What is Your Desire for the Church?

What is Your Desire for the Church?

 2/18/14

In these changing times within the place of the world, the church’s mission has never been greater.  It is evident that the world is pushing God out of its atmosphere and this action should signal the Church to ever so true to its mission and push back the enemy’s kingdom.  But does the Church actually have the initiative and drive to complete the mission that Jesus commanded?  This begs the question of what is your desire for the Church and how will you press forward the message of her founder?

A recently saw a picture and a small caption about a picture on one of the news agency’s the other day.  The picture was of a mother who was changing her baby on a changing table.  There was nothing alarming about the baby or its position because it was securely in place on the table and strapped in accordingly.  All of the materials needed for the changing of the baby were located within the appropriate distance.  There was adequate amount of clearance around the changing table so that the mother could easily maneuver around and keep total control of what was occurring around her and in the immediate area on the changing table as well.  Nothing about this picture was wrong when it came to the procedure and process of changing the baby.

The picture also showed that the mother had a portion of the baby’s jumper in her mouth and it was obvious that she was trying to get the jumper off of the baby.  The mother was pulling the jumper off with her teeth which when a person saw this they might be shocked in horror with the idea that the baby would fall off of the changing table.  But as you scanned the picture all of the previous paragraph descriptions were in place and it seemed like all would turn out ok for the baby.  Then the details about the mother were noticed.  The mother had no arms at all, both arms were not present.  The caption did not say how the mother lost her arms and it really does not fit into that specific picture but it was interesting to see how the mother was completing the task of changing her baby.  She had figured out a way to complete this task with other parts of her body to ensure that the health and well being of the child was staying intact.

The mother who obviously had a physical impairment could have other people take care of the child for her, and I am sure that she has had many offers to this nature in the past.  But it was her determination to change her baby and to care for it as a mother should that that impressed me about her attitude towards not only her family but life itself.  We complain so much about how bad we have it sometimes. Life is never easy and anyone who believes that life does not have any challenges has not been in society very long.  I also find it fascinating that the people that are doing the complaining about life the majority of them do not have any physical malformations on their bodies. These people are usually physically intact and have no real reason of why they cannot make life better for themselves.  Yes, the choices we make can sometimes be not so good, but it is also our choice to stay in the gutter and pick ourselves up and move along down the road.

In the picture it is a given that the baby is helpless and cannot fend for itself.  The baby is very small and a person can tell that it is not more than a few months old.  The baby needs help in everything at this point in its life and is totally dependent on others for its survival; in this case its mother.  It is the responsibility of the mother to find ways necessary in order to provide for the child.  It is obvious that this mother loves her baby enough to make sure that she, the mother, has all of the provisions necessary in order to provide the needs of the child.  It is this love that the mother has for her child that will allow that child to grow up and to know how to set an example for others to see in the future.

My question for my reader is this, what is your desire for the church?  Do you love the Church enough to find a way to advance the Kingdom of God while the world is hurling bombs at you and supplying you worldly options that have only the goal of distracting you while trying to complete this mission of truth?  Do you love the Church enough to stand up and to face the enemy that is attacking the Church in this manner or will succumb to the worldly efforts and accept them into your doors just as the Church is doing? 

If you are committed to spreading the gospel of Christ then this is what Jesus meant by going out into the entire world and preaches the gospel.  It is people like this mother with a noticeable physical ailment that displays the attitude and commitment that no matter what the conditions of their body might be and that an example must be shown to the world that is different than what is being generally offered.  It is this type of person that is not afraid to talk about the truth of a person’s life to the world and to have an adequate and honest answer to the question concerning true direction.  And it is this type of person that will defy the world in order to help others when the world refuses to even acknowledge the person’s existence.  The world does not care what affects it has upon the people that it influences because it knows that one day it come calling for all of the items that it has delivered to them; that is the way the world operates, it is a selfish and manipulative ideological whirlwind that will torture its inhabitants at some point in their lives.

If you do not perform these tasks, or you do not have a desire to perform these tasks then we must agree that you are sitting in the pews of the church and not doing much for the future of not only the Church but for the people of the world also.  This is not the road or the place that God has ordained a Christian to accept or to inhabit.  Jesus was out with the people of the world and establishing a relationship with them, and even though He understood that His time was short it was His desire to teach the people of His time exactly what was at stake. 

We cannot fulfill our mission to the world unless we are like this mother who was determined to change her child, no matter what our limited conditions or surroundings might present.  We can no longer afford to sit back and wait to see what God is going to do in the world for if we choose this attitude then the world will not only die around us but it will totally engulf the Church and tender her death.  It is this type of sitting around that has allowed any person that believes in Christ as their savior to cease their witness to the world and relax in their conformability within the confines of the church.  This action by Christians is incredibly WRONG!!

It is time for us to restore our faith and belief in God and the mission that He has set before us.  It is NOT a time for us to sit back and hope that Jesus will return and watch the world go to hell in a hand basket.  The world’s spirit does not care about your feelings nor does it care when its attacks hit your specific home, community or church either.  We have got to realize that the world is dying and that our spiritual awareness is becoming blinder to this truth each hour of each day that we draw a breath.  God is calling His Church to rise up and to defend what He has established on this planet and it is time that we wake our spiritual ears up enough to hear the calling once again. God loves the world and He loves you as an individual as well.  His desire is for His Church to get off their duffs and to stand up and take the gospel to the world.

What is your desire for the Church and do you share the same desire for mankind that God and Jesus do?  Is the church pew a warm place for you to sit or is it a place of reference of restoration for those who are dying and are in need of true forgiveness and life?  God wants no human to miss out on His restoration and He had made the way possible for everyone not just a chosen or lucky few to receive this great eternal gift.  How can we expect God to pass over our sins when we have deliberately left the mission that His son commanded us to complete?  We need to repent and then start going out to the dying world and showing it that we no longer will stand for its presence within the Church or in the people of the world.  And the only way to accomplish this mission is to know and to feel the desire for all mankind to hear about the gospel of Jesus.

DLB