What is it all about?

   

    What is the church about?  What is worship about?  What was the cross about? What is heaven about?    Are these things about man, or about God?  If you answered man, you have totally missed the message of the entire Bible and plan of God. The center of God's universe is not man, but God Himself.   Yet, sad to say, so much of what we call church, what we call praise and worship, what we look forward to in eternity is all about us, not God.  Remember the old timers that longed to go to heaven, just to see Grandma?  A song writer, years ago, got it right.  He wrote "Jesus will be what makes it heaven for me".

   The further we go along in the direction we are going, in America, the more we become centered on the welfare of man and not the wishes of God.  We are at a point now, in people-friendly, people-centered religion that we can seemingly do without God, but we can't do without man.  Seldom do I hear of a Pastor who wept and longed for the manifestation of God in his church, but many are those who weep, fast, pray, exert tremendous energy and expense to get people into the church. That, my friend, is backwards.  The further we go in this direction, the less meaning God has to us.  At best, for some, He is simply a vehicle with which they collect more people.  Churches study on how to make the Holy Ghost relevant to the world today.  That, my friend is backwards.  We ought to be studying on how to make the church and the world relevant to God.  God created us to worship Him!  He did not create man for Him to worship and become a servant of man.  For His pleasure we exist.

    The further we go in this direction, the less the Bible becomes relevant to us.  If you open your eyes and ears, you will discover that so many among those who call themselves Christians, do not use the Bible to define themselves.  They define themselves by whatever pleases.  They obey only what is convenient.  They believe only what is comfortable.  They do only what profits themselves. They worship only when they want to.  They have no need of the Holy Ghost, God among us.  He is too demanding.  He takes away their focus on themselves.

    All of this began in the garden.  When God came looking for Adam, instead of a greeting of love and worship, Adam greeted God with a condition-based response.  God asked, "where are you?".  Adam did not answer that question, and Adamic, natural thinking man does not answer it today.  Adam, instead, answered a question that was not asked. "I was naked and afraid", citing his condition as an excuse for his failed response to God. From that day to now, man without the constant stimulation of the Holy Ghost, will invariable base his religion around the condition of man, not the presence of God.  From that day to now, man without the Spirt of God to continue bringing him out of his fallen-man thinking, will hide from the manifested presence of God. Such a thing is too disquiting, too dis-comforting to Sister Easyfright and Brother Hardhead.  

    My friend, this thing we call Christianity is either all about God, or it isn't Christianity.  We are either in pursuit of God, or pursuit of the pleasure of man.  For me, like the Apostle Paul, I pray that I can "apprehend what has apprehended me".  I want to get hold of what has gotten hold of me.  I am glad God caught me, apprehended me, got hold of me but for the rest of my life, I want to apprehend, get hold of, catch Him.  If the Bible is your defining document, you are to be ever in pursuit of the Spirit of God.