Friday, June 24, 2011

Churches into vacant lots

I'm thinking that most of my readers, who have been very inconsistent of late, are church-going folks. I'm also thinking that they think that probably is quite enough religion, thank you. But I'm also thinking they're wrong. Look what God said to those people who were in captivity in what had been Babylon: "4-6God-of-the-Angel-Armies gave me this Message for them, for all the people and for the priests: "When you held days of fasting every fifth and seventh month all these seventy years, were you doing it for me? And when you held feasts, was that for me? Hardly. You're interested in religion, I'm interested in people. ... God-of-the-Angel-Armies said then and says now:
'Treat one another justly.
Love your neighbors.
Be compassionate with each other.
Don't take advantage of widows, orphans, visitors, and the poor.
Don't plot and scheme against one another—that's evil.'

The United Methodist Church in Louisiana just raised $1.2 million for the poor, it has been announced. Guess what? It's not enough.
Our churches are feeding 45 persons outside the church on Mondays. It's not enough.
We pay our apportionments and our pastor though the payment of each is a pair of hands around an old neck that is squeezing life out of the church.

When it is enough, you might ask? Never, I might answer.

We are to help the widows, orphans, visitors and the poor constantly, routinely. Loving our neighbors isn't something Jesus came up with on a whim. It's God's wishes. GOD. You know, the big guy in the sky? This is the plan. Help. Someone. Today.

We're not called to simply worship, though we are certainly called to do so. We are called to be of SERVICE. Not a church service. SERVICE as a verb, mind you.

The rest of the passage in Zechariah in the Messages says this: 11-13"But did your ancestors listen? No, they set their jaws in defiance. They shut their ears. They steeled themselves against God's revelation and the Spirit-filled sermons preached by the earlier prophets by order of God-of-the-Angel-Armies. And God became angry, really angry, because he told them everything plainly and they wouldn't listen to a word he said. 13-14"So [this is what God-of-the-Angel-Armies said] if they won't listen to me, I won't listen to them. I scattered them to the four winds. They ended up strangers wherever they were. Their 'promised land' became a vacant lot—weeds and tin cans and thistles. Not a sign of life. They turned a dreamland into a wasteland."

Serious? Yea. Scary? Perhaps.

The fact is God turns churches into vacant lots all the time. No one is immune. It's your serve......

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