For so many Christians, church has become about this ritual routine of singing songs and giving money, and the pinnacle of worship is this big sermon. They feel more and more that something is disconnected. And I’m talking to more and more Christians everywhere I go throughout town and in my journeys, and people are resonating with this message because they inherently know something’s wrong. And partially, what’s missing is the majesty and the mysteries of God.
We have somehow forgotten about how great and mighty and awesome our God is. We have disconnected ourselves and the relationships that not only inform our relationship with God, but also with one another. I found this great quote today.
It says that the kingdom of God is within you. Have we ever really stopped to think about that for just a second? That the kingdom of God is within you, and within you is everything that you need for life and godliness, according to 2 Peter chapter 1. And part of this quote that really stuck with me is that the feelings a person plants in his soul during his lifetime will go into eternity with him. I want to repeat that one more time.
The feelings a person plants in his soul during his lifetime will go into eternity with him. See, I think the biggest misconception that we have is that this life is temporal, and we’re just waiting for the eternal. But here’s the truth.
Eternity is here, and it’s now, and it’s present within us. It’s present whenever we gather in the church. And where two or more are gathered together, there he is with us in our presence.
When we are gathered in his presence together, we experience the majesty, the mystery, the beauty of God. We begin to see our lives as not our own, but his. That we are the hands and the feet, the eyes and the ears, the heart and the tears of Christ to those around us.
That we are blessed by him to participate in his work. And in doing so, we become, as again in 2 Peter 1, it says, we become partakers in the divine nature. And that has tremendous implications for the Christian, because we begin to experience God in the everyday.
We see him. I see so many discouraged Christians right now. Deeply, deeply discouraged.
Some are even facing depression, from mild depression to extreme depression. But this should not be the case, because in the body of Christ, as we’re reminded in Galatians 6-2, we should be carrying one another’s burdens, and in doing so fulfill the law of Christ. And by being engaged with one another, by caring for one another, by loving one another, we become the light to the world.
This is why Sunday morning cannot be the only expression of our Christian faith. It is how we live our lives in community with one another that says to the world we are different. We are peculiar that we have something worth exploring.
We have something worth gravitating to, because we are different. We are not like the world that seeks its own, that will just destroy anyone and everyone for their own objective, their own means, their own pursuits, their own goals or ideas, their own greed. We see this in the early church even, that to protect one another, to protect those less fortunate who are being persecuted for this new faith, what did they do? They sold everything they had for the general welfare of the community to provide for one another’s needs.
There was a relationship there. See, there’s something deeply wrong when somebody says something to the extent of, I lost my job recently and I’m really struggling financially, and all people do is come up and pat them on the back and say, well, I’m going to pray for you, knowing darn well you’re probably not going to pray for them. Matter of fact, you might think about them for a few minutes and you’ll probably you’ll probably empathize to the degree of saying to yourself, you know what, jeez, I hope that never happens to me, and then never do anything to actually help someone.
James warns against this. He says, What kind of faith is it if your brother or your sister has a need and you have the means to help them and you don’t? What kind of faith is that? What does that say about God? Because yes, God can swoop out of heaven and take care of all of our needs, but here’s the truth. He wants to take care of our needs through one another.
He wants us to participate in his work and in his divine nature together by the way that we love and care for one another. How we do this says something to the world about how peculiar we are. That together we are the light of the world.
That we died to self and embraced Christ. Now remember his two greatest commandments. The first is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.
And the second is just like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus didn’t quote the rest of Torah. He did not say to hold stringently to the ten commandments, though we should.
That’s not an argument that we shouldn’t. In that part of the moral law, the point is that if these two things happen, everything else takes care of itself. If you love God that much, if you follow him that much, if he is that important to you, then you love God.
Wow. The natural outflow of loving God is loving others.
The natural outflow of loving God is serving him and serving in his church.
The natural outflow is a community that is so vibrant that the world can’t ignore it. Brothers and sisters, do you have that kind of love? Or is your criticism so heavy and overhanded that it creates shame and embarrassment?
Does it create anger and hostility in the other person?
Because here’s the thing, if someone doesn’t feel heard and understood, and if they don’t feel like you care, they’re not going to listen to you. If they feel like you’re coming at them instead of coming alongside them, you’re never going to earn the voice to help them, to bless them, to call them back to Christ.
So, brothers and sisters, this great saying is so true. What you do right now in your life will determine the treasures that you lay up in heaven. Is what you’re doing storing up those treasures, or are you selling them off before you even get them? I hope today that message resonates with you.
As we seek to be the kind of church that God has called us to be, may he receive honor and glory and praise to the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen.
Father Don
