WHERE IS THE CHURCH HEADED?

When I determined that I would go against my earlier will and become a part of a church, I was completely caught off guard.  I thought church would be a one-hour sitting endurance once a week.  As soon as the closing prayer would end, I would head to the golf course.

Not so much!

Church is a very intense and complex system that includes wars of the spirit and battles of the flesh.  Right and Wrong is one of the clarion calls; but the problem is that there are about one million versions of what right and wrong should be.  And, that is barely the beginning.

God will not be cornered and pegged by man's understanding.  This bugs us greatly. We want a god we can manage, direct, and prove.  He won't go into such framework.

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts higher than your thoughts (Isa. 55:8-9).

Mark this down: higher means higher and His ways will always be higher than ours. Just so we know.

This doesn't mean we can't know Truth.  This is the Truth.  Our concepts must be lifted into the higher range or else we will fumble in the very center of our commitments to Him.  Truth is to be on His terms; not our traditions which He very clearly warned.

A huge problem with traditions is that we tend to call them Truth because these are what we want.  We, too, mistakenly believe that what we believe is always the route to take.  The mystery of God and His ginormous revelation takes a back seat to the most prominent of our own voices.  Our bad.

The church is to be headed where Jesus was headed; to our crosses.  Ritual isn't it. Trend isn't it.  Even our best moment of the past isn't it.  Knowing Jesus and following him all the way to the cross, dying for our enemies so that they can become our brothers and sisters; this is where we are headed.  Until Jesus is our focus, we are clanging gongs and clattering cymbals.

As the church heads toward Jesus we will develop an appetite for assisting the down and out more than appearing sharp and successful.  We will be re-trained to become adjustable--even in our older ages--due to the nature of the Spirit to move us about like winds change...John 3:8.  This truth is the very reason so many in the church detest change; it really is from God.

Where is the church headed?  Well it is headed for decrease and abandonment in far too many places.  Too many within the broad range of religion have been more captivated by brand name and location than the breath-taking newness of the Spirit life.

The good news is that when we catch this we are able to make adjustments to head once again toward Jesus and the cross. Such a direction is not like flipping a switch, understand, for it involves drastic reformation of our dispositions.  To work from the least, the nobody, and the weak is a far cry from being on top of things and pushing our agendas.

Jesus is where the church is headed; else we are not the church.  We can do it, we should do it, and we will do it.