Sunday, July 31, 2016

The Church in America

In the past I have indulged myself with continual criticism of the Church in America. I confess and repent of it. In recent times i have been led to begin my daily time of intercession by praying for the Church here. The verses that convicted me on this are the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:1-2. "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you." (ESV) How easy it is to read over His words. The reality is that the church in America is His church, and Jesus tells us in Matthew 16:18 that "I will build my church." On the individual level it is also so easy to criticize because only Jesus is perfect; the rest of us are deeply flawed. anything that we hear or read except for the Bible has some mixture of error, and we cannot claim to intepret and practice the Scripture perfectly. Another reality is that it is far easier to criticize someone else... until we try to do what they are doing. I had a lot of criticism of pastors until I tried to shepherd God's people and learned how difficult it is. I see that i have not posted for almost two months. In this period i have tried to concentrate on doing God's will rather than writing about it. Am very thankful that He is faithful in my life. Yesterday morning I had something that I will call a vision. This is unusual for me. I saw myself standing alone before Jesus at the great white throne judgment. ( Revelation 20:11) My eyes were on the ground and I felt like the man in Luke 18:13 who cried out "God be merciful to me, a sinner" although I said nothing. I saw Jesus come down from His throne, advance toward and hug me. I wept and thought, "God is hugging me." I don't know what will happen on that day but this gave me wonderful comfort.