A quick thought...

how foolish is the church today?  We are so focused this new method and that new method, and how to reach people, and how to make everyone like us, and how to avoid offending people...and don't look now, but in an effort to "win souls", we've lost our own.  We're busy out here, not giving people the Gospel message, but chasing after our own glory.  We're too busy scratching people's itchy ears.  It is high time we refocused our attention...or in many cases, simply focus, it was never there to start with.  Our focus need to be Jesus.  We need to tell people about the problem of sin.  It gets skipped because when we talk about it it offends people.  Well let me pose this question.  Do you think they'd prefer that you tell them now and run the risk of offending them, or would they like you to brush it off and let them find out on their own that God is Holy and hates sin?  In the immediate sense, of course people want to hear nice things, but we have to quit thinking in our 21st century mindset that only sees as far as the next txt message.  We need to think bigger picture.  We need to preach Christ sacrifice on the cross, and the amazing gift that that is.  That in spite of our utterly sinful and depraved state, God chooses to love us anyway.  That God the Father planned before the foundation of the world to send Jesus to pay for the sins of a wicked people who hated Him.  We need to quit preaching the liberation gospel, the prosperity gospel, and every other false gospel.  We do these foolish things to draw people into our church.  We are so caught up on us that we miss the point, the point being God and His glory.  And in His glory He has given us a Gospel to share that is far grander and more beautiful, more appealing, more amazing than anything we could dream up in our finite minds.  It's time to quit settling for the cheap versions of Jesus that we are sold by our world and even our churches.  It is time to dig into God's word, see what He has to say, and share that with our lost and dying world.

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