From: "ServantsHeart" <misfits@...>
The House That God Built  
by Mark Hanby

 The Christian Church today is drowning in a flood of human ideas and programs to bring "God's dreams" to pass. Impatient to impress, we preach on television each week, and our radio programs air three times a day. 

We knock on every door in town, run full-page advertisements in the newspaper, and our full-color billboards blanket every major highway.An endless parade of guest preachers and singers compete for our pulpits and the chance to entertain bloated, infantile believers with an acquired taste for shallow, uncommitted Christianity. Meanwhile, millions are dying of spiritual hunger and thirst outside our bannered walls.

We promote popular spirituality and synthetic sincerity to the point where our members dance gaily from one congregation to the next, nibbling daintily at the latest religious smorgasbord of unanointed presentations and powerless pageantry...The apostle Paul was deeply concerned that the Corinthian church would be "corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ" (2 Cor. 11:3). Have we become so busy with our "houses" that we've lost our focus and singleness of heart? What if, in the busy traffic of our "church activities," we have really lost sight of Him?I believe this is why the apostle Paul wrote, "...but this one thing I do.." (Phil. 3:13). We promote and practice so many inconsistent ideas and programs in our "houses" that it's practically impossible for us to strike anywhere near the target of God's true Kingdom purpose! 

Our aim and direction in the "house" has to become so consistent and so spiritually instinctive that we don't have to think or worry about it.
 
http://www.hanby.org


Mark Sadler
misfits@...