Flickering Lights

The reason why people leave the church, the reason why people refuse to come to church and be saved is not because they don't believe in God. It is because you don't.

What would you do if the guy giving the sermon in church on Sunday, preached with a bottle of whiskey by his side? What if he did it every single Sunday? How long would you remain in that church? Just a rhetorical question but a question to reinforce a point.
The question is this, how do you preach the good news to someone who does the exact same things you do? You are in the club, bumping and grinding every Friday, he is too, the very same set of songs are on your ipods, in fact he copied the songs from you. You take a shot every now and then and no, he actually doesn't. Why? Because he believes too much alcohol would cause him health problems in the future. And yeah, last week you both were wishing you had someone to share your bed with you.

A new year, a fresh start, yet in most parts all I can see are flickering candles, lights that should be burning brightly and yet are flickering due to conflicts and strife from within. Conflicts due to increasing indecision on where to stand for beliefs or even how to, strife due to a decision to stand for truth and truth alone and still decisions are being made to burn as a part time light for God, here today, gone tomorrow only when convenient.

For all who claim to be Christians, we were given one assignment, to go into the world and preach the gospel, the gospel that Christ died for us, to save us and to change us, to become more like Him and less like us. The gospel of who we were and who we now are. Yet, more and more people are leaving the church, more and more people want to have nothing to do with what we stand for.
Let your light so shine, that men may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. In an age where people look more to self, in an age where love your neighbor just as much as you love yourself and love God regardless of whatever situation you find yourself, we find people using God, leaving Him when they have achieved what they want, we have people where the only prayers they make in a week is the Amen demanded of them by the priests and pastors every Sunday or whenever they do go to church. But then I forget, the very regular Jesus we all scream when things happen to go wrong. Yet we claim, we dare to lay claim to the name of God and put ourselves under the name of Christianity.

It is a new year, a fresh start and a new beginning, and for some reason, all that is on my mind is a question asked by Moses to the people of God at a time when they had missed out entirely on where they should have been, it is a new year and all I can ask right now is this... Who is on the Lord's side? Not to slay people but to shine out and draw all men to God, to represent not as flickering candles but as lights shining brightly as a representation of who you are, a light, not hid under a bushel but a light shining brightly everywhere you go...

Shalom...