Wake Up Call

This post is from my previous blog, Ear to the Heavens. Enjoy.

I’ve really struggled with this one. For days, now, I have debated and edited and wrestled over how to say what’s on my heart and how to say it without sounding “angry” or “bitter.” My good and Godly friend Bob reminds me to “accentuate the positive.”

I reluctantly want to share what recently happened to my wife and children. Not to be critical of any one church or believer, but to highlight a behavior that is prevalent in the Church.

For the last three years, my beautiful wife and two incredible children have attended a weekly event for mothers and their pre-school children. The mothers would fellowship and share - sometimes focusing their time on a biblical study - and the children would play together. It was an event that my wife and children looked forward to every week: their “play group.”

Due to a numerous set of circumstances, we stopped attending the church fellowship that sponsored the event and began attending a local home fellowship. At the time, the women involved in this “play group” made it clear that my wife and our children were still welcome to attend. My children are best friends with these other children and my wife had developed lasting friendships with several of the women.

Several days ago, my wife was asked to meet with the wife of this fellowship’s Pastor. My wife’s “best friend” was in the meeting as well.

These two women told my wife that she was no longer welcome to participate in the weekly play group since she no longer attended their fellowship. They told her that the friendships could continue but that she could not fellowship with them as long as she worshiped and fellowshipped elsewhere. They, in essence, told my wife and children that they could no longer be a part of the most important recurring social event of their lives because we no longer attended their church.

I have to believe that the Holy Spirit is grieved.

It is obvious that many in the church do not understand who we are in Christ. They do not understand the nature of the relationships that we have with one another in Christ. They do not know the power that is available to them in the Holy Spirit. They do not know how crippled they have become.

I wrote previously about covenant relationships and the bond that is between brothers and sisters in Christ which exceeds that of even earthly blood or genetic relationships. And this is how Christ intends it: that we love one another and are one just as Jesus and God the Father are one.

We are no longer carnal creatures but Spiritual beings bound together forever in Christ..

Friendship, but not fellowship? We who walk in the Spirit of the Lord cannot help but have Koinania- fellowship- with one another. We are of the same body. We are of the same structure, designed to be a dwelling place for the Lord.

Can you imagine embracing every true believer you meet with great love in your heart and joy over the grace and forgiveness of God, looking to serve that person, to give to them, to encourage them, and to lift them up in the light and love of the Lord? Can you imagine a totally non-judgmental, absolutely-loving, all-forgiving, completely open, self-sacrificing, subservient relationship with other believers?

Can you imagine relationships that exists in light and truth because each of us is in total submission to the word and the work of the Holy Spirit, in agreement and harmony, remaining teachable and embracing one another as we use our spiritual gifts to edify one another?

This covenant relationship in the Church was evident as we read the first few chapters of Acts. The believers gave to one another as they had need and there was equity among them. No one sought to exalt himself above another, but rather, sought to serve and be used of God in the body of Christ. They went home to home sharing meals together. There were no denominations or walls to divide them.

Paul made it clear that we are one body, each with a different and necessary role. Peter describes us a living stones being out together to become the dwelling place of God. Imagine the Lord in our midst, dwelling among his children assembled together as His temple.

So, in contrast to how we should be, how are we today?

The enemy is so deceitful and we are so easily deceived.

Many of us are puffed up with knowledge. We are unteachable and unapproachable if an idea contradicts what we firmly believe. We are dogmatic to the death, even if we are dead wrong. We lean on our human understanding of God's word and allow little or no room in our lives for the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Not that many of us could even hear that voice or recognize it. Our lives are so cluttered with electronic noise, the pursuit of wealth and status, and the service of self that we measure our relationship with the Lord, not by quality or quantity of time spent in fellowship with Him, but by how little we sin and how well-disciplined we are. (None of which are reliable indicators of how spiritual we are, but how able we are to deny the flesh.)

Of course, such a worldly standard by which we can judge ourselves makes it all the easier to measure ourselves against others, too. We can look down our long noses at those who aren't as disciplined as we are, as wealthy, or who aren't as high on the social ladder, who don't dress as well, drive as nice a car, live in as big a house, have as credible a degree, or are as respected in our communities.

We divide the moment we meet by judging one another's character on the basis of our denomination. “What church do you go to?” we ask. The very question is ludicrous. What we really mean, is, “Of what sect are you?” And that question need only be asked because so many rebels have gone before with their immovable doctrine and decided to divide the church once again.

Instead of us being the wholly united, loving, power-filled body of Christ, we have become splintered, back-biting, judgmental cliques that are more focused on how we might further divide than with how we might love and serve one another and, in so doing, maybe reach the lost world for Christ's sake.

“The love of many shall wax cold.” [Jesus] (Matt. 24:12)

I want to remain positive. But I think we are in need of a wake-up call.