SermonIndex Audio Sermons
SermonIndex - Promoting Revival to this Generation
Give To SermonIndex
Discussion Forum : Welcome & Intro : Do we have what the world needs?

Print Thread (PDF)

PosterThread
searchin
Member



Joined: 2006/10/18
Posts: 125
u.s.a. /

 Do we have what the world needs?





Drive by any Walmart store in the country and you will see people by the hundreds even thousands coming through those doors every single day. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week the doors are open. The crowd never quits, and the shoppers never stop. Why? Simply because they are convinced that Wal-mart has what they need. Those shoppers know when they walk through the front doors of a Wal-mart store with a need they can walk out with that need met.


What About
The Church ?
Does the world know that we have what they need? Look around you Sunday night. Do most churches in your city have more empty seats than full seats? Could it be that the world is just not convinced that we, the church, have what they need? Do they know that God is the answer to life’s most complicated questions?
We have men and women from all walks of life comethrough the church house doors week after week with broken lives. Hurting people in search of something real. They are looking for answers. The world is crumbling around them and when they come to our churches seeking a touch from God that would change their lives forever---what do they find? More often than not, I’m afraid, those that come to our churches seeking a life that only God can give, leave desperately disappointed after sitting through 90 minutes of what usually turns out to be a traditional, programmmed ritual which has no more effect on our spiritual lives than a little league baseball game or the local county fair.
Many of our services have become so routine that you could pencil in what will (or will not) happen before the first song begins. How many services have you been in that, when it was all said and done, nothing was accomplished? We sing a few songs, take an offering, and in some churches you might even still find testimony and prayer request; then the preacher gets up, and from behind the pulpit, tells us a story about what God did at one time, or about what Gods going to do someday. Then, a closing prayer and out the door we go, content and satisfied to have church without God! There is so much more to being the church that God has called in these last days to bring glory to his kingdom than what we are trying to pass off as the work of God in the world today.

When We Lose Our Purpose…We Lose Our Influence…
If our churches thrive on tradition and programs, those we come in contact with on a regular basis will never be touched by the true power of God. What about our family and our friends? People that we see day in and day out; how can we let them go to hell untouched by the gospel that we claim gives us the power to know the God of all creation!
A great preacher, Leonard Ravenhill, said “the greatest tragedy in America is that we have a sick church in a dying world. We don’t have revival in our churches because we are content to live without it.” It satisfies the average churchgoer to attend service once or twice a week out of tradition and feel as though they have done God a favor. We sacrifice four hours a week for God and that satisfies our conscience, but what about our soul? Or more importantly what about the heart of God? If God were given full control of our churches today what would happen? We make excuses for all the empty seats around us each week, but the fault sits in the seats that are not empty. The preaching doesn’t drive us to the altar. We remain unmoved by the songs that compel us to worship. We need to earnestly seek the face of God until we hear a word from God that moves us out of apathy, beyond contentment, and to a place where we are not drunken and intoxicated with the cares of this life, but our hearts are filled with the passion and desire to see a real move of God. Not in the future, not one of these days, but right now where we are!
I know it would do our churches a great deal of good to put all our programs of the flesh on hold and give ourselves completely to prayer. Not just the pastor but the whole church. We need to Pray for God to move lead, and direct… and we can’t let up until he answers. Our hearts must be hungry for God, hungry for his presence, and no longer satisfied with church as usual. No longer praying prayers that we really don’t mean, to a God we really don’t know, prayers so empty and shallow that it wouldn’t change the course of our daily life even if God answered them.
God will work in our churches and in this nation when we are no longer willing to be led by men who talk about a God they rarely, if ever, talk to. Men of knowledge, educated by the flesh, full of dry facts, and a head full of knowledge about a God that they have never experienced. God can’t be expalined, he must be experienced! We need men and women who will go into the prayer closet and into the word of God because Jesus promised in Matthew chapter 6 verse 6, “When you pray, enter into thy closet, and when you have shut the door, pray to the father which is in secret; and the father which sees in secret shall reward you openly.”
Nothing God Touches Will Remain Uchanged……
When we touch God he will use our lives and our churches to touch the hearts of those around us. We can have a real, life changing experience with God that goes beyond the four walls of the church and touches the hurting hearts of those around us, but it will only come to a church that has given itself to prayer and obedience. That’s what it takes to touch the heart of God. Then, and only then, will we be the church that God intended us to be and the prophecy of Isaiah in chapter 32 verses 1-2 will be a reality through us. “Behold a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment. And a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert (shelter) from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” As the church of Jesus Christ, his body on the earth today, we can be a hiding place, a place of refuge from the forces of evil that continually strive to destroy our confidence and faith in God. We can be, as Isaiah prophesied, a river in a spiritually dry place, but only if we are filled with the spirit of God that Jesus said in John chapter 4 verse 14 would be a well of water springing up into everlasting life. Again in John chapter 7 verse 38 Jesus said, “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly (or heart) shall flow rivers of living water.”
Everything around us will come to life and be fruitful when it is touched by the living water, which is the spirit of God. The last part of Isaiah chapter 32 verse 2 talks about the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. The church can be that one place where a worn out traveler in a weary land can come and find rest. The life of Christ operating through his body, the church, will cause lost souls to be more important to us than lost revenue. Broken homes, broken hearts, and empty lives will be more important to us than the need to maintain our traditions and social status. God’s heart will become our heart, his desire will become our desire, and his purpose will be our purpose. This is not accomplished by book learning, board meetings, or church growth seminars.
We must give ourselves to prayer and obedience. When we do, desperate lives who need a real touch from a real God will come to our churches and find that … we do have what they need.

Roy Belt 10-18-06













 2006/10/18 13:35Profile





©2002-2024 SermonIndex.net
Promoting Revival to this Generation.
Privacy Policy