Strengthening the Local Church
Overcoming
Passivity
Intro
Of course we could name a million things that a man
should do to strengthen the local church, like praying, becoming humble, paying
tithes, studying the word of God, actually reading the Word of God, participating
in praise and worship instead of looking around, taking leadership, while
you’re in leadership – being submissive to your leaders, becoming servants –
but I think instead of talking about all those things that people know about
and are just too lazy or rebellious to do – I think we can do what men ought to
do best – and just do it.
If you came to this workshop just so your wife wouldn’t
yell at you or if you came hoping you could sit down and maybe if you’re really
religious, throw out a few “amens” – I don’t want your amens, I want your
attention - you have a problem. It is a
disease. Yes, you have a disease. That disease is called “A Passive Spirit”.
A Passive Spirit
What is a passive spirit?
Well, a, it’s not a demon and b, it’s not something that you’re stuck
with. Yes, you are infected, but just as
a body fights infection – you too can fight this infection.
Let me tell you how you may have become infected. You may have come to this country looking for
a better opportunity and wanted to support your family. So, you began working very hard in the
harvest – 8-10 hour days 6-7 days a week.
All the while, you have a family and you call yourself a Christian. After a few months had gone by, one Sunday
you told your wife, “I’m not going to go with you to church today” I worked so
hard this week and I need a break. And
it is true that every Christian is supposed to take breaks, like the Bible says
“the Sabbath was made for man and not
man for the Sabbath”. So you took
your break. And it was nice. It was deserved. And it continued. It became easier to sit on the sofa, or lay
in bed or talk in the park than go to church.
You became infected with passivity and it caused you to forget about
your God-given responsibility to be a good steward of your family, of God’s
things and of this earth.
You equated the work that man has to do with the work
that God asks us to do. You figured that
since you had worked so hard in the week, God must understand that you can’t be
working for Him too. You bought and
chose to believe the lie that working for money gives you the right to skip out
on working for God. You were wrong. You were infected.
Others
of you, who dared to call yourselves ministers and lay-pastors became infected
when you started listening to yourself instead of listening to God. You began to say things like “that pastor is
no better than I am – I think I could do his job better than he could
anyway”. And while you were right about
the pastor being just a man – you chose to forget the part that “every authority comes from above” and that
leaders of the church are anointed in their position and that God will
carefully watch over his anointed – no better illustration of that is found in
2 Samuel 1:14-17 “14 David
asked him, “Why weren’t you afraid to lift your hand to destroy the LORD’s anointed?”
15 Then David called one of his men and said, “Go, strike him
down!” So he struck him down, and he died. 16 For David had said to
him, “Your blood be on your own head. Your own mouth testified against you when
you said, ‘I killed the LORD’s anointed.’”
You also decided that it would be okay to
disobey God and not give your tithes and offerings first and foremost – the full
10% - BEFORE – you bought groceries, went out to eat and went to hang out with
friends. Our temples are run down, out
of date and honestly shameful to look at and it is because people think so
highly of themselves that they think the Word of God doesn’t apply to them! They
think they can disobey by stirring up people against the pastor, pastor’s wife,
pastor’s children, the board, the leaders, the volunteers and the
district. They think they can get away
with not obeying God by giving of their time and their resources – yes, that
means money – and not suffer the consequences.
Maybe actually in truth – they haven’t gotten a passive spirit – they’ve
just gotten an evil spirit! Because now
instead of fighting against Satan and his angels, our true enemy, we fight against
each other – and if you have done that – and I have at times – you ought to be
ashamed, you ought to be face-down, humble and asking God for forgiveness and
then knock it off!
Transition
Many
people sit there in broken marriages, with ruined finances, terrible children,
nearly miserable and are trying to figure out what went wrong. You gave up! You gave up! You became infected and gave up. You didn’t go to the doctor and you didn’t
try diet and exercise. You gave up! You didn’t run to the Lord to find out what
went wrong and what you were supposed to do – you didn’t pray and you didn’t
fast and you didn’t serve and you didn’t fight!
You allowed a passive spirit to take over you who is called to be a mighty warrior of God. You put down the sword of the Spirit, you put
down the shield of the faith and you said “the helmet of salvation makes my
forehead sweaty” and you took it off!
You said “the breastplate of righteousness is so heavy and difficult”
and you took it off! You said “the belt
of truth is pretty inconvenient and my fat hangs over the edge of it” and you
took it off! You said “I don’t want to
go walk around and do my job, I want to stay here” and you took of the shoes of
the gospel!
So
you weren’t wearing armor anymore, and you didn’t have your weapons anymore –
and just because you took them off doesn’t mean that the war had stopped – it
just meant that you had given up! You
gave up your responsibility, your job, your blessing, your family, your divine
relationship, your salvation and your blessed hope so that you wouldn’t have to
fight! You have a problem!
Proverbs
26:15 says the lazy person is puts grabs
the food on his plate but is too lazy to bring his back to his mouth. This isn’t talking about just food! The Word of God, the Bible, The Verb, Jesus’
love written down is food for the soul – yet so many are who have the Bible in
their home, at times in their hand – they’re too lazy to bring the bible up to their
eyes to read it, study it, memorize it.
They have spiritual food in their hands and they are too lazy, too
disinterested, too distracted to read it.
The reason that person cannot lives like a fool is because they do not
have the Word of God hidden in their hearts.
Men,
it is past time, but not too late to step up and become not just men by gender,
but men by character – Men of God!
No comments:
Post a Comment