Is Church Broken? - Part 3

In part 1, I laid out what I thought were the issues in the current Church model.

In part 2, I said that there is a better way for Church to be done.

The better way is not anything new at all. In fact, its a very old way that has just been forgotten.

Why these methods were left behind, Im not sure.

Maybe like the religious leaders of Jesus day, church leaders feared loosing control over their Church and their people.

Maybe Church leaders fear losing donations and people if they do too much. Its hard to say exactly when and why the problem happened.

But that does not matter. Our society loves to play the blame game. We are always looking for someone to blame for what is wrong.

Most of the time, to find the problem, we only have to look in the mirror. Just like the late Michale Jackson told us.

Before I get to the answer, I want to lay more foundation by answering the bullet points I posed in Part 1. In going through these, we might even find that we have stumbled on the answer.

• When did our faith die?

In our Church services, we pray. We should certainly pray. Prayer is how things get done. Prayer activate the power of God. But we are missing a part of this process.

A part of this problem is that we dont let God talk. But Im not going to put that here. I will just link it and you can read it if you wish. Its called Let God talk too.

The part that is missing is letting God talk to. But this is also not the end of the process.

When we pray, we are having the faith that God will do something. We ask as though it was already done. That's faith.

But this is only part of Faith.

According to James 2:14-26, faith without works is dead.

In fact, this is a reoccurring theme throughout the entire Bible. What is Faith, what is not Faith, and how to have faith. I will do a study on that later. When I do, I will link it here.

In order to fulfill the requirements of faith (Have a real and genuine faith), we must put action to it. If we dont put any action (Work) to it, then according to God, its a dead faith.

A dead faith is completely worthless. Id go as far as to say that if you are not putting action to your faith, then its better not to have it all.

In fact, we have only to read another part of the Bible to confirm this principle.

Revelation 3:16 I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.

Vomiting is a very violent action. Meaning that not only will God not put up with someone that is Lukewarm, he will expel them with great violence and force.

We can easily apply this same concept to Faith. If we don't have a living, breathing, working faith, God will have nothing to do with it.

So if we put this all together, we learn that its not enough to pray. Faith requires action to that prayer. So when we pray, we have to do something.

How about a few examples?

If you are praying for someone that needs clothes, you need to find that person clothes yourself. Maybe from your very own closet, which is probably overflowing with clothes you don't wear anyway. Or you can ask someone else that has the ability to give clothes to that person.

If you are praying for someone that needs food, find that person food yourself. Maybe from your own frig, which is probably overflowing with food you dont even need. Or you can direct that person to a food bank that can help them.

If you are praying for a job for someone, you need to try to figure out a way to help that person find a job. Maybe with the place that you work at. Or you can send them to the employment office. Or you can create a resume for that person and help them mail it out to places that need people.

If you are praying for healing for someone, dont stop with just an easy prayer. You can find out more about that persons illness and find a them a good doctor. Or research the disease for them and help them understand how to deal with it Or Give them money for medicine

The bottom line to all this is that if you pray for someone, or something, the other part to the process is action (Works)

Put some action to your prayer and do something about it.

According to the Bible, if you dont put some action to your prayer, then its a dead prayer.

The bible says that if you see a need and dont have compassion, then the love of God is not in you.

Having compassion for someone is more than just a feeling. Its the same as Faith. We learned that Faith without Works is dead.

Real, living, breathing compassion also requires action to be put to that feeling. To have the compassion feeling, but do nothing with that feeling, is to be no better than the world!

Compassion requires doing something. So when God says that to see someone in need, we should have compassion for them, he was not meaning that we need only that ooey gooey mushy feeling.

If you see someone in need, and dont do anything about it (Action), the love of God is not in you!

Continue to Part 4