Is the Church today putting heads together or sharing a Spirit?
We all agree with the pastor, shaking our heads and screaming. The drummer and the keyboardist know how and where to put in effects each time the pastor drops a ‘bombshell’.
We all go home telling ourselves how Pastor really vibrated. “O boy, Pastor is becoming something else. Pastor made a lot of sense today.”
Yet our lives do not change any bit.
On the other days, it’s the other way round; “Church wasn’t fun today at all.”
Pastors need to quit telling the church things that sound logical alone. Pastors really need to quit reading books and coming to tell the church what they read somewhere.
Pastors need to start ascending the heavens to bring down God’s word for their congregation per time.
I read about Saul the persecutor of Christians. An encounter with God changed his life forever. At that point, Paul the Apostle emerged. How come members leave services, heading straight to ‘Damascus’ to continue their evil works? Saul, I mean Paul could not. Are we sure they met God in the service?
Jacob was the one who said at Bethel; “Surely, the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.” He wasn’t even aware of God’s awesome presence until he began to see the manifestations. His life never remained the same after meeting God there. How come members ‘meet’ God and still go back to their old ways after service? Are you sure God was present at all?
Every person who had an encounter with God in the bible had his or her lives changed. Ours should not be different. Something new should follow us each time we come into the presence of God.
Encounters with God do not just come and go; they make very evident marks on lives. How come you claim the Holy Spirit is always present in your services and your congregation never gets to meet him?
Our gathering unto God shouldn’t be ordinary meetings. Our messages in church shouldn’t just be to impress the people. Our fellowships are not schools. They are not places where we either put heads together or rub minds together. They should be spiritual gatherings indeed, where we share a Spirit. Nobody meets with God and remains the same.
The mad man of Gadara, Jarius whose daughter was raised, Peter’s mother-in-law, the ten lepers, Peter and the other anglers, even Lazarus who was dead will forever remember the encounter they had with Jesus. Should ours be different?
Hebrews 12:22-24 talks about the nature of our ideal gatherings. You’ll be surprised what it says;
“No, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering. You have come to the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God himself, who is the judge over all things. You have come to the spirits of the righteous ones in heaven. who have now been made perfect. You have come to Jesus, the one who mediates the new covenant between God and people, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks of forgiveness instead of crying out for vengeance like the blood of Abel.”
How on earth could you have met with all these people and remain the same?
As a church goer I need to learn, that my “being blessed” in a service, Matins or Mass is never a function of how beautiful the Pastor's preaching was. It is not a function of how badly he preached either. My blessings in church have nothing to do with how good or bad the choir is. My blessings in church depends solely on whom I have gone to meet; the Almighty God.
I should get to a point where either Pastor ‘does well’ or not, I will meet God in church. Either the service goes right or not, I will not leave the presence of God without an encounter. It is God I go to meet in church.
The presence of God, especially the gathering of his holy people remains a place of encounters, a place of change and a place of divine turn-around. If we have anything short of these, something needs to be done fast.
