Hello everyone!
The other day I had an epiphany. I have written about this before in another ways like FB posts or in passing but today, I am going to talk about our comfort in the Western church in more depth.
We have gotten very comfortable, too comfortable in fact. In fact, we are so comfortable, we are bent on pursing prosperity and wealth more than helping our neighbors and spreading the love Jesus. We are bent on sustaining the Religious Right instead of what it right and just according the Word. We are bent on flags instead of on our Father's heart. Yes indeed we have grown too comfortable. We have grown spiritually fat and sleepy, quite like a baby, only wanting what we want. What is it going to take to wake us from our slumber? To jolt us from our comfort? To put us back in touch with a world that needs us desperately?
Humor me and consider a few things:
1) The flags and political boundaries we hold dear will not exist in Heaven. They will be no more and will no longer be needed. There will be no Religious Right, they will no longer be needed. The wealth of this world will not follow you to Heaven.
2) Our rewards in Heaven will be far greater than any comfort here on Earth! Don't you want every person you know to go to Heaven? Are their souls not more precious than our politics or our wealth? Are we not all made in the image of God? Does He not want all men to be saved and none to perish?
3) My fellow Christians, in the end it will not matter whether our politics were right or wrong. It will not matter if our country was right or wrong, for all nations will be judged by God Himself as to their intents and motives. In the end, all the prosperity in the world won't have a say in your motives or the condition of your heart.
4) What is more important? To be right and comfortable? Or to be following in Jesus's footsteps no matter where it takes us, no matter if it makes us uncomfortable or puts us around people that make us uncomfortable? I would choose discomfort over being comfortable, out of touch and asleep any day.
I implore all of us to think on these four things - for yourself, your family and your church. We have to wake up! We have to come to terms with our comfort and our baby-likeness in the Western church! We must become relevant again to a world that needs us! We are not a political machine. We are not the answer but we know the Answer. Wake up Western church! Wake from your comfortable slumber! The time is now!
Micah 6:8; ESV: He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Sounding that annoying spiritual alarm as always,
Elizabeth
**If you would like to know more about the persecution and discomfort of the worldwide church and how they thrive in it, read The Insanity of God and The Insanity of Obedience, both by Nik Ripken. You will never be the same!!