Be Ye Separate

Go into Home Depot, you can tell the Workers apart.

Go to McDonalds, you can tell the workers apart.

Not only can you tell the workers from the customer but the Managers are dressed differently as well.

It is only in the church that we ask for no standards, no difference for we must make them comfortable!

Yet, It is not their house.

It is only in the church that we insist we have to be as simple as we can for them.
No other place in the world do we make so many excuses for being non descript or blend in.

Ball games, Mc Donalds, Lowes, Home Depot, Dollar General all have their workers looking different so people know who to ask for help from.

Yet in the church we do not, and because of this they don’t know who to get help from.
It is a sad state of affairs when we no longer care enough to stand out as a place they can go to for help.

Rom 12:1  I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 
Rom 12:2  And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. 

Where is our passion

 So often we rail at the crowds football stadiums, baseball games, concerts etc. We talk about how excited they get stomping and yelling for their team.

We say look at the stadiums see how people have time for that but not for the church?

I watch football and baseball, and I yell at the screen, at the refs and umpires, yet I am in church. Why? I mean if I can do both, why do not more people?

Why can certain things pack them in yet the church service can’t no matter what they do?

The church has tried bingo, beer parties, Superbowl parties, dances etc to try and get them in, and they do, for those events, but not for the reason the church should be trying to get them in for. The church has changed their music and their dress for them, the church has changed the message and the standards, and still no response.

The church has become exactly like the world to try and get them in yet no matter what they do the church is not seeing results. Why?

There is bondage out there.

I was at the hospital the other day and in the next ER bed was a man admitting himself for alcoholism. The Dr was telling him of the process and he was fighting the DR and why? Because it was going to be harder and more convoluted than they had originally told him.

The Dr was putting forth a good medically reasoned argument and I was with someone in the ER, yet the situation broke my heart. This man needed something and the best the DR had was medicine to give, not Jesus.

This man needed peace, needed rest, to hear of the Love that passes all our understanding, a Love that we will never ever get the full comprehension of. Yet we do not tell of it, testify of it to a lost and dying world. This man was looking for something and we have it, but we do not tell them of it.

In short order the man was convinced, but he had come there voluntarily and was fighting it!

He finally went to the place he needed to get to, in order to dry out.

Yet what if that DR had the same indifference most Christians have?

What if that DR had no passion for helping?

Passion.

That is why the church is losing, we have lost our passion.