They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. “Peace, peace,” they say, when there is no peace. (Jeremiah 8:11)
Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. (2 TImothy 4:2-4)
Would someone please challenge my apathy from the pulpit?
“But, you seem like a model disciple!?”
Why? Because I have a blog about Jesus? Because I’ve mastered the lingo and syntax of the prayer movement? Because I lead worship or teach from the scripture? Please. Depending upon which hour of the day you run across me I may be apathetic, carnal, spirit-filled, full of faith, or throwing a pity party. It doesn’t necessarily make me a bad person, you do the same thing. Whether or not you admit it is your business. I’m moving from glory to glory, just like everybody else. The problem is, between glory and glory there is sometimes some inglorious stuff. It’s just life.
My point is, I have plenty of room for improvement. I also happen to like it when I get a man (or woman) in the pulpit who will come straight at my apathy and religiosity and speak truth from the Word of God that hurts so much it compels me to repent, change, grow, and mature. The problem is, nobody is doing that. Seriously. It’s been months since I heard a sermon that truly challenged me. It’s mostly been rainbows and daisies and cuddly puppies and sunshine.
It’s bad enough that I have to come home and google the two or three guys in the world that I know are bringing the heat just so I can hear a fresh, anointed, spirit-filled message that will challenge me to move beyond where I am.
Please hear my heart on this issue. If the world were a place of daisies and rainbows and sunshine, then I could justify preaching to that effect. The problem is, when I look around I see death, decay, immorality, and compromise. Even in the church. That’s not the whole picture. There are victories, and advancement is happening, but people are preaching peace when there is no peace. “But don’t we need balance in the pulpit?” you ask. Balance is a buzz word for compromise in this context. We don’t want to preach the word because the word will cause somebody to get offended…..and it’s August…..and attendance is down because everybody is on vacation in the summer…..and we have to keep our tithes up….so we can’t afford to offend anybody……
Now, I have a prayer life. So I don’t necessarily need men in a pulpit to challenge me. God challenges me, and I respond, because we have a relationship. The problem is, so many people are still relying on the preacher to spoon feed them the word of God, and preachers are responding with namby-pamby sermonettes.
Here’s another problem:
If you claim to be in a five-fold office, you ought to know that the church doesn’t need to hear you speak every Sunday for two straight years, unless you claim to be in all five offices simultaneously, in which case I invite you to recognize that you are not, in fact, Jesus.
Yep. I said it.
Half of the problem is when we have so-called “Kingdom” churches where one-fifth of the ministry grace is dominating the pulpit every Sunday. You let the “pastoral” grace dominate the preaching, and you wonder why nobody has any zeal. You let the Apostle talk every time the doors are open, and you wonder why nobody has any depth of understanding. Hello. There are teachers, evangelists, and prophets who have a role to play in this scenario.
OK. I’m done. It’s my blog, so I reserve the right to rant once in a while. I attend several churches regularly, so nobody get their feelings hurt, uhm k?
