Monday, September 03, 2007

Holy Discontent

“The person who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to discover places no one has ever been before.
Creativity in living is not without its attendant difficulties. For peculiarity breeds contempt. And the unfortunate things about being ahead of your time is that when people finally realize you were right, they’ll say it was obvious all along.
You have two choices in life: You can dissolve into the mainstream, or you can be distinct. To be distinct, you must be different. To be different, you must be what no one else but you can be.”

As I was at a church planting meeting one of these days, I heard a testimony of someone that has problems with some stuff that happens with the church. That really caught my attention, because I have been a big critic of the mainstream religion nowadays.

Lately I have been wondering why I am so critical about the church. My wife also has been questioning this more and more, and I cannot explain it to her. It is hard for me to explain it to anyone, because it is hard for me to understand what the problem is.

During these past 3 weeks I have even questioned my Christianity. The deal is this: I don’t like to see the wrong in the church and the body of Christ all the time; it is time consuming, and not very well appreciated. I feel like an outcast sometimes, and trust me, that is not a very good feeling. I have prayed many times asking God to allow me to conform to the patterns of what our Christianity became. I would like to be able to just go to any kind of church and appreciate it like most people seems to. I’ve asked God many times to make me blind to all the wrong and mistakes that the church does. The interesting thing is that He is not blinding me or allowing me to conform, but I am becoming more and more edgy. So, I came with 2 options: all this is either a God given thing, or I am not a Christian and am just trying to create dissent in the body of Christ. The problem with this is that I believe with all my heart that I am a Christian.

So if I rule out that I am not a real Christian that means that God is allowing me to go through this. Talking to a friend of mine, he told me that I do not babble against the church with disdain, but every time that I say something, he sees and feel my love towards the church. He told me that I am going through something called HOLLY DISCONTENT. I laughed out loud when I heard that, but the more I thought, the more I realized that he was right. I am discontent with what I see, and God is allowing me to see all this.

This HOLLY DISCONTENT is like a curse though, because it makes me feel like a Mac computer: Mac Internet browser, the Safari, is not compatible with a lot of web applications. You can’t find Mac software and components anywhere you go. Very few people understand how to run a Mac, so when you have questions, the answers are very limited.

But I promise that for now on I will be content with my HOLLY DISCONTENT. I don’t know where this will take me, and pray for God to lead me. I believe that God has something stored for me; otherwise He would not allow me to go through this.
What and why is my HOLLY DISCONTENT? The church is not effective. The conventions (SBC, BGCT, CBF and others) are not effective. My fellow Christians are not effective. The messages preached from the pulpit are not effective. Our discipleship is not effective. Our church programs are not effective. Our Christian events are not effective. Our tithe is going to non-effective ministries. Our leaders are not effective.

We are failing in all aspects.
Let’s use evangelism as an example: when was the last time that you shared Jesus with someone? When was the last time that you lead someone to Christ? When was the last time that you sacrificed some leisure time to go visit and tend to the poor? When was the last time that you passed a track to the supermarket clerk? When was the last time that you visited all the neighbors of your street, and gave them some cookies or something like that?

What is the point of spending enormous amounts of time in bible studies, leadership meetings and ministerial positions if none of the above was part of your life on the past week, month or year?

Many pastors, board members, elders, conventions directors and staff are on the same boat. They only minister inside their box, and sometimes even use the excuse that each one of us have a gift, and “his gift is to be behind the desk making the plans or coordinating.”

My boss told me these days that I have the gift of evangelism, because I lead 80% of the girls of our ministry to Christ. I told her that I don’t have the gift of evangelism. I really don’t. What I have is the burden for the unsaved, for the lost, and I somehow understand that I must share the gospel; I must talk to others about Christ. Am I scared of the ridicule? You bet! Am I scared of being ostracized? You bet! Do I feel bad to have a door shut on my face? Yes, I do! But I have to share about Christ. Christ is the only way, and if we Christians don’t share, who will?

Only 2% of Christians share their faith. Are you one of them?

Read this article: http://www.afajournal.org/2005/march/3.05cameron.asp

That was only evangelism; there are many other failing that we Christians are doing. To fail is not the problem; the problem is the blindness that we are on the right path, when we are not.

I spent 5 years on a Bible College. I experienced grace over there, but I was never taught in deep the significance of grace in a person’s life. Seminaries and bible colleges continue with that old and defeated theory that “we are sinners saved by grace”, or that we have a “sinner nature”. How can I have a sinner nature if I have the nature of Christ and the Holy One lives in me? How can I be a sinner and a saint at the same time? I am not a sinner, I am a saint. Why is this so hard to hear, and even sound a sacrilege? Because we have been mistaught for decades, our theology is poorly divided into sacred and mundane, and we are scared of talking about the freedom, the total freedom that a Christian have in Christ. Instead of teaching victory in our churches, we are teaching defeat.

I am sick and tired of seeing new born Christians being taught a theology of defeat. I am sick and tired of seeing our leaders fighting over doctrines, when both of them practice a defeated theology. I am sick and tired of the divisions in the body of Christ; not just the conventions divisions, but the racial divisions, the denominations divisions and the economic divisions. First Hispanic Church, First African American Church, First Brazilian Church, First Korean Church, and others are separatists, segregationists’ churches. The body of Christ is not united. BGCT members don’t like to even hang out with SBC members.

I will not conform to the patterns of this world. My mission in earth is way bigger than this circus that is happening right now.

And then I keep receiving blogs, journals and other Christian infomercials about how this or that ministry is achieving well their goals.

"Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have discarded everything else, counting it all as Skubala ! - so that I may have Christ"

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