners Jesus is trying to save! Thus considering those who profess belief in absolute truth and morality to be “judgmental”, the worst sin af all in a postmodern world.
Many christians have an undeveloped christian mind & a largely untouched life. The modern church has welcomed the spirit of modern culture, which is intellectually fragmented, market driven, style based, personality driven & morally relativistic. We have focused on ourselves, pumping ourselves up through self esteem exercises, redefining our sins as “tendencies” that require therapy of one kind or another, and discarding traditional marks of maturity to gratify desires we refuse to tame. In the process, we have not grown. We have shrunk!!! In the modern church we have shrunk God as well. God is much friendlier! GONE are the notes of judgment, though these are more displaced than denied, and they are replaced by those of Love and Acceptance. Sin is preached but is presented more in terms of how it “harms the individual, rather than how it offends a HOLY GOD, sin, in short prevents us from realizing our full potential”. Conversion is insisted upon but then, paradoxically benefits of knowing Christ recurring all the attention with scarcely a look at what happens if we turn away from Him.
David Wells writes this:
” The church, created by God to represent His holiness in this world, has instead accommodated the culture, adopting in many cases it’s practices, concerns and even ideologies. In too many of our churches, christians do not live or think differently from the world. Many may simply be struggling as we all who follow Christ in a sinful world. But the combined weight of this testimony should lead us to consider another possibility; a sizable portion of Christians are nominal believers, people who profess faith in Christ but who do not truly know the Lord”.
Now I ask you to take a moment and examine your heart…are you a true believer? Have you repented for offending and sinning against a HOLY God? Have you asked for forgiveness and turned from your sins, to sin no more? Is your life showing forth the conviction of your heart?