Nothing will build our church or save our church from failure, except faith in Christ. Faith results from and grows in response to obedience. There are no short cuts or quick fixes. It is not about a one-off emotional response but a complete turning around and following God in the opposite direction than we have been going…

But it is not our church. When a group of Christians meet to worship, pray and learn from the scriptures, this is His church- His living and glorious body. Everyone is involved and no one is without spiritual gifts. It is a living breathing building of spiritual people who are living in the power of the Spirit.

We do not build this church, Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of our faith and the same is true for His church. Whatever we need, we ask for it and He supplies the need.

The problem arises when time goes by and we accumulate money and fame, we build the church out of bricks and cement, and we start to think we have something. We find ourselves glorifying the building and what we do in it, rather than the God who we are supposed to belong to. The needs of the structure we have built, both the building and our particular organisational structure, take precedence over the living stones, which are the people of God.

Resources are given for us to operate and we use them to present ourselves and build an empire, which can be a reflection of our own preoccupations and not the Living Christ. There is a reticence to use resources to actually supply the needs of people. We fail to recognise the difficulties faced by people who have a different mind set and life situation than us and presume our beliefs are superior. It is so difficult to see and notice our own sins, which may be subtle but deadly.

And so death pervades the church in a slow and creeping way, where it is not detected until the people leave, realising it is all law and no grace. It is so hard to let go of our well loved and self-orientated practices, and go right back to Bible principles. Faith is the only thing that pleases God, and we must live by faith, act and think in faith, and allow faith to infiltrate our souls.

Stop justifying wrong beliefs and earth motivated actions, and turn to the living God. Repentance is a word not used among us, and we imagine it is unnecessary in our “well educated” and “highly progressive” time and culture. Pride grows as we conclude our position before God is good, since we understand many things from His Word. But we admire the wrong things and we refute what is godlike because it is outside our experience. In fact our experience has atrophied and we cannot think to apply the Holy words to our real lives. So the question is asked… do we have a church?

If the Holy Spirit is not there, and He is not seen to be working in a dynamic way, then Christ is not there….

These truths should shake us and awaken us to our spiritual dilemma….