Outside Influences

I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but sometimes I do realize when things happen in such a way that only God could have been behind them. In those situations, I am always reminded of a definition of "coincidence" I saw many years ago. Coincidence is when God performs a miracle and chooses to remain anonymous.

Yesterday two different emails came into my in-box from unrelated, but high-profile men of God. (Well, the emails came from the same person, but the articles they contained were from those two men.) They had the common thread of being from men who love The Church, the body of Christ, but who are also objective enough to see that the manifestation of the The Church in 2013 is not a perfect Church, "...not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing..." (Ephesians 5:27) Of course these men were speaking to The Church generally, but we must see their words as applicable to the smaller part of the body here.

Os Hillman writes, "In the early church there was an emphasis on developing a heart toward God. This was the Hebraic way...Loss of intimacy with God has been...a result of the influence of the Greek spirit. The primary focus has been teaching and discipleship instead of the development of a personal and intimate relationship with God. This has resulted in a form of religion, but one without power."

Jack Hayford writes, "We're within frightening reach of being able to grow bigger churches while failing to grow bigger people. We are increasingly tooled and trained in technology and management techniques, better resourced with music and media effects, and better housed and staged for added consumer appeal...Amid our heavyweight enterprises at refining style, we are growing weak in substance."

Thankfully it does not take a genius to see these two mighty men of God are asking questions about how The Church is and how it should be. Do they recognize what they are describing are observable affects of religious spirits at work within The Church? Of course, we cannot answer for them, but knowing one of them personally and the other through his writings I feel comfortable saying they both know the truth of Ephesians 6:12, "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." If you are not willing to take my word for it, perhaps you can take their word for it. We are locked in spiritual battle that will likely affect The Church until Jesus returns. At present it is not perfect, but we can make a difference once we recognize the real enemy and fight it wherever we find it. God bless!