God or You?
Only a few short years ago, we were in the throes of the COVID panic with an empty church and the pastor standing in the pulpit delivering Sunday morning sermons to a room inhabited by ghosts. This was no doubt the unhappiest time of my preaching career with all the emotion sucked out of the messages. Without immediate feedback from the congregation, I had to generate feelings I was not necessarily feeling. Looking at our church today the physical sickness from COVID no longer lingers, but the spiritual effects are still with us. Many are complacent about church service, many left for other parts of the country, and many simply no longer attend. I wonder about those who stay at home. What is a Christian’s substitute for hearing from God through the Bible’s approved method, the fellowship of the church and a pastor instructing God’s people through sermons from God’s word?
I do not sit at home with them, but I assume many are not completely divorced from their attempts to hear. Rather, they may have stuck with the easier medium for them—listening to TV preachers. We are a small church without ability to duplicate the musical intensity and the slick polish of a tightly scripted program. Much of what people hear on TV is meant to emotionally charge and never deliver the excitedly spoken promises.
We are currently in a series from Mark reflecting on Jesus’ scathing denunciation of false teachers and the hypocrisy inherent in their self-serving schemes. Every Sunday morning, living rooms hear a modern equivalent of the types of charlatans Jesus’ warns against. Christians are watching television programs intended to satisfy at least a modicum of their spiritual yearnings. The majority are not Christians at all but seek to satisfy a baser instinct which is the inherent knowledge of God without a relationship with God.
These people are ripe for the exploitation of TV preachers. They have no filter for deception, which is the bread and butter of these ministries. Preachers easily manipulate especially when their listeners are sick and poor and hear that God never intended for them to live this way. God’s intentions are always for healthy feel-good people with hordes of cash on hand and a good place to spend it. Their assurance lies in transferring their small funds into the TV preacher’s coffers who will make sure God hears their requests and responds.
My limited space allows only enough to tell you attendance at your church is meant to focus on God not you. Our focus is to worship God and not lavish ourselves with wealth, power, and position we think we deserve. Rather than false promises connected to sending your money away to fund the preacher’s airplanes, mansions, and fleet of luxury cars, you get to see where every dollar goes and personally enjoy participating in the operation of the ministry you support. You are part of it and the amount of enjoyment you receive from it is directly proportional to the energy you put into it. The difference between us and them is the presence of the Holy Spirit and as Paul wrote, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
The audience for this article does not rate on the same scale as the TV preacher reaches. Eventually, it will make it to our website where it has greater potential. Hopefully, some of the duped will see it and return to true New Testament Christianity which requires the personal fellowship of God’s people. I only ask those who see it now to consider, who does your religious life center on, you or God?
Pastor V. Mark Smith