Here’s a guest post from my friend Darren. Darren always says it as he sees it 🙂
“Church shouldn’t be a place where we must have ‘stiff upper lips’. Where we quietly and orderly listen to mundane preaching and have to have 4 songs and a ‘4-point sermon’ otherwise it’s not ‘biblical’ or to the standard of our denomination; where we have to act in a certain way as if everything is good and right otherwise we will be seen with ‘sin’ and a lack of ‘faith’. Don’t we realise that ‘preaching’ and ‘4-point’ sermons aren’t the ingredients to pleasing God?! FAITH is that key! Faith isn’t words or sitting quietly on the pew behaving ‘good’. Faith is action, putting your neck and your reputation on the line like Noah did based on God’s personal promise to him! Oh how the church needs to wake up! Send revival now Lord!
“Church shouldn’t be a place where we have to behave in a certain ‘pattern’ with ‘order’, or where we do things out of ‘duty’ as opposed to the heart! Such things quench the human spirit as well as the Holy Spirit! Such things were demolished through the cross and were a direct enemy of Jesus Himself!
“Church should be a place where we, as honest humans, can openly and freely confide in each other our troubles and weaknesses, where we can find comfort and encouragement despite the fact that we all make mistakes from time-to-time, ALL weak and human, including the pastors and leaders (oh to whom can they turn to for prayer? I am here to listen if that means anything – although I am not perfect either but I offer my shoulder!). Church should be the ultimate place of asylum for those in their struggles!
“Church should be a place where you can express your feelings, your frustrations, your anxieties more than any other place on earth! Church should be like the Cities of refuge in the OT, not a court room. Church should be a place of FREEDOM! ‘If you are free, you are free indeed’… not just from sin but from the religious spirit of ‘greater than thou’ and condemnation too, as well as the ‘living a perfect life because Jesus set you free!’ nonsense. No one can be ‘holy’ until He that is perfect comes again! Oh we need freedom to share!! True victory comes at that point, not before! Only then can we really, truly uphold each other. Only then can we really love each other in spirit and truth!! Church should be more full of LOVE than anything!!!
” ‘Here is love, vast as the ocean!’. Oh how will we learn! Jesus within us creates that ocean of love within us! Anything that opposes this is not Jesus! ‘If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal!!!’
“There is NO condemnation here! Here, within me, is love – vast as the ocean”