I love people; those in the church and those outside.
It bugs me deeply that I can't seem to get the two connected. I love what I have found in the church and surely know the questions many have who are not yet in. I eat, sleep, and drink imagining efforts to draw really good and wonderful people into the body of Christ.
No one is too far gone. No one. No one would be labeled as not good enough. Jesus died for sinners; not for the saintly for there are none of those.
None of us that are in are good enough. Yet, from the call of God, everyone is welcome.
I was once on the outside. The hesitancy is understandable. But it must eventually be understood by all that no one is in the church because we attended well, or gave well, or performed well. We are only in because Jesus paved the way for sinners to be acceptable.
I've long thought that our hypocrisy was what held others back. That is the loudest charge it seems. There may be yet another reason; our lack of daring and risky faith.
In general, those who claim that our God is big may actually live as if He is little. This would be the purest essence of hypocrisy, I guess. But it seems to go unnoticed and unmarked as sinful.
It takes work to believe Jesus. Churches are full of good people trying our best to do better. The power of God...that element that separates Truth from Tradition...appears to be missing. We have tried hard to not be out of line with the herd; we believe what the consensus believes even if it comes far short of God's elaborate call.
Our desire is twofold; we don't wish to draw unnecessary attention to ourselves and we want to go to heaven when we die. If we are following Jesus, we will be noticed. If we possess the wonders of God in us, we will be crucified (not by the gangsters, but) by the religious leaders.
Mark it down, if we are to follow in His steps, we will pay the price. None are called into the church to hide until Jesus comes.
Somehow the church has taken on a false doctrine that our goal is heaven; not Jesus. It takes work to believe in Jesus. Few want to labor that much. But this is what it will take for those who are on the outside looking in to be persuaded that there is more than putting one foot in front of the other and calling such a pace Life.
If searching for fellowship, unbelievers can find that in the night clubs. If needing support, such can be found on the golf courses. These and other spots are their churches. But the life-giving power of Jesus is absent. The church is to display and draw others into His power.
What we can do about this gap--this very serious and burdening gap--is to jump into the work of believing Jesus when we can't give explanation for His mighty moves which result in a weirdly wonderful new kind of life.
"What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?" Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent." (John 6:28-29)
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