Looking Up, Seeking More

          As my last few posts have revealed, I've been struggling a lot lately and my mind has been a scattered mess. I've been frustrated with the way people handle situations, and aggravated by the way God's people have become so wrapped in playing religious games that they lose sight of who He is and what His vision is in their life. I'm tired of people thinking they have the right to tell others how to serve God instead of focusing on their own calling and serving Him in their own way. We are the body of Christ, but we each have our own role to play. No one person in the body of Christ is any better than another. We are all broken people, only made whole by the love and mercy of God our Savior, so why do we try so hard to tear each other down instead of building each other up? If only we would fall back in love with God, we would see that religious matters don't really matter at all. If only we would get to know our Savior on a personal basis, we would see that it's not up to us to dictate how our fellow brothers and sisters should worship. My heart is breaking for God's church and His people. My only desire is to make God proud and bring a smile to His face. He deserves so much more from us than what we choose to settle for. Something has to be done, but I don't know what to do or where to start. I'm crying out. The songs "If We've Ever Needed You" and "Lord Move or Move Me" have been playing on repeat in my mind. Then one day last week God began to speak to me through a passage in the book I was reading...

"For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor, average diet with which others appear satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another's notions, copied one another's lives and made one another's experiences the model for our own. And for a generation the trend has been downward. Now we have reached a new place of sand and burnt wire grass and, worst of all, we have made the Word of Truth conform to our experience and accepted this low plane as the pasture of the blessed. It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to biblical ways. But it can be done."

- from A.W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God

          Those words were written over half a century before I ever read them, but it seemed as if they were written for the sole purpose of speaking to me in that very moment. It reminded me of the day I accepted Christ as my Savior because every question and every doubt I had was answered in only a few short minutes. God broke through my madness and clearly revealed Himself to me. If I am this disappointed in God's people right now, I can't even imagine how disappointed He must be. I kept thinking about the children of Israel. Every time I read their story I say to myself, "How does God still love them after they've turned away from Him so many times?" and "Why do they continue to turn away from God after all He delivered them from?" It's no secret that the children of Israel are symbolic of the church of Christ. We are no different than them. God blesses us and we turn away from Him. God delivers us and we reject His plans. God saves us and we live as if we were actually worthy of His salvation. We are not worthy, so we need to start living like it and stop taking God's grace for granted. Recognizing a problem within God's church doesn't make me a saint by any means. It's easy to talk about change, but it's another to actually enact change. Pointing fingers doesn't make me any less of a sinner, but disobeying the conviction of God does make me more of a sinner. God assured me through this writing from Tozer that hope does exist. God can still use the church despite it's flaws. God can still use me despite how many times I've let him down in the past. As a body of Christ we need to come together and cover each others weaknesses, not expose them. We need to remember where God brought us from and the countless ways in which He has blessed us along the way. We need to seek after God in a way that we never have before. We need to thirst for Him like we thirst for water. We need to crave Him as if He's a drug we're addicted to. We need to stop viewing ourselves as self-righteous and worthy of God's love. We need to open our eyes to needs of this world and the needs of our own souls. Our one and only focus in this life needs to be to know God more and invite others to do the same. Only then will the problems within the church vanish. Only then will discord become unity. Only then will we be healed from the sickness that has infected the church of Christ for so long. We need to put God back on the judgement seat where He belongs, we need to look to Him to solve our problems, and we need to seek His will above all others. He alone is worthy of such a position.