If you said those words to your spouse, your marriage would be in serious trouble. In an intimate relationship, our love and affection for one another is most often expressed in various forms of bodily contact.
So why do so many people who claim to love Jesus reject contact with his body, the church?
Yes, I have heard all the reasons… the excuses.
“I can’t find a good church in my area.” Really? Seriously? With a dozen — perhaps a hundred — evangelical, Bible-believing, worshipping congregations within a few minutes of your home, you can’t find one that meets your approval? You think maybe, just maybe, all those churches are not the problem after all?
“I was hurt before.” Welcome to the real world. In any group or organization composed of people, it is highly likely, perhaps inevitable, that sooner or later somebody will say or do something that hurts you. If you let that keep you away, how do you survive in the workplace? In the mall parking lot, even? If you think people who attend churches get their feelings hurt now and then, you wouldn’t believe how thick the pastors skin has to be! Get over it. Grow up. Go to church.
“I just don’t seem to fit in anywhere.” Then ask the Lord to help you plant a church for other misfits like you. Maybe what you are experiencing is “Divine discontent.” The Lord might be allowing you to be an uncomfortable misfit because he has called you to a task you have resisted. Remember that story about Jonah? Avoidance is a bad strategy. Give up, give in, give all.
“Most Christians are just insincere hypocrites.” Step away from the mirror, champ. You know the old cliché — “You’ll never find a perfect church, because as soon as you get there…” This excuse is among the biggest smokescreens of them all. Look, here’s the bottom line: the church is not just a good idea, it’s a GOD idea. It is such an important idea that Jesus gave his life for it. For you to disregard the church, avoid the church, criticize the church from the outside, or — can we be straight here? — just get so lazy, self-indulgent, and arrogant that you start to believe ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ should be sending up all kinds of warning alarms in your head and heart, because “you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”
If you love Jesus, love his body.
Go to church.
Get involved.
Take a risk.
Allow yourself to possibly be offended or hurt again.
You can’t really love Jesus and disconnect from his body. You wouldn’t want to make the body of Christ an amputee, would you?
Wow, this is great PG, Honest-Blunt-True Anyone who considers themselves a Christian, needs to read this.
True Christianity.