A simple script for an amazing church service:
–“Please welcome our speaker, the living, resurrected Jesus Christ!” (Applause, then one person after another stands up and talks freely from the heart as they are internally prompted by Jesus.)
Have we made church meetings too comfortable and routine? Have we set them up so that if God doesn’t come through they run just fine without Him?
–Perhaps we need to lay down our human programs and open up church meetings so that “we will be in trouble if He doesn’t come through.”
–A scripted football game where you are given a program that shows every play and the results of each play (before the game even starts) would bore almost everybody.
–So why do we do that with church? Why do we script church meetings so tightly that there is no room for any excitement or surprises — no room for the living Christ to show up?
“Being present in the Presence, so that the mind is a conduit for the immediate guidance of the Spirit is a powerful testimony.” –Keith Saylor (2013)
Our post-Christian world will never be convinced of Christ by religious talks and programs. They need to experience the living, resurrected Jesus Christ for themselves. It’s our job as Christ-followers to present Christ to the world and to one another, “not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.” (1 Corinthians 2:4)
Who will step beyond church’s contained, confined, and controlled Christ and welcome the living Jesus to the podium in your heart and in church meetings? When will churches set aside their programs and allow all the people present in meetings to obey the challenging words of Jesus’ mother Mary in John 2:5: “Do whatever He tells you,”?
“The testimony of Jesus, which is revelation, had been much withheld from the church until our early Friends (the early Quakers) were prepared to receive it, and to walk faithfully by its guidance, as the rule of life, and thus this unspeakable blessing to the church was again restored ; and how exceedingly essential is it for her that.” –John Wilbur
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