I was in church yesterday trying to meditate on the message I was about to share. As worship was taking place I stood in the back and looked around the building. I saw many hands raised, the sound system was projecting well, attendance was down but with school systems on fall break I knew many people were out of town. The worship team was singing and exhorting. On the outside everything looked well enough. We were having church! Yesterday looked much like last Sunday and the Sunday before and the Sunday before that, wait a minute, it looked like the Sunday last year and the year before that.
In my spirit, I felt Holy Spirit was not active at all. It just felt like we were going through the motions. Now I don’t say that to discriminate against the people who came or wrongly judged what they were expressing or receiving. After all, most are simply drinking the wine they’ve been served and being the wineskin they’ve been told to be. No, I don’t have anything negative to say about the people coming but I could say a lot about those of us who set the structure and definitions for Christianity. People’s spirituality is built upon the teachings and examples of others. So if we don’t like the spirituality we see in people, we may need to refer to the teaching, hence discovering the root to the problem. I say problem because Houston we have one.
I got up into the pulpit, gave an announcement or two and asked people to stand for the reading of the text. As we finished, I stepped to the side of the podium to say a prayer and could only utter the words “Lord awaken us” before falling silent. Silence sat over the church, in this setting it can be somewhat deafening. It only lasted a few minutes but it seemed like a very long time. In my mind I was feeling the need to move on; after all we’re taught to not have silent places in the service. It needs to move!
Finally feeling a release, we just began to bare our soul. Confessing the place we find ourselves as Christians seems so far removed from the description given in the scriptures. Erwin McManus in his book the Unstoppable Force says that when we take a previously defined word and use it to describe something else other than what the original definition intended, then we redefine the word and consequently it loses it power. I think this has happened.
Christianity is about putting your hands to the kingdom plow and not looking back. It is about losing your life for His sake, to gain the one He has for you. It’s about preferring others more than ourselves. It’s about living the scriptures, loving your enemies. IT’S ABOUT DYING WITH A CROSS ON YOUR BACK AS YOU FOLLOW HIM WHILE YOU EXPERIENCE HIS GRACE AND MERCY AND EXPOSE HIS LOVE AND POWER.
I realized many things yesterday- one in which I blurted out without reservation “I hate my Christianity”. I didn’t say Christianity, so don’t fall out with me, I said “my Christianity”. Because mine would be an embarrassment to many of our predecessors and I know it. They wanted to die but chose to live in order to share Christ. I want to live to enjoy my life not because I need another day to tell someone about Christ. They didn’t concern themselves with the adornments of life but were driven by the depravity they saw in man and the love they saw in Christ. I am motivated, well one only has to look at what gets our attention and effort each day to find that out.
How do you say to a people “we need to own instead of rent”, when they feel like they already own? How do we call people to living the real Christian life when they feel like they already do? I can say without reservation I don’t have all the answers but I can also say we need one.
May we all be willing to change our minds through an honest evaluation of what is being accomplished through our efforts, becoming new wineskins, skins that have elasticity. Allowing God to offer a new wine to transform us into the Christians He originally intended us to be. Lives are at stake and eternity will judge our present time. There is something more to this!
-Anthony Daley
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