Our concept of "church" is so very important! In the early 80's, Christianity in North America was characterized by selfishness. A message was preached that didn’t fully line up with the Holy scriptures. Preachers taught people that the church or even God Himself owed them something. And we ended up with people crying, Bless ME! Bless ME! Bless ME!”
When we preach a message of selfishness we present a wrong picture of the church Jesus desires to have. Too many churches have tried to be a “user friendly” church with a modern self-centered appeal. In doing so, churches tried to please and appease people being careful not to step on anyone's toes in order to build 'numbers', and as a result wound up with very shallow Christians. Don't misunderstand, I'm not against large churches. But church should not be “what I can get out of it” but rather “what can I contribute to it”. Many looked to what God could do FOR them rather than looking at who He is.
I’ve often said, there are three types of people who followed Jesus; Those who followed Him because He gave them food to eat, Those who followed him because they liked watching Him perform miracles. And those who followed Him simply because they LOVED Him.
We forget that the greatest reward of Christianity is not "prosperity" or even what the church can do for me. The greatest reward is Jesus Himself! Sadly the church produced a whole generation of "birth defective" disciples who through no fault of their own were taught to value what Jesus could do for them, forgetting that victory is in Jesus Himself! Isn’t it time that we let the world know that it’s all about Jesus and not all about us? We serve Him today because we LOVE HIM! 1 John 4:19 We love him, because he first loved us.
So let's all go to church this morning with the idea of serving Him rather than being served! I LOVE HIM!! HOW ABOUT YOU? SRR
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