God's Message For His Church
By: Kristen L. McNulty
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Tonight's impact devotional is called "God's message for His church" and out of all the devotionals I've done during these past seventeen months of ministry I believe this one is the most important.
God has a message for His church. You see God has grown quite tired of the many of our churches and so has the world. God is tired of causal and complacent Christianity and so should we be. We call for revival, yet those sitting in the pews are cold and uncommited. So we sit and pray, pray and wait and wonder why nothing happens. We recite religious phrases, we play church and think that as long as the outside of the cup is clean, then it doesn't matter what's in the inside.
We have alter calls, rejoice at the salvation, then let the soul go loose in the world and wonder why after a few weeks we never see them again. We run the church on a clock and make sure everything is timed. Heaven forbid if a preacher keeps us one minute past the hour. We join our cliques and invite only members that look and think like ourselves. And all hell breaks lose if ungroomed seeker comes through the doors.
We gossip, spread lies, and instead of holding each other up, we tear each other down. We are short of confession for fear of what others may think and hypocrisy runs rampant because we encourage and reward it. We make a big show of giving our money at church then pass a homeless person by outside the church and don't offer a penny. Church has become a theater and the aisles have become a runway to sport our latest fashions. We elect our friends to the board and our enemies to the service level. We won't compliment the preacher for years of faithful service, but are the first to say something when he does something wrong.
We pad our pews and our pocket books, then stand with arms stretched to heaven looking for blessing. We view others struggles as punishment for their sins and cover ours for fear of what our friends will think. Instead of confessing sin we excuse it. We run our church as we would a business instead of a family. We cause divisions, we encourage disunity and then discredit other denominations.
A crusade comes to town, souls are saved, and instead of rejoicing we fight over whose church should get them. After all, a new member means more money and the more money available the less we have to give. We buy new clothes and hesitate to give away the old. We cling to Jesus during a storm, but once the storm is gone are gone so are we. We love money and not souls.
The Gospel of God has been replaced with the Gospel of Grace, yet we have missed the message. Yes, God's grace is readily available but it is no excuse to live our lives the way we do. We are God's children, His chosen people, yet we do not act like it. Our morals are out of whack, we do what we please, then call it harmless fun. If we feel any conviction we rely on the grace that God will forgive us, but we rarely change.
We have grown unloving, uncaring and totally casual towards the Gospel. We take advantage of God's grace, yet are not so quick to offer any to those who offend or hurt us. We have grown cold and we have compromised. We live in a lost world, claim we have the truth yet don't live it. No wonder so many people think Christians are hypocrites. For some, I'd have to agree. We love the world, and have made it our home and yet we want revival.
Well let me tell you something. Revival and revolution aren't going to come until a change does and that change starts with you. It's time we cleaned up our hearts and our lives. It's time to air out the church because it has grown awful stale and moldy. We need to get down on our knees and repent for we have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). And I say we because we are all guilty. Now although not every Christian is in the same boat that's been described, we all have areas in our lives that need improvement, no one is perfect.
If we want God to get serious about us, it's time we got serious about Him. It's time for His church to get real and get committed. It's time to get past our differences and get on with the Gospel. It's time for great repentance and personal revival. It's time for change. Then after personal change and repentance, we can talk about revival. After all, true revival begins with you. If we want to make a difference in the lives of others, we must let God make a difference in our lives first.
The truth is, a city or country wide revival is not going to come until we get back to the basics. No outlined sermon or special preacher is going to bring revival. Revival will occur once our lives are aligned with God, then His Spirit will move and it will attract attention outside of the church doors. But God is only going to do this once the hearts of the people in the church are ready. After all, He wouldn't want to send souls to a church where they would be turned off or even worse, wouldn't be accepted.
This devotional was aired as a part of the Making A Difference Christian Radio Show.