Satan is winning…and it’s not even close…

Let me preface this by saying that I’m the son of a fire breathing, corn shuckin’, pulpit pounding Southern Baptist Preacher.  My Sundays were filled with ‘Jesus-as-sweet-as-honey’ and ‘hell-so-hot-you-could-feel-the-heat’ messages, with every single one of them wrapped in a blanket of love and care from a true pastor’s heart.  And throughout the week, there was a standard in our home…if you preached about it and ‘Amen’d’ it on Sundays, then you lived it Monday through Saturday.  Period.  In all actuality, it wasn’t just in our home.

Those days are now gone.

I’ve been in full time vocational ministry for nearly 30 years.  In fact, it’s been much longer if you consider the fact that I was a piano-playing-song-leading 12 year old while my Daddy was pounding pulpits into splinters.  Suffice it to say, I’ve seen a lot…and have had way more than my share of experiences. 

Too many…

Man, I miss those days!

We are living in a day and time when there is a tremendous battle raging inside our churches and we don’t even realize it!  Jesus said in John 10:10, that “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy…”  Truer words have never been spoken.  In fact, this could realistically be called the ‘devil’s purpose statement.’  His entire focus is to ‘keep lost people lost, and to keep the Christian from being effective.’  He is a master of deception, deceiving thousands … if not millions … of church members into thinking they’re Christians.  Billy Graham once said on national TV that he believed that 85% of church members were on their way to hell. 

Long before Dr. Graham, Jesus unpacked this way deeper in Matthew 7:21-23:

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.  Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’  And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”

What we are seeing is an epidemic of Biblical proportion of church that are filled…literally saturated…with lost church members. 

Don’t take my word for it.  Look around…

Jesus even talked about this in His parable of the Wheat and the Tares in Matthew 13:24-30.  This parable is often referred to as ‘The Parable of the Unsaved Church Members.’

Now don’t get me wrong.  I have no problem with pastors in jeans, stages with multiple instruments or media used to it fullest capacity.  In fact, I don’t even own a pair of dress pants. 

The problem lies with the fact that churches are more interested in being culturally relevant and politically correct more than they are the proclamation of the full breadth of Scripture.

The powerful writers of the New Testament like the Apostle Paul, Simon Peter and James were explicitly clear that ‘if you claimed to be a Christian, then you need to act, talk, and live like one.’  They pulled no punches.  In other words, ‘if you talk the talk, then bless God walk the walk!’  No matter what everyone else thought, or what the government indicated.

But as you look at today’s church, the pews are littered with people who choose church only as option.  If their kid has a ball game or ball practice, forget it…they’re gone.  If it sprinkles three drops of rain, they’re not coming out…they might melt.  If the fish are biting, their Ranger boat is their pew.  Got to get in one more weekend at the lake.  Kohl’s is having a huge sale. 

Starting to get the picture?

Church should NEVER be an option.  If church to you is an option, you have a heart problem.  And you distinctly have a priority problem.

Pulpits are filled with men…and women…who are giving ‘feel good talks’ with warm fuzzy messages, because they don’t want to offend anyone.  And heaven forbid, calling a sin, a sin … somebody’s going to get mad!

I grew up on sermons and Bible studies that were ’10 miles deep and 1” wide’.  Now more and more messages are ’10 miles wide and 1” deep’.  (If you know, you know!)  And, forget about the exegesis of Scripture.  Pastors are preaching the same message week after week and only exchanging the Scripture text.  It’s now, all about performance and entertainment. 

Disillusion at its finest.

We have to remember that being a church member doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than standing in a garage makes you a car.  When we gave our life to Christ and accepted His gift of salvation, we began a lifetime journey of sanctification…of holiness…of being set apart from this world. 

The life we live, the things we do…and don’t do, the words we say…and don’t say, the places we go, and don’t go should reflect Jesus 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  No exception.  Your daily life should be a walking, talking proclamation of the Gospel, consistently pointing others to Jesus.  Billy Graham said, “We are the Bibles the world is reading; we are the creeds the world is needing.  We are the sermons the world is heeding.”

We have work to do.  Many, need salvation.  I dare say that if we can just get the church members saved, we would have revival across our country. 

Ya’ll, we are losing the battle!  We’ve got to realize that we’re being out strategized and out flanked each and every day by our enemy.  We’ve got to stop playing church and start being the church.  No close seconds!