From the Heart of the Pastor

The Church – Famine (Amos 8:11)
“‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord God, ‘When I will send a famine on the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of the Lord’” (Am. 8:11).
Your beloved nation is experiencing a spiritual famine. The foundational problem is not in the failure of a nation, but the failure of the church. Scores want to attend to this by addressing the form of church services, but the problem is not in the Sunday practice of churchianity; rather, it is in the deadness of the hearts of those within the church and particularly those leading the church.
Some innovators believe that if they can move away from the authority-image of the preacher, the vaulted learning of the pulpit and the aristocratic white starched shirts and ties they will arrive at the remedy – they are wrong. You can remove the history of the church, the biblical traditions of the church and the ebenezers to the help the Lord has allowed in the past and you will birth a continuing downward spiral in scriptural Christianity. The problem is in the hearts of the churched rather than the structure of the church.
Though biblically thoughtful churchmen are aware of the cultural meltdown attending their increasingly anti-Christian society, well-intentioned evangelicals have adopted worldly weaponry in their failing attempt to provide a remedy. They are failing to recognize that the modern church is fostering a religion requiring little risk, moderate standards, undemanding entry into membership, limited involvement in the lives of the members and no disciplining of the members. God’s church needs a tidal shift in its perspective coupled with an awakening to the Bible being the only means to a genuine Christian consensus.
The tame church preceded the trite society. The church became indistinguishable from the society; so the society became colorless in its Christlessness. Its humanistic rationalism, feministic naturalism and therapeutic existentialism are fostering its floundering insipidness. As the church in America sanitizes itself from the inspired, inerrant and infallible word, it shall discover its waning influence over the ways of its people (II Ti. 3:16f.). The uninfluential church is robbing a great nation of its greatness.
God has determined to do His work in this land through His church (Eph. 3:10). The scantiness of holy authority is the product of generational slumbering. Perhaps the season has arrived for God’s people to once again think and live generationally rather than just for this moment in time. Perhaps God is preparing His people to cease their tasteless innovations, lay aside their golden calves and look to imitating Him (Eph. 5:1).
Every life is an experiment. Most lives are spent in trading away commitments for comforts; avoiding sacrifice by refusing economic challenges; exchanging dreams for conformity to what is common and classifying defeat as victory. Myriads of churchgoers claim the name Christian, but they are merely evangelical in their disobedience (which does in no way militates against the heinousness of their sin!).
God is calling for His people to access His Spirit so that He through them might bring about a revolutionary, reformational, generational, societal awakening. Only then shall the church of the living Christ be positioned to capture its former glories. Nevertheless, churchmen once again must acknowledge that a sovereign holy God has in His providence placed you here in this place at this time in His history to make an eternal difference.
Do you believe that you were born for just such a time as this? Are you willing to have a conversation with yourself and the holy Christ about where you are in influencing this land for the manifestation of His glory?
Take the pulse of the complexion, movement and direction of your life. Look ever so precisely and thoroughly at the lifestyle you have adopted, the ambitions you are pursuing and disciplines you are employing. Are your thoughts exploring the heavens, your conversations challenging the culture and your goals eternal?