Essential?

"For in Him we live and move and have our being." Acts 17:28...."I would not have you ignorant...." Romans 11:25...The outstanding characteristic of this intellectual age, believe it or not, is ignorance. We do err, not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God." Vance Havner

In this pandemic, there are a great many things for believers to be upset about. The overreach of government. The hysteria of the media. The constantly conflicting "facts" presented by "authorities." Leading them all may be the listing of the coming together of the church as not being "essential," while liquor stores, abortion clinics, and marijuana dealers, where it's legal, are. The fact that politicians of both sides have carried out prohibitions for coming together shows the lack of regard the church is held in. New York's Andrew Cuomo has publicly stated that the recent downturn in Covid-19 cases and deaths is not because of people's prayers, but of scientists and doctors work. Such views have always been in the culture of the world, but it has grown at an alarming rate over the last 50 years. I'm both grieved and angry, because I know, as do legions of believers over all the earth, that as Scripture points out, it is Christ that holds all things together. It is Christ who is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. It is Christ who was, and is, and always will be. People may reject that truth, hate that truth, but it remains truth.....However, I have a very disturbing question for each who does profess and confess Christ as Savior and Lord.....Have we, the church, given the unbelieving culture around us good reason to see us as "non-essential?"

Let me tell you some things that I know are non-essential as concerns the Body of Christ.: Celebrity preachers who promote the idea that Father God desires all of us to be financially well off, fully healthy, and very happy and blessed. Both they, and the self-absorbed, self-indulgent crowds they preach to are non-essential when one compares the message of the cross to their message of comfort and plenty. They and their disciples are not essential to a culture lost in darkness and death and heading for an eternity of the same.

Neither is a timid and fearful priesthood of believers, who are afraid of angering the culture with the full message of the Gospel. Jesus said that those who hated Him and His message would hate us as well when we brought His message to those who would reject us as they did Him. A church that wishes to play to the crowd in order to attract it, is not essential to a lost world.

There are so many more examples of where the church is non-essential, but I will speak that which makes us more essential to this world than all other things: A church fully alive in Him. Fully awake. Full of His Holy Spirit. Presenting to the world a portrait, through the Holy Spirit, of just what the Father and the Son "look like" and who they are. When an unbelieving world beholds such a church, they, even if they don't fully believe, will welcome our presence and ministry. The fact that they are not presently doing so has to be owned by us, at least to a real degree. Are the lives we are living, individually, communally, corporately, essential to the culture around us? Dare we ask the question? Dare we allow Him to bring us to the true answer?

I want my life, the life of my local church, and the life of His universal Body, to be essential to this world. It is, but are we? When we're willing to turn from all that makes us non-essential, we will be so. Are we willing? Are you? Am I?

Blessings,
Pastor O