Love Without Comprimise

The thought just hit me; imagine if we still communicated by letters like they did in the first 400 years of the Church. Imagine that the elders of your church would go out on missions and write back to you. Imagine what they would say when they were in your presence.

Often times we read the bible and we think of the words that are there and what they meant but what if we were to take a look at the Bible on a deeper level. What if we looked at how we live today and think about what Paul would write to us as a church.

What would Paul say if he were writing to your church today? The apostles had a very special way of communicating with their churches and today’s churches might do well to ensure they are not falling into any of the ways that Paul wrote about to the churches but there are also problems facing churches today that we must be cognizant of.

Many times, we cannot see the problems inside our own church but we are quick to point out the issues in others. Sometimes, it takes an outside view to make us aware of where we may be missing the mark. It may be that we truly cannot see the problem at hand or it may be that we have chosen to not see or recognize what is going on. We have grown so comfortable that we turn a blind eye towards our problems and pretend that everything is okay.

All of this has made me think about how these churches felt when they got these letters. I mean everything is going well and then one day you get a letter from Paul and in your excitement you gather everyone around it and you start to ready.

I, Paul, write this letter to you to encourage you…”Oh boy, this is going to be good”. Then he continues

Stop doing this and if you do not turn away from this then bad things are going to happen and stop doing that and you must start doing this.

What you thought was going to be some great letter from Paul has turned out to be nothing more than instructions and admonishments. Yeah, he commends you for what you are doing write but he lets you have it in the areas you are straying from the gospel.

Looking at the condition of today’s church I can only imagine that Paul could have wrote a few more books if he were still around:

If you were taking an honest look at yourselves do you think Paul would need to write you a letter or even worse make a personal visit. If he did what would he say; what area would he compliment and what areas would he admonish. These are hard questions to answer when looking inward but if we truly want to get down to following God then we need to ask these questions and try to find honest answers.

Yes, we can study the letter to the Corinthians or the Ephesians and learn something from them but what if the devil is leading us away from God through a different path than he led them? We have to see where we are falling short of scripture and get back on track.

In order to do this I think the Church and Christians in general have to do a few key things:

1. Start being honest about our struggles. We are not doing ourselves or anyone else a favor when we hide the struggles we are facing. The world needs to see that we struggle to and that church is not the magical place full of happy perfect people. The world needs to see that it is okay to be broken, to be hurting, to be anything besides perfect. The world needs to see that the church is a place of imperfect beings who are looking to God for a better way.

2. Start reaching out. Recently I had a discussion with some other believers and while discussing the shrinking crowds inside the church the thought hit us that instead of focusing on how to grow the church we should be focusing on how to increase our ministry in the community. A church body should be active in the community and should be a beacon of light to all who can see its light. You want to fill up your pews on Sunday, be part of your community on Saturday. 3. Stop turning away from Scripture. Today it seems that many churches across American are redefining Scripture so that it benefits them and allows them to be comfortable without the stress of being corrected or told that they are living in sin. More than ever we need a Paul or we just need to wake up.

4. Love more judge less; This one is simple and is what I call “Love Without Compromise”. We can love the world and those in it without compromising our beliefs. Believe it or not it is possible to love someone without agreeing with their lifestyle. Jesus set that example many times over in scripture. Sin does not stop ruling a person’s life if their heart does not change and a heart cannot change without love. As I have said before we are called to love and it is up to God to work on their hearts.

5. This one is something I see more and more each day. If we want to set our churches and our country back on a track for God then we must at all cost stop calling evil good. It seems that with each passing day we lower our guard a little bit more and start justifying more and more in our lives. I can only imagine that Paul would stand on the highest point and caution the church and all Christians that they cannot continue to call evil good and expect to continue living in blessings. If we know what is right and continue to allow evil to flourish then we might as well be luke-warm or simply Christian in name. If we want to see our brothers and sisters return to God then maybe we need to get serious about following Him ourselves. As Christians we have to call evil what is it and it does not matter if we lose friends or even family over it. I don’t care about political opinions and debates and this side versus that side. All I care about is “what does Scripture say?” If it is wrong it is wrong and we have to stop looking for loopholes to justify our behavior.

6. We must stop putting our friendships on the pedestal that is meant for our relationship with God. I say that to say this, In today’s society it seems that when it is someone close to us that is living in sin we tend to take the easy path of justifying their behavior as opposed to taking a chance on losing the relationship and calling out their behavior or even expressing that we don’t agree with them. Instead of showing Christian love and concern for their soul in eternity we place more value on their friendship here on earth. I see it all the time. Well I know that X is wrong but my friend is doing that and I really don’t want to lose their friendship so I will either sit idly by while they continue to live in their sin or I will go one step further and call their behavior good and try to justify it. This just leads down a path that leads further and further from God until one day you choose that your earthly relationships are more important than the one with God and you turn away from Him completely.

In conclusion I think the success of the early church was their ability to take criticism or admonishment if you will. I truly think that if the churches had not received these letters with love an open minds then we would not be here today. I think that the true key to success is an ability to accept those tough comments when they come. I think that if we want today’s church to see a resurgence then we have to be open to listening to what is broken and try to fix it.

---Quick Army story. In the Army, any time we had a major exercise or event we would have an After Action Review. This was a time were we were supposed to be able to openly and honestly discuss what was supposed to happen; what did happen; what went well; and what we could improve one. The best leaders I knew in the Army were the ones who could listen and take something from each step of that process and not repeat mistakes that were made and learn from previous events. Most leaders, though, are like us today, they do really good at telling you what was supposed to happen, and they are even better at telling you what went right but as soon as someone mentions something that could have been differently or done better they take it personally and start justifying and making excuses for the way it was. These leaders are destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. They will not accept change and they will not see that there is anything wrong with how they are doing things. As a church and as Christians we cannot be this type of leader.