“When Jesus found me on the trash heap, I quickly cleaned myself up and left Him waiting for me to come back and let Him do it.” - - - Elder Son
“When Jesus found me on the trash heap, I told Him, get your grimy paws off of me, I will sit here and you can figure out how to accept me dirty, or not at all” - - - - Prodigal Son
We are inundated today with so many different looks to our churches that it is sometimes dizzying to figure out who believes what and why. But often when we go to a church we are confused, or at least I am confused, did we just see Jesus or not? In the pews of churches across America are people who are supposed to be Image Bearers of the Christ they serve, but often we look like someone wholly different than Him. We are either dressed in a tuxedo with not a hair out of place or we are in our PJ’s scratching our butts during the service! Either way, there is a message that is sent loud and clear. Be a Pharisee or be a Sadducee.
Today’s churches are really in a challenging place as the options for finding a church continue to explode in America. The offerings range from fundamentalist to extremely liberal and everything in between. The problem for today’s church is to be somewhere in the middle. It seems to escape most of us that Jesus held to dogmatic knowledge of the law in a grace-filled and loving way. He offered both. Truth with a capital T, he wasn’t a post-modernist...he also loved people most of us wouldn’t associate with. There are many churches in America today that seem to be on one pole or the other, but wasn’t the church supposed to be an offering of the absent Christ?
It seems we are usually telling half the story....
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