Monday, August 20, 2018

How You can Kill a Church with Lilies and How You can Help to Avoid It

Every day we live for God. God created us and God can destroy us. It's that simple. We can sugar coat it all we want, but God is the Alpha and the Omega and there is no way to argue that.

Atheism is spreading at an alarming rate. They are, themselves, a religion. I'm not going to get into why I say that because only Christians would understand what I mean and since you do, I can skip it. Suffice it to say, they preach much more loudly than Christians do.

For that reason, I'm here to admonish Christians around the world, to include Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. Why aren't you doing what it says in the Bible? We'll come back to that part.

You see, churches are dying. My own church did. The church I've known all my life. It was my foundation. It was where I learned about Jesus and his sacrifice for us all. Yes, yes, my family taught me too but that's off subject. The point I'm making is that this church was my life and family. It shut its doors and do you know why? Stupidity. That's why.

Yes, it's harsh, but there it is. We allowed the older generation and believe me when I say how much I respect that generation, to rule with an iron fist. They didn't like giving to charity "in lieu of flowers" at Easter. I remember sitting in on that meeting when a kind woman gently suggested it.

You see every year the church would exchange a lily for a donation in someone's name. It was a memorial for Easter. The problem was, that the church had to pay for said lilies (at Easter no less which is pricey enough) and so the church was only getting a small percentage. Not to mention, guess what happened after Easter? All those lilies were thrown out! In the end, the church got their tiny percentage and a charity got nothing.

In fact, the church could have made more money, even without the said charity. But no! They insisted that this was a time honored tradition and must be followed. I was disappointed. They wanted me to become a high committee member because of my age and that everyone knew my family (my children brought us into a 4th generation membership, we were the only ones in that church that could claim that).

I was so disgusted with the blind faith that the older members were steadfastly holding onto. The kind woman, who I will only call C, said that kids are leaving left and right. In order to keep the church, we must make changes but they became hostile in their refusals.

I said I would never become a committee member and I never did. Now the church is gone. Admittedly, I was not in attendance when I heard. I too left, but for geographic purposes. We moved to Mobile, Alabama and my church was in Atlanta. Still, my membership was unchanged.

Today churches are dying and my church is only one of many. It is time that Christians wake up and see what is happening. In today's toxic climate of political correctness, the fundamental rule of Christianity is forgotten. Remember what is said in Ezekiel!
Ezekiel 3:17-19 New International Version (NIV) 17 “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. 18 When I say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them from their evil ways in order to save their life, that wicked person will die for[a] their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. 19 But if you do warn the wicked person and they do not turn from their wickedness or from their evil ways, they will die for their sin; but you will have saved yourself. -- Courtesy BibleGateway.com
This clearly states that we're supposed to be evangelizing. We're not supposed to be sitting around arguing over lilies. We need to make God's word heard and it needs to be heard loudly and clearly!

There have been steps. There are Bible apps that encourage reading and will offer notifications and reminders. We need devotionals to be offered in apps too. Basically, we need an open source Biblical app that will offer devotions, set up prayers, maybe even tag friends that we're praying on their behalf or that we need prayers. We need an app that offers achievements, that helps us learn verses and on and on. We need some great apps that kids will enjoy, that adults can use and so on.

It is time that the Bible and learning from it should be free. Subscriptions are only going to cause a slow death. Ads would be perfectly acceptable provided that they are from Christian content. Maybe it's time for all the churches to come together and create our own seal of approval so that those ads are acceptable. They could be Christian movies, games, books, etc. It shouldn't be limited to non-fiction, though I can certainly understand how it could, but Christian non-fiction is on the rise so strike while the iron is hot!

We need to be in the streets with our own church rally's. We need to have our own demonstrations with banners that clearly proclaim "Walking with Jesus!" Local churches should work together to make community walks such as this to proclaim God's word! Do not let our tiny differences segregate us. Let Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterian, Lutheran, other Anglican and even Catholic churches walk together as one. It's time to unite outside of our congregations and show the world that in the end we are of one mind. Jesus is our savior and though we are fallen men, we are strong in our faith.

That's another thing. We need to preach about the fall of man. Atheists use human sin as a weapon against Christianity but said Atheists know nothing of how the fall of man causes our sin. We are born that way and it is a battle for us and that faith helps us get through it, but not always. That's why we sin all the time! God does not expect us to be like Jesus, despite what Atheists believe and they need to learn this! Maybe then they may become Christians themselves.

We need to target them! We need to have a voice louder than them, but instead we sit by. We choose to instead remember Matthew 5:5 where He says "blessed are the meek". We forget that he listed a number of them. He wasn't saying that we have to be meek, he just is letting them know that they are loved. "Blessed are the poor", he also says and we know we don't have to be poor to be Christians.

Let us come together. Anyone interested should share in the comments. Perhaps we can rebuild Christianity and spread God's word the new way. 

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