See http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12208&start=20
"How the church looks to me"
2 Nov 09
Prayer of surrender:
Dear God
I do not understand.
There are so many things that I do not understand.
But I choose to trust you.
I realize that you are interested in the one half-dead person lying on the side of the road, to weak, to beaten up, stripped and desperate to help himself.
Rather than nameless faceless masses, Your heart beats for the one.
Thank you for revealing this to me. The simplicity.
The good Samaritan.
I want my life to reflect the behaviour, mindset and attitude of the good Samaritan, towards the one.
Use me Lord. Make me usable material in your hand. Where my attitude and belief systems and disposition is a misrepresentation of Your being, come and prune me and shape me, come and take this rough diamand and cut it, that I can shine with Your brilliance and Your glory.
I want to reach out to "the one" with a servant heart. Not with a "pulpit" "know it all", "talking down", style and attitude, but with that of a humble waiter, serving food to a prince who is seated at the King"s table.
That is how I want to teach, serve and bring Jesus. Jesus the teacher. Jesus the servant. Jesus the meek one.
I want to come to You and learn from You my master what it is to be truly meek and lowly. Lowly. I want to bend more and lower.
That I may know You Lord.
The cry of my heart is to know you.
And if that means that for some time still you want me to sit here with You in darkness, being broken, so I can learn Your ways and Your heart and have true compassion and passion as is fit in Your Kingdom and reveal Your heart, then that is ultimately good, and I praise you in my pain and loneliness.
And if that means that you open the doors now, for the dream I laid before you, to reach out to the broken, and provide for me the spesific requests I listed before you right now, then that is ultimately good, and I thank and praise You that Your name will be greatly glorified through that.
For everything you do is good, and wise. And I trust You my Father.
And if you want me to go through tremendous discomfort before you reveal Your face to me, if you want to hide Yourself from me for a time, because in Your infinite wisdom, You know that is best, then I trust Your goodness, and I trust Your kindess, wisdom and processes and I praise You for that as well.
I surrender my life to You Lord. I surrender my all.
All my ambitions, dreams, desires, needs, wants, ideas, mindsets, beliefs, constructs, concepts about how things should work and be, ideals, body, mind, soul, emotions, spirit, hopes, longings, passions, friendships, family, skills, gifts, talents. I bring it all to You Lord Jesus.
You are my God, Abba Father, and I will serve You and no other, I have made up my mind, and I trust Your grace to help me, never ever to bow the knee to any idol again in my life, and never ever to rebel against you in disobedience and also to worship you in Spirit and Truth the way you intend for me to. Help me please Holy Spirit. I need lots of help. So much help. I can not do this without you. But I so desire to.
You know what I need.
You know what is best.
You know how to work with me.
And You know the best way to reveal Yourself to me.
Have Your way Lord, I surrender.
And where you see any part of me, still hardened, not yet surrendered and yielded, please show me and help me to surrender and yield.
And where you see any part of me, not aligned to You fully, come transform me Lord.
You are so welcome Lord.
So welcome Lord Jesus.
To take full control and do things in whatever way, time and fasion that pleases You.
You are so gentle, so meek, so kind, and longsuffering in your ways. Your joy and peace is beautiful. Your righteousness and justice are the foundations of Your throne. And your love is pure, and perfect.
I want to reveal that.
I want to love.
My life is not my own anymore.
Jesus, here I am.
I need you so.
I can do nothing without You Lord.
I wait on You.
Thank you for Your guidance and leadership.
Thank you for the story yesterday, about the little girl who needed braces, because in love her parents knew it is the time to attend to her crooked teeth. But she cried and felt it so cruel and didn't see it as love at all. And it broke the parents hearts. But they still went through with it. And today she is so grateful. Because they did know best.
Lord, if I need spiritual braces to fix my crooked teeth, then I surrender, I yield, no matter how much the discomfort or the pain. Fix me please my Father. I trust You. And if my spine is crooked and my bones needs breaking and regrowing in proper place, and my jaw is out of place and I need all kind of painful processes to fix me Lord, that I can reveal the beauty of Jesus, then here I am. Lord. I just ask that You hold my hand. I ask that you give me grace. I trust you my Jesus. I know You are good.
I thank you for how far we came.
I lay my life down for love.
I am passionate about knowing you and about loving You, with all my heart and soul and mind and strength and all that is within me.
Help me Lord,
Yours,
Humbly,
Your bondservant
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Matthew 16:25,26
"For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.
What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?
Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?
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I am a Christian, but I am prepared to be honest about the condition of the Church at large.
ReplyDeleteIt is truly sad.
You can tell me if you agree or not.
Jesus tells the parable of the man that is beaten up by robbers, half dead, clothes torn, hurting, hungry, so in need, he can not help himself.
Then came the priest, and he does nothing to help.
Neither the levite.
Only the good Samarathan, that wasn't even part of the temple system. Only he helped. Poured wine and oil. Nurtured and took care of this man.
Now the world is full of beaten up people. Some have depression. Some eating disorders. So much rejection, abuse, abandonment, deep pain. The scars of divorse, loneliness, lovelessness, disappointments, and abuse are all over their innermost being. And they are stripped of their dignity, their glory, their sense of worth, their garments torn.
Now the priest is only interested in his church growing plan and to scor points with God and people, building a "successful" church, with good programs, and good numbers, and as many "converts" as possible.
ReplyDeleteHe doesn't see the wounds of the half dying man. For he is blind.
All he can see is how this man can jack up his numbers.
The dying man can be one of his congregation.
The dying hurting beaten up person often is.
But the priest has the solution when a hurting man complains and the stains of his blood is dripping all over the church.
His answer is "enroll him in another program".
Tell the man step 1 to 10 how to be a better person.
Explain to him the disciplines he needs to apply to "come right".
Shame him if he doesn't "come right" fast, and tell him how important it is that he needs to give to others.
He must learn that mind over matter is important and that other people are more important than him, he needs to learn to be less self-centred and more concerned about others.
"Shame on you, you wretched man, you have been in the church programs for so long now and your still not "right". What is your problem? Get over yourself. Start giving more. Believe more. And you will be less of an embarrassment to us and to God".
The hardness of this words, is shrinking the dying man.
He either ends up leaving the church, bitter and hurting, or he ends up trying more.
The rejection of God and of his people, because he did not adapt adequately for the pain to stop, is just rubbing more salt into his wounds. But he is determined not to disappoint God.
He will pull himself together.
Some can endure longer than others. Many are so exhausted and battered they just fall apart at one point.
Some refuse to be brought to church, they see right through it, and would rather bleed next to the road.
Well, that is not what Jesus taught.
He wanted the priest to stop his big programs and to rather be Jesus to the one.
Jesus is not into making masses, multitudes, of nameless, faceless, converts, in order to provide the right statistics.
Jesus cares about "the one".
And as long as "the one" is shamed for his condition and not nurtured with Jesus and with His love, and as long as he is pushed to do the same to others, to be as hard on the next dying man as it was unto him, the Church will remain broken and wounded.
Perhaps with some facade of smiling faces, hiding the hurt behind a mask, trying to be good. Trying to please. Trying not to be a bother, a newsanse anymore.
Trying to "get with the program".
But I sadly don't see much of Jesus in the Church.
It feels like Jesus has left the Church, looking for Samaritans, that will tend to "the one".
Sadly, the priests are often even more hurt and battered than the rest, and their attempts to help others, may even be, just a way for them to focus away from their own hurt and emptiness.
For many of them have not even had a true and real encounter with Jesus Christ themselves.
Many of them, themselves does not know what it means to eat His flesh and drink His blood and to live from His life and His wholeness.
The world needs the real thing.
It is becoming increasingly clear to me, that ministry, Jesus's style, is not about having mass-crusades or building big churches.
It is also not about "instant results", for even after the dying man received the oil and the wine, the touch of God's healing annointing, he still needed to be nurtured in the inn in the parable.
Jesus's style was serving.
With a servant heart.
With utter meekness.
And Jesus's love is patient, and will stretch itself to the utmost limits,
Stopping everything.
Kneeling down.
Washing the feet
Of "the one".
What is wrong with the world?
ReplyDeleteSo many things are broken.
The entire system leans itself towards an empty rat race and lonely people.
With more than 50% divorse and others just living together with one person after another, who is left to be the good Samaritans.
The system is broken.
And it seems the only ones left still to give some love in the world, is the broken ones that still has something left to give to the more broken ones.
We get born into so much curses and idolatry. Born in a Babilonian system. And to break free from this is not a "1,2,3" thing.
It took many years and many deliberate choices of sinning and sacrificing to idols to get us here.
It will not be a bed of roses for things to totally change.
But one step at a time, one person at a time, one day at a time, this mighty wall of iniquity can be pulled down and hearts can be reached.
It builds up momentum.
We can not change, until we "had it" with how things currently are.
We need to cry out in desperation to God.
But the longer we think this is normal, and remain passive and even accusing of God, of how things are, the less things can change.
But it can.
And He that is in us, the believers, are stronger than he who is in the world.
So we can keep our eyes in full hope and assurance on Him.
And join Him in His plan.
How to bring the world out of this mess.
Even if it may take us sacrifices and persistance.
It is more than worth it.
Prayer
ReplyDelete"Dear Abba Father,
Please heal and resore the root issues that went wrong in this world, in my country and in my world.
I don't ask you for quick "patch-up" solutions.
I undertand that sometimes you require a people to absorb and to rechannel.
And they are the sacrificial lives laid down, for a new beginning to emerge.
If my life have to be one of them, than so be it Lord.
Glorify your name, and bring about fundamental, deep grounded changes, to the systems in this world, and the terrible idolatry and unrighteousness all around.
Stop the spiral effect.
Deflate.
Crush the snowball.
And let Your life and Your principles and love become the standard.
Let us know You, Lord.
O, I long to know You.
Amen.