If you do not see the problem I see, and so many others I might add, then you are yet to remove your blinders. Can we say we are honestly trying to remain faithful? Can we honestly say we are remaining a Great Commission Church? Can we say we are honestly and faithfully still the Church started by Christ and remain in His good graces? Has He departed from us? Has He removed His candlestick from among parts of the Body? I think He has, I believe many, many Churches are Churches in name only and in practice they are more Satanic than Christlike! In order for me to make these comments I must be able to tell you the difference in a true Church and a false Church, and that my friends is simple.
The true Church take The Great Commission seriously. "Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. 17 And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen." Matt 28:16-20 (KJV)
Friends, we as The Church, are not doing this! We are not "going" we are not "teaching" we are not "baptizing", we are not making disciples and we are not doing a Jesus commanded us. We are doing just about everything but this! The Church is to be making disciples, preaching the Good News! Teaching believers God's Word. Edifying them, building up believers into a mature form ready for Heaven.
Instead we are playing a foolish game. Instead we are getting together in country club type buildings, gathering early so to have time to gossip and mock. Judging others who assemble with us. Denouncing their clothing instead of their sins. Deriving instead of loving, dividing instead of building up. We assemble together still, but for all the wrong reasons and hardly any of the right. We have been and continue to make a mockery of The Lord's Day Worship.
If your toes are rather sensitive, then I cannot help but to ask you to toughen them up. Sensitive toes are little more than a side effect of a non Christian amongst the sheep of God. Instead of being offended, maybe Repent and Believe in Christ as Lord and Savior. Be humble and throw yourself upon His mercy. This is all any of us can do. We have no one to blame but ourselves for this mess. Maybe this type of church is all you have ever known, and that would be unfortunate, but even that is no excuse, for in reading of the Holy Scriptures we are made known to the truth of what the Church is to be. We cannot use ignorance of Scripture as an excuse for making a mockery of His Church. That would be admitting we do not study our bibles enough, and you know what, we don't.
See here is where the true blame comes in, if we wish to point fingers for the demise of proper worship and failure to know Scripture on someone, be it our fathers before us for not preserving the way, that would be easy and maybe some what accurate, maybe they did listen to Billy Graham too much instead of listening to Scripture, but does that make it okay? No, of course not, we are held responsible. We have Moses and the Prophets to hear! We have the cannon of Holy Writ before us! We have the indwelling of His Spirit telling us to shape up! We have the teaching of Christ and His apostles to learn from, and to cry ignorance or to point fingers is saying nothing but that we are too lazy to take Christ serious, we are too lazy to study and grow in holiness, and in saying that, we say Christ and His Love means little to nothing for us.
We have hope, we can return to the ancient paths, we can once again be the Church we were meant to be. But it will take work and it will take making a few people uncomfortable. Most people do not like change, I understand this, nothing pleasant about taking something comfortable and ripping it up, tearing down old beliefs and instilling those that are true and accurate. Doing this sort of thing takes away from our comfort level, it is like moving to another country and having no choice but to radically change your diet, everything you take it is new and foreign to you and your stomach. Not so easy, but it is something you cannot avoid. What are you going to do, quit eating? Of course not, you train yourself to adapt to this new food, so we must learn to adapt to our new spiritual food. This means we have to tear down the false practices we have become way too comfortable with and begin instilling sound, practical methods to Bible study, family worship, and corporate worship and all this begins with ourselves in our private worship of God and quickly moves onto our family worship. Nothing at all will be accomplished inside the Body of Christ in corporate worship until it has been firmly implanted into a regular family worship practice.
It always has begun at home, we must first fix what we have let get broken in our own homes before we can dare fix what is broken elsewhere. A return to daily or nightly family worship is mandatory in this case. Everyday should be a time set aside for family worship, at least one hour. This may seem long but when you try to fit in what is needed, you will see the hour time is just about right. My family has been practicing this on a regular basis for sometime now and it has worked wonders. The good thing about family worship is that you can tailor it to your liking and what works best for your family in growing them in knowledge of God and His Word and Will. We begin with a family hymn, then we move to a group reciting of the Lord's Prayer. Followed by reading a few chapters from the Old Testament, we take turns reading, each reads 10 verses, then next family members in line picks up where the last left off. Then we have one member pray out loud for all of us. Next comes the reading of Psalms, every family member reads one Psalm, we begin on Psalm 1 then read Psalm 2 and so on until each member has read from the Psalms. Next another member prays aloud. Then we catechize using the Westminster, I read the question aloud and then we read the answer as a group saying amen after each answer. We do this with at least ten questions and answers. Next we move to the reading and discussion from the New Testament, we try to read one to three chapters depending on the length followed by discussion of what we read over. Then another member prays followed by the last family hymn and then I as father, offer the last prayer for the family and we dismiss. This takes about one hour and we have found this to be extremely edifying to us as believers and a family. It has afforded us a degree of knowledge and discernment that is of the utmost value.
Of course you do not have to follow our pattern, though it makes a useful pattern, but if you sit down with your family this is something you can implement easily. The hardest part is of course getting everyone in the same room at the same time everyday, but this is not impossible and after awhile, if you make it a requirement, you will see your children will begin to look forward to this time together. I know we do and have been truly blessed by it. Praise God in heaven for allowing us to be together in His Word.
This is where and how it begins to change. Once you get a few weeks of family worship under your belt, you will begin to see corporate worship differently, you will see how in many cases it has become cheap and plastic like in its nature and presentation. The Gospel offer seldom left out, sanctification and personal holiness little more than a fond memory. Sound doctrine taught by the regular catechizing of the body a thing of the past. Replaced by entertainment and fluff. The meat of His Word replaced with funny stories and tells of vacation outings. Missions to share the Gospel replaced by fun field trips to help paint churches by the youth group. Youth groups in general, a new fad that removes the children from corporate worship because we believe they are not mature enough to set through worship with the parents, so instead we send them down to play games and hear stories. All the while making them the children of the world instead of covenant children of God's. Pizza parties have replace regular meetings for catechizing. Prayer replaced with comedy. Singing of Psalms and spiritual hymns with rock bands and singing pastors. What a shame.
It all begins with you, it can be fixed. You have Christ and the Holy Spirit, you have God's Word, that is enough. We just have to get serious about making a difference and working on change. It must first begin with you dear reader, and then share this change with your family. Be active in this, do not make excuses, we have enough of them already.
Be Holy!
Shane
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