What I wish for in Church - Part 1
What I wish
for in Church
(Part 1)
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I hope you
are having a great day today. I have not
written on my blog site for quite a while and before you read this post, please
understand that I am not writing these because I think that I am a perfect
example for people! I have recently
experienced another marital failure. I
think that is the reason why my last post was about brokenness and how God has been
able to use broken people from time to time.
That is my hope also. May God
bless you as you continue to read my posts, though they are from someone
that is on the path to becoming more like Christ, I am most certainly not
very close to the finish line! Thank
God that I did not write a lot about marriage in my previous 46 blogs, or I
would need to close that down… unless I wrote about what NOT to do! : )
Cool, now that I have said that “disclaimer”,
I would like to share a few thoughts that I have had recently. Since my divorce, I have been looking for a
new church to attend. I have visited a
few churches close to where I live, and I have a few thoughts about that
subject. I guess I have come to wish that
churches would do a couple of things differently from what they are doing
now. Before I say anything about what I
think could be better, let me first say that I am so glad to have so many
churches to be able to visit. I think
that since COVID, people have come to realize how much we need others in our
life for encouragement and correction. I
think that there are many things that the churches I have been visiting are doing
very well! I guess what I have noticed are
a couple of things that I think could be better.
Most
churches encourage their people to read the Bible and since that is our
reference point, then I think we should try and emphasize at church – what is
emphasized in the Bible… don’t you?
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The
first thing that I wish churches would do is to spend more time trying to help their
people to become more filled with the Spirit, than worry about trying to
get their building filled with the Spirit!
I cannot tell you how many times I have heard a song trying to convince us that God is “in this place” or singing that God would “fill this place”, or for someone to welcome me by calling the building the “house of God”. The emphasis seems to be more about the building than the people, and most certainly more important than the individual. I am not sure why they are motivated to do this when the Bible does not seem to support this idea.
Based on these verses – the “temple” the place where God wants to live…
is in us. Maybe the greeting in church
should be “Aren’t you glad to BE the house of God today?” When we go to church, if we are believers –
we bring God with us.
You might
think about the verse in Matthew 18: 20 “For where two or three are gathered
together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” This is a wonderful verse and let me tell you
why. It promises that if we want to “feel”
closer to God, then all we need is 2 or 3!
That can happen at home! That can
happen at a coffee shop! That can happen
at work, or anywhere! I think that if
God wanted to make the modern church a special place – then He would have said…
wherever 20 or 30 are gathered, or 200 or 300 are gathered, or 2000 or 3000 are
gathered. Instead, He gives the blessing
to 2 or 3, if they are “in His name”, if they are talking or praying, or
studying about Him. The emphasis is NOT
on the location, but the attitude of the people. We may enjoy going to a big fancy building,
but I am glad that even during times of persecution and suffering, the
closeness of God can be felt by the smallest group possible… 2.
I
am not even going to imply that big buildings are bad, but we need to realize
that it is just… a sheep shed. It is just
a place for God’s sheep to hang out for a while.
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As
Christians, we have the Spirit of God in our life once we are saved, but the Bible
encourages us to be “filled with the Spirit.”
Since we are the Temple of God, then the Spirit of God lives in us. Someone once said that the reason we need to
be filled with the Spirit again and again, is that we… leak! We oftentimes respond to life under more
control of the flesh than the Spirit. We
respond more often like the world, than like Jesus asks us to respond. We need to be reminded over and over and over
again that we need to ask God for more of His Spirit and we need to follow more
obediently in His footsteps.
My
first wish for churches is that they would put the emphasis on encouraging and
teaching and admonishing their people and stop the Old Testament (pre-Christ
coming) emphasis on a building. God says
in His word that he no longer wants the emphasis to be put on the building, but
on each one of us.
Old
Testament – God was FOR man.
New Testament – God was WITH man.
Now – God wants to be IN man.
That
is my first wish for churches. Stay
tuned for my second and third.
Written by Lee Malden 2025
For more information: email lmalden@hotmail.com
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