About 5 hours of my day was spent discussing the church. That would not be a bad thing to me at all, except that it was mostly negative. I don't like to be negative. Talking about the church I like to be as positive as possible. Yet, I find that most of my conversation about the church is negative and it revolves around one main issue.
My title, The True Church, has nothing to do with one church, as if I were to say that the Baptist church is the only true church. That would be foolish. Yet I find that there is very little care about the True Church. And when talking about the True Church I am talking about the body of believers whom God has chosen. Yet I struggle with churches because I find none that are True. The reason I struggle with churches is because most of our churches don't have very many saved and spiritual people.
When I say saved and spiritual people I am addressing two different groups. Our walls are filled with the worlds lost who have no clue to who Christ is. Yet they make a major impact on how we do our work. Then there are the weak, those who are not strong in the doctrines of Christ, and they greatly affect the work of the Church. Why is it that such a weakness has crept into the churches of the world and made the Church weak.
When we read in Acts it tells us that the people were concerned with four main things. They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayer. Well, most churches do well at fellowship, we still do the Lord's supper, and most still pray; but how many really hit the apostles' doctrine hard and dig deep beneath the surface?
This is the weakness of the church: weak preaching leads to weak people. Our churches are filled with the lost and weak because the message is not being taught to them and they are not expected to uphold it. And that is why I am convinced that there are not many, if any, True churches. Since when did churches start using by-laws to manage their work. When did the Scripture not suffice. I'm sick and tired of churches who can't do anything because tradition dictates what is acceptable and the Word is not the standard.
Here is a challenge, show me a church where the Word is preached, powerfully in the Spirit and sound in doctrine, week in and week out and I'll show you one of two things. A church that has a ministry that is reaching to the sky, or one that is struggling to make it another week. Why? Well if one is faithful to God He is faithful to them and will bless them according to His purpose. Yet, the world hates the Church, the body of Christ, and those who are in the Church, its many members. They do not know Christ, but might love the church, the orgization it has become, because it is now designed to flatter the ear instead of teaching the Truth, the Apostles' Doctrine.
So now we have organizations established with a few who are members of the Church, surrounded by people who are members of a church, trying to seek out the will of God while every effort they make is rejected by those who are lost and weak. But we can't do anything because we are afraid and intimidated by the fact that there might be a few who get mad.
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I don't answers to very many questions about your true church you are looking fore, but I don't think it's as far away as you might imagine. We stayed up until three in the morning discussing religion only two nights ago. There are a lot of questions, and I think the only way to get answers is just to beleive they are out there. Our discussion was mostly on faith. Our friend says faith is stupid, you can't have faith unless you've seen something. We tried to explain that you have to believe in something before you can know it. That's faith. . .Anyway, your blog just reminded me of that.
ReplyDeleteSupergirl,
ReplyDeleteYou are very right in saying that understanding can't come without faith; for it is by faith that we can understand that which to the mind is irrational. And I agree that the answers I am looking for are out there. Not even that they are distant or odd by some strech. The problem is that people don't like change. I don't like change. Change is many cases is bad; so we as a nature of ourselves don't like it. Yet, when we are wrong in our ways there is nothing better than changing; such as our change when we were regenerated (born again). That is the problem; people who don't know the ways they do things are wrong have not desire in themselves to change in fear that it might be bad and in pride that they like the way things have always been. This developes as stubbern spirit which is not easy to change. In talking to one of the spiritually mature men of my church his only suggestion was to pray and endure. That is a sad thing to think that we are simply to pray for the weak and endure there foolishness. I am a man of action and I think it better to act and to cause one to do as they should. But maybe he is right and longsuffering is the best way to combat the situtation. I guess in the end you just have to have faith; faith that Christ will work it all out to the good of His chosen and to His glory. Yet some times it is hard to have faith when you don't see any kind of proof.
I think I'm part of the true Church. There are about five of us, and I'm pretty secure in that, because if anybody else comes around, we might deviate. ;0)
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, here's the problem (at least in the context of your post) that I see in churches that claim loyalty to the sola scriptura tradition: How do we tell the difference between what the Bible tells us about Jesus and the faith, and what our traditions tell us that the Bible says about Jesus and the faith?
Plenty of sola scriptura Christians are very happy to say, the Bible says this and the bible says that (hence my recent posts on cliches), but I've read the thing, and it doesn't say many of those things.
It's tough.
Keep writing.