Relatives!!

Although we are into our 4th week of our 5+ week cross country trek visiting relatives and sightseeing, this blog is not about those kind of relatives.  It is about the relatives in today's culture.  Everything is relative: morals, ethics, truth.  Nothing is absolute anymore.  In our striving for tolerance, everything has become relative.  Society tells us that what is truth for you, may not be truth for me.  It has permeated our churches in such a way that we have become blind to it.  It is like the frog in the pot of water on the stove, getting warmer and warmer without the frog realizing what's going on.  We no longer have Sunday School teachers or Bible study teachers.  We have facilitators and monitors.  In an effort to include everyone and get group participation, we are told that there are no right answers, everyone's opinion is valued.  All opinions are equal.  Facilitators ask: What does this verse mean to you? What do you think about this verse?  It has come to the point that sin has become relative in many churches today. 

Surprisingly, this is not the methodology used by Jesus.  God does not need your or my opinion.  He does not ask us for our opinion.  Jesus welcomed everyone and hung around with tax collectors and sinners; but he did not deny sin when he encountered it and he did not ask their opinion.  When Jesus encountered the woman caught in adultery, he did not say that it was not a sin.  He said: “go and sin no more”.  The Truth of the Word IS NOT relative.

We are to be “the light of the world”.  We are to be the salt in the world.  People are going to hell because they have not accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord.  If we are to be the light and the salt, we must know God’s absolute truth in His Word.  It must become part of us.  It must become part of our DNA.  We must experience it and live it such that it exudes out from us.  Today’s church in America is not the New Testament church that turned the world upside down. Are we, you and me, living out the Word in our life?  Does the Word exude from us.  Are we being the hands of Christ

Jesus said:

“Believe me: I am in my Father and my Father is in me. If you can’t believe that, believe what you see—these works.  The person who trusts me will not only do what I’m doing but even greater things, because I, on my way to the Father, am giving you the same work to do that I’ve been doing. You can count on it.”

Are we really doing the works that Jesus did?  Read the gospels like it were the first time that you ever read them and then write down what a typical day in Jesus' ministry consisted of.  Compare that to the typical church service in your or my church.  Read Jesus' command when he sent out the twelve and the seventy.  

And we wonder why our churches are dead and not growing!!