In this day and age of everything being questioned, criticized, rebelled against and reorganized, it seems like many decide at one point or another to decide "I can do it better, so I'm going to start a new ministry".

I've been surprised by how many times in the past few weeks I've had to remind people of the "perfect church" addage in their moments of frustration or disdain about "the church" (which more often than not is not the church as a whole but a few individual 503c organizations that have burned them):

"If you ever find the perfect church, don't join it, because you'll just ruin it."

In the last week I've heard from people saying: there isn't one Bible-teaching church in their whole metropolis, so they're going to just start their own ministry; church as an institution is unbiblical so they want to have no part of it; [insert any hot-button current issue here, from homosexuality to "Emergent" churches] just proves that the Bible is no longer relevant and is generally unreliable and untrustable; "I know what the Bible says, but I just feel that ____________"....it goes on and on.

Whatever happened to letting God raise up and bring down?  Why do we feel like we have to do it all ourselves? I know I personally have inserted foot in mouth several [hundred] times, and am likely to do so again even before this new day is through.  But it's beginning to be almost comical how so many who accuse so many others of being faithless actually show their own lack of faith by running on ahead of God and doing their own thing in regards to ministry and Christian fellowship as a whole.

"Without faith it is impossible to please God."  That verse both convicts me terribly and frustrates me to no end.  It convicts me because I know how many times I display my own lack of faith, and thus my own inability to please God in those situations.  It frustrates me because everyone else is the same as me -- but since they're someone else, it always looks worse on them.  :)

I think a lot of times we need to remember we're just a bunch of stinky sinners who STILL day by day are in need of a Savior.  We're not "God's gift" to anything but Himself, and even that boggles my mind.  For some strange reason, He has chosen us stinky people for the eternally-important task of introducing others to Him -- and here we are, flawed as can be, and He has entrusted to us such an important task?  So what do we do?  Argue with each other about whether there should be music in church or not.  Though I don't at all think He would say such a thing, I think He'd be totally justified to look down and say "Freakin' boneheads", because we are.

So while so many people float around trying to gather together others who share the same agendas, it's really easy to get frustrated.  I'm thankful for my hockey video game, which allows me to take out my frustrations on soulless animated characters without fear of jeapordizing anyone's eternal address.  :)  By our love, the world is to know us.  Not as the world loves -- either sappy, always-smiling airheaded love, sensual and carnal love, or agendized "I'll love you as long as you can do something for me" love -- are we to love, but as He loves us.  Does He chastize us when we're out of line?  He does in my life.  Does He edify and build us up?  He does in my life.  Does He say "no"?  He does in my life.  Does He look at us with googly eyes and say "whatever you feel like, my love"?  Not in my life...in my life, He's the master and I'm the servant, and the times when I screw things up the most are the times when I get those two mixed up.  As the line from the song says:

"You leave Jesus on the cross
While you sit on the throne
Put yourself up on that cross
And put your savior on the throne!"

Rebellious, stiff-necked people.  I'm one of them, I know, but thank God Almighty I'm not like I was.  I pray we would all seek to stay at His pace, by His side, not moving or venturing out to start things unless He has told us to do so.  May today be the day that we seek to bless others in their walks instead of focusing primarily on how we can better feed ourselves.

We're to be set apart from the world, not from each other.  :) 

In His service, and yours,
jason