Tuesday, December 15, 2009

His hand on the faucet

Jesus builds the church
From John 6:44
"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day”.
From John 12:32
“But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself."

It’s God’s responsibility. All our actions and works mean nothing unless He draws to Himself.

Our attempts to measure our success in numbers and dollars and service ultimately reflect whether the Lord is drawing people to our church because of its program or adjenda? This puts the relationship into the position of being a puzzle. Have we drawn the right conclusion from reading? If our numbers are down or flat we must not be doing it right or Jesus would draw more people to us.

I am a staunch believer that when Jesus enters a life, some form of demonstrative service will result, (weather it is evangelical in nature or humanitarian), because that is the nature of Jesus, to lay down the life. Accept His offer; he will do it to you when and how He chooses.

I suppose if I met Paul we would have a good time. I believe; he was anointed by Jesus Himself, had Jesus’ heart within him, and tried his best to explain what he knew and learned from Jesus to a bunch of humans. But as wonderful and inspired as his letters are the words of Jesus are greater.

I believe the responsibility of the institutional church is to first lift up Jesus, what He accomplished on the cross and why He had to depart so the Holy Spirit could come. I believe if we do that, lift him up, He will draw people to Himself. We then bear witness to the truth of what is happening to them (something I think is critical).Then, I believe as people interact with us and see how we work out our faith, He will speak to the hearts of His people. They must then choose to respond “yea or nay” to His leading (just like always).