ARISE THE TRUE CHURCH STATUS

I believe the church to be the highest power on earth. Its authority is from and in heaven. Furthermore, Jesus seems bent on building such a visible structure that the stubborn gates of hell cannot effectively resist. I also believe we have imposed our man-made order in the name of Truth to the extent the church is looking pale. Society is eaten with selfish cancer and the bride of Christ is being admitted to the trauma center alongside the ailing community. If there is genuine hope to heal our land it will be necessary to give the headship of the church back to Jesus and we repent in order to function as the body.

Political, financial, educational, emotional societal train wrecks are the church’s (our) fault. No one else's. The highest power on earth has abandoned its mission to save a lost people in the name of establishing religious Olympics. Seekers are lost in our cloud of “who does church best and right” competition. We shift His mercy and truth from the ditch people to the Lectureship and Workshop Gurus. America has divvied up the believers, raised our church colors on the flagpoles of our church lawns and began bidding for persuadable passersby.

We’ve developed passwords to tip off our brand. Catechism? Auditorium? Pray Jesus into your heart? “Baptism for the dead”? These tell-tale signals are dispensed while the glory of Jesus vanishes by the clouded skies of “we each and we only have the truth”. Pulling prayer out of public schools or removing God from the pledge isn’t the main culprit. Our dividing the flock into codifying lingo and perpetuating church brands is.

Are there biblical truths? Yes. Are there religious errors? Yes. Name the group who has successfully laid claim to them all and I’ll show you the group who just failed due to pride. If this is the case, and I believe it is, we must awaken to the truth that we each have a few of His callings in line while several parts of His will, we simply don’t yet get. Our pride over a few stones in the wall has misled us into believing we possess the entire fortress. We don’t. Instead of hopping into the ditches to relieve nasty and helpless strangers we have directed our focus on Sunday school studies which usually leads us to conclude we were right after all. Of course they do. The studies were written by us. If these are sending us to the ailing, I say, awesome. If, however, they are building our case against the other religious brands, we have surely abandoned the faith Jesus establishes.....all in the name of Truth.

The Bible still claims we can know the truth and it will make us free. When I find members of churches tied up on knots without freedom to love others, care for others, and believe in others, I have not encountered the true church. I’ve happened upon one steeped in denominational code-language, but scared to learn that there is more to Christianity than entering the doors of the right building.