We've Taken Too Much

Thursday evening I had the privilege of meeting Dan. He basically just walked up to my wife and I as we were loading groceries into our truck. So I gave him a tract. :) Dan had severe leg pain, but was very interested in the tract I had just given him. He had been struggling with God and religion for a long time. He was very wary of discussing it with me at first but I knew the Spirit was in control so I just pressed on.

Dan asked me about what church I was with. He said it this way. "What church is this?"

Those four words reveal the state of Christdom (all people who say they are Christian) in North America. Church members go to and fro talking to people about "church" and asking for donations and pressing them about getting up Sunday morning to come to a building full of people doing something completely foreign to this world.

Is it any surprise people are wary? I mean really.

When Dan found out I wasn't representing any church building, I didn't want anything from him, but that I was deeply interested in where he was at then and only then did he relax and decide to work this issue through with me. Right there in the parking lot of a grocery store.

You can't tell me people aren't interested. That they avoid the topic. People are DEEPLY interested in where they are going after they die. Everyone wants to go to Heaven, it's just most of them don't want God to be there when they get to it.

Christians stop asking people for money for your buildings and your programs and your whatever you do. Stop it. It's a shame! We are told to GIVE the Good News of Reconciliation to every person on this planet. There is a biblical way to do it for sure. But we are not to be asking non-believers for money or their time.

People who are blind and headed for Hell do not want to come to "church". They know nothing of God. God Himself says that if a man is not Born Again he can not even SEE the Kingdom of God. Why then ask someone who knows nothing of God to come to a building to worship Him? It won't make sense to the poor person. Make them understand their state before a Holy and Just God. Do so lovingly but firmly. You do not have the right to judge them, but it is your responsibility to ask them the questions which the Holy Spirit will use to reach their conscience. THEN when they understand, for maybe the first time in their life, the exceeding sinfulness of their sin. Then give them the Grace of the Gospel of Christ Jesus risen from death and seated on High. Only then will it make sense to them.

Then you leave it in God's hands. You respond as the Holy Spirit prompts you and NOT in your prideful flesh that will demand you be "right" and the other person "wrong".

Dan was desperate to know the things of God. But he would never have listened to the truth from someone who wanted to take him to their church. Please, please Church, (the global assembly of true Christians) please, reach for souls to save them from the Fire. Once they are saved, they will actually want to fellowship. You won't have to beg them to come to church, they will want to.