Our downfall as the church
Our problem, as it often has been, is that we stop at the “salvation prayer,” and we don’t teach people how to move forward after that—or we don’t know how ourselves.
I remember running down the aisle in an old church at the age of 10 because I felt the presence of God calling me to Him. I knew deep down in my soul that He was the One I was born for, and yet I was met with a pat on the head and a “good job.” Deep within me, I felt sad and whispered under my breath, “Is that it?” As a child, I knew there was more. But why didn’t they tell me? Where was the discipleship?
Today, I witness this as a major problem still in the body of Christ. We do not know how to know Him, and therefore, we don’t show others how. Or we assume they already know, so we say nothing. But the epidemic in our world today is that we are an orphaned people. We do not know our Father; therefore, we are not about our Father’s business. So what must we do?
We are invited into the greatest love story of all time. The God of the universe sent His one and only Son to die on the cross for our sins so that we could be free and so that we could be restored to connection with the Father. We get that He died for us to be free, but we’ve missed the fact that this freedom was to restore us to the Father—not so we could do whatever we wanted with our precious freedom.
Take a look at this Scripture with me:
“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh[a]; rather, serve one anotherhumbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[b] 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever[c] you want.”-Galatians 5:13-17 NIV (Bible Gateway)
So let’s start here. What does it mean to live close to God? Subscribe to my blog and follow along this journey of unpacking what it means to know the Father and make Him known.