In addition to my post yesterday, my heart breaks for the Church Body. We have allowed ourselves to become so fragmented, segmented and divided by the religious spirit and its cronies that we seem to have forgotten what it means to love one another. Modern technology is a wondrous thing, offering different mediums by which we can connect socially, educational opportunities at our fingertips, global news reporting, etc. All in real time, mostly. These are some of the positive things, but there are negatives. Much of what we can access may not always be true. Things such as editing for time/content, photoshop techniques, false reporting for ratings, writing opinion based articles and perpetrating them as fact, and the like are rampant and usually posted in prominent places. We need a very discerning spirit to separate fiction from fact.
There is no exact script for preaching the Gospel, nor is there a cookie cutter way to evangelize. Papa created us as individuals who react in different ways to different stimuli, and we perceive things differently from each other. This is part of Creation. All one has to do is really look at things and notice that though they are alike, a closer inspection reveals subtle differences. I’m convinced Papa loves variety. Based on this, I have always believed that since we are the Church and we have been given diversified individual gifts, our actual church houses will also be given these gifts.
Papa gave us apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers (Ephesians 4: 11-16), to me it makes sense that we would have churches gifted in one or more of these gifts. Not every church is evangelistic, nor every pastor, we need churches that can be nurseries for the new believers, but then we also need churches that are meaty enough to strengthen us. As a body, we need churches flowing in all the gifts or even some of the gifts because we need to learn together how to walk this out and advance the Kingdom. This is how we grow! We must not be so judgmental about what one church does that we surmise it shouldn’t do. We are to be fruit inspectors, not crap talkers about other ministries.
It is a form of pride the religious spirit stirs up, and it loves when we get all judgey about someone else’s ministry. Especially when modern technology feeds our negative attitudes about it. Keep in mind, technology allows for something called “editing” and the religious spirit loves to “edit” to the point all that’s left is the negative. And then it will parade its point so that the “moral and righteously angry” Christians grab hold and begin to tear others apart. It has essentially programmed us to focus on the negative and overlook the positive.
Church, we really need a heart shift. We must stop letting this spirit run rampant by stopping the spread of negativity about different ministries. It doesn’t matter what they do, they have to answer to God. If we don’t like what we find, we must take it to God in prayer, not defame them. We don’t know who these other ministries reach, but we know Papa didn’t make any junk.
The only opinion that matters is Papa’s and that is good enough for me.
1 Samuel 24: 6-7 “And he said to his men, “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my master, the Lord’s anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord.” So David restrained his servants with these words, and did not allow them to rise against Saul. And Saul got up from the cave and went on his way.”