Here's snipets from this morning's message:
There was a little old cleaning woman that went to the local church. When the invitation was given at the end of the service, she went forward wanting to become a member. The pastor listened as she told him how she had accepted Jesus and wanted to be baptized and become a member of the church.
The pastor thought to himself, "oh my, she is so unkempt, even smells a little, and her fingernails are not clean. She picks up garbage, cleans toilets - what would the members think of her." He told her that she needed to go home and pray about it and then decide.
The following week, here she came again. She told the pastor that she had prayed about it and still wanted to be baptized. "I have passed this church for so long. It is so beautiful, and I truly want to become a member."
Again the pastor told her to go home and pray some more. A few weeks later while out eating at the restaurant, the pastor saw the little old lady. He did not want her to think that he was ignoring her so he approached her and said, "I have not seen you for a while. Is everything all right?"
"Oh, yes," she said. "I talked with Jesus, and he told me not to worry about becoming a member of your church."
"He did?" said the pastor.
"Oh, yes" she replied. "He said even He hasn't been able to get into your church yet, and He's been trying for years."
Today I begin a new year sermon series entitled: Does Jesus Go To Church?
David R. Mains wrote a small book for the church entitled WHEN THE TROOPS ARE TIRED
He said…What God’s people actually feel about the state of the church is determined to a large degree by the health of the congregations in which they’ve participated. The truth is, there are marvelous churches in every state and province. It’s also a fact that many other congregations are really struggling.
Church attendance in America is on the decline. According to William Hendricks in his book: Exit Interviews: Revealing Stories of Why People Are Leaving the Church, nearly 7600 people are leaving the church in Europe and North America every single day. He writes:
That means that every week, more than 53,000 people leave church and never come back. To put that in perspective, consider that the United States lost about 57,500 people in the Vietnam War…Or look at it another way: a “large” church is said to be one that has 1,000 people attending each Sunday. We would have to plant at least 7 ½ large churches every day of the year to offset the number of people walking away from churches we already have.
According to Hendrick’s figures, 2,700,000 people are leaving the church in Europe and North America every year…
You know me to not usually be a numbers and statistics kinda guy (specifically because numbers sometimes lie and foster competition and tend to not take important factors into consideration)…but, these facts may represent a desperate call for change…we can’t just stick our heads in the sand and hope it all gets better…we need to do our part in representing Jesus better!
Surveys suggest younger generations are not being reached by today’s churches. According to Mike Regele in his book, Death of the Church... While the face of America is changing, for the most part the face of most large historic Protestant denominations is not, except for the color of members’ hair!
Across all denominations, there is a failure to reach the youngest generation…In other words, while the overall US population is graying, the historic Protestant institutions are graying faster!...Based on demographics alone, the future of the church is grim…
When evaluating the overall state of the church it is necessary to ask what impact Christianity is having on our culture…From that perspective, most North American Christians would agree that the present church doesn’t even begin to influence society the way the early church did…
According to Barna Research and the Gallup Poll a miniscule number of Americans are reading God’s Word each day. These pollsters also agree that there are no discernible differences in the behavior patterns of Christians and non-Christians…
The Bible reports, it was said of the early church that it turned the world upside down!
Does the pulpit and the pew still see the miracle of NT Christianity as a viable option in North America?
I definitely do not want to spend this sermon series wallowing in the temporal statistics of a failing society of believers.
Let’s practice my last sermon series and speak of much HOPE!
I’m crazy enough to believe the church still can drastically affect its society…infused with the very Spirit of Christ we too can turn our world upside down!
The First Step we can take to letting Jesus back into His Church, so to speak is a Miracle Mindset
The only way the church can truly turn the world upside down is to find out how Jesus is going to do it! It must be His will; it must be His miracle working power. We can’t create His kingdom, grow His church with man-made schemes or programs…
In my opinion A miracle mindset is simply a state of expectation, a true reliance upon our God to intervene, an unquenchable hope for a miracle despite the circumstances, most importantly a mind immersed in God’s Word and praying w/out ceasing, having your mind set on God’s ideal refusing to see thru temporal eyes, if you look hard enough you can see a miracle in any situation good or bad…
Allow the Father to Create your perspective, Let the Spirit illuminate, renew even transform your vision, Ask Jesus to shine light upon your dark thoughts that keep that miracle mindset just out of reach…
Nothing expresses or explains the miracle mindset better than
2 Corinthians 4(Find, Stand, Read, Pray)
I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that a church full of believers practicing the miracle mindset will turn the world upside down!
This miracle mindset really is a discipline.
It’s choosing to let go of your own wishes and turning the spiritual coin over so to speak. Instead of insisting on tails, God may be calling heads, until you yield to His Higher ways things can be rather miserable…
In my personal devotions I just finished Max Lucado’s Inspirational Study Bible, before it I went thru Eugene Peterson’s Paraphrase the Message By the way I highly recommend these two devotional tools, Next I have decided to go through the amplified version. I do not say this to say lookyme...I say it to be an example...If the shephered isn't in the word the sheep won't be either... So, I’m in Genesis and yet again in awe of Joseph! Whenever God allowed his coin flipped he rolled with the punches: from favored child to literally the bottom of a pit and slavery, then just when things started to look up injustice throws him in prison but even in prison his miracle mindset lands him second in command of all of Egypt and when his scheming brothers fear his wrath, He puts words to the miracle mindset: what you meant for evil, God meant for good…
A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could, and it could go no further. So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly. What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives.
If God allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. We could never fly!
