United We Stand, Divided We Fall...

So, I had another "Footloose" moment at church yesterday. This seems to happen to me when I go the "big" church with my family. I sit there with all of those people (most of them fifty-five or older) and stare at the backs of their perfectly coiffed heads and feel just like Ren; out of place, having an almost out of body experience. Sometimes David Bowie's "Space Oddity" plays through my head. Sometimes it is another song. This, oddly enough, does not happen at my "small" church. I am obsessed when I am there, mostly with the music. One of the ministers, whose wedding I was flower girl in when I was six (five?), wants me to lead worship. I am slightly afraid to do this and have been praying to God about it for the past month or so. I LOOOOOOOOVE music and one of my dearest ambitions for years (before I ever even really started feeling God move in my life) has been to write Christian music. I used to have notebooks and notebooks of praise music. I'm not sure where those notebooks wound up, but I still have tons of poems and song lyrics in various notebooks scattered throughout the house. So I am really feeling like God is calling me to do this at this tiny, tiny, tiny little church.
I am digressing slightly. (I have a tendency to do that. Mostly because I like to use the word 'digress'.) Our "big" church has an interim pastor and he was telling us that Sunday marked his 56th year in the pulpit and he gave the same sermon Sunday that he did his very first day. I thought that was touching. God, working in His mysterious ways as usual, really spoke to me in this message. I am always a note taker. Always. You should see all the notes I have from Sunday mornings throughout just the past seven months. So, I thought to myself, God certainly is trying His best to use me in so many ways lately. First of all, there is my aforementioned problem of leading worship. Second, I am working really hard to start a non-profit to help rape victims, in particular rape victims that have a resulting pregnancy. Third, I feel like God wants me to do something with all these notes I take. Ta-da! My blog! It's a perfect fit.
Our pastor was saying that people seek so many things of the flesh these days: fame, fortune, attention, whatever. That the younger generation (I took this as a personal affront as me and two other people are the only people there between the ages of 16 and fourty-five) is anti-Christ. Not like, THE Anti-Christ. He meant that there are growing groups of people that believe that the church is an institution that has much wrong about it. (Let me explain for a minute. I took this personally because it seems like every where I go, every church I go to in the past seven months or every lesson I listen to online, the pastors and teachers are blaming higher education for a lack in morality or Christian-ness. This is absolutely disgusting to me as a college graduate and, not to toot my own horn, someone is somewhat cleverer than the average person. It is not because of people being more educated. It is because of our culture!) He was right, of course. (Proving my higher education, ignorance, right?) There is much wrong with the church. He admitted as much! But, as he went on to say, that is because we are all imperfect. I absolutely agree with this. If you don't think there is a lot wrong with the church, then I think there is something wrong with you. There is bound to be problems when a bunch people (who are only human after all) gather together in one building, sharing our sins with.... I hope God, but most the time, each other. People in the church are always grabbing for power, gossiping, back-biting, etc. Like Joyce Meyers said in one lesson, sometimes people leave church Sunday mornings and go out with each other to lunch and wind up eating the preacher for their meal. We are not perfect. We are human. Sometimes we are fools who build our houses on the sand, some times we are wise and build our houses on rock. That is why God laid the foundation of the church for us. That foundation is Jesus Christ. Look at 2 Timothy 2:19 and Hebrews 11:10.
One of the roots of Catholicism is that there is no salvation outside of the church. This has been stated in various ways from Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian of Carthage, and several others. Martin Luthur, the father of Protestanism himself, stated that anyone who find Christ must first find a Church. The pastor said something that absolutely struck home with me. You have to give yourself to Christ. If you are just dependant on your membership in a local church, then you are destined to go to Hell just the same as a guy who sits at home on Sunday and watches NASCAR. Maybe even more so. That guy may have Christ in his heart and just has not found a church where he feels at home. I tried for a while to just be active in a church and let my membership in to that church be my salvation. I was even baptized there. But I did not truly have God in my heart, my soul, in my mind. I was simply going through the motions. You can't truly belong to God unless His spirit calls to you. The Spirit will work on you and all you to see your life's conditions.
Some people think that you can find salvation by doing good works. Apparently the pastor did not agree with this, but I do. I think in order to recieve salvation you absolutely must do good works. That's not the complete way to find salvation because I also believe that you have to absolutely had yourself over to God. But, I mean, think about it. How can possibly produce the good fruits of the Spirit without doing good works? I think that that would be impossible. We as humans are completely self-centered. That is our entire problem. There isn't anything wrong with the outward look of love. We shouldn't always consider ourselves, we should consider one another. I know that I have been guilty of this. For many years my mode was survivalism. I did things simply to survive: lied, stole. Just to survive. And merely surviving is no way to live. That is not the way to be satisified. No one can find fulfillment in that way. Hebrews 10:22-24 tells us, "Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;)And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works".
As Christians, our hope lies in the resurrection. That is what the Easter season is all about. This is more important than even Christams. Yes, God gave us Jesus, but also He took Him from us. He died for our sins. How lucky are we? How much must God love us to do that for us? As imperfect as we are, we are so blessed! The pastor said one other thing that stuck with me: "His blood cleanses us, the cross illuminates us, and His friendship strengthens us". Praise God for that!