Insurmountable Obstacles

How often do we in the Church put up obstacles to God's Spirit?

Just dwell on that question for a minute . . . perhaps make it first person.

Last Sunday we visited a local church. Probably 2,000 people, give or take, go in and out of its doors on a typical Sunday morning. I'm tempted to offer description and commentary, but I'll just cut straight to the point.

As we were walking in the choir was singing a patriotic medley since it was Memorial Day--It was something like "God Bless America/My Country, 'Tis of Thee/God Keep Our Troops Safe While They Kill the Arabs". Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit; I don't think they sang "God Bless America". No joke, a cross in the background was literally draped in red, white, and blue banners.

Then they moved on to singing a song called "Revival Fire Fall" with such highly crafted lyrics as Revival fire, fall
Revival fire, fall;
Let the flame consume us
With hearts ablaze for Jesus,
Father, let revival fire fall.

Whatever happened to slant rhyme?

Now in all seriousness, I'm only criticizing (and perhaps mocking) in order to strengthen, not to tear down. Nevertheless, there exists a serious lack of artistic labor in much of our (contemporary evangelical) liturgy these days, and we may be paying a dearer price for it than we realize. Still, that's not my main point.

What struck me as I was standing there with 1,100 other people (they have two services) singing "Revival fire, fall" was the reality that if God really did, as one of the lines suggests, "fall on us here with the power of Your Spirit," the place would be rocked to its foundation. We simply cannot imagine the mind shattering impact God's Spirit would deliver if He really "fell on us here." And yet we sing such words with great aplomb, acting as though if we sing it, He will come. And there's the rub. As much as we'd like it to, just singing the words doesn't make it so.

I was genuinely sad and angry at the same time. I so long to be somewhere where our faith matters, where we believe in God and love Him so much that we literally fall on our faces in His presence. Instead, I sit in a church service that is ostensibly more focused on American military might than on God's omnipotence. I stand and sing with scores of others when none of us really grasp the levity of what it is we're singing about. And I'm just as complicit in all of it as anyone else is.

As I stood there thinking about it all, I realized that revival fire never will fall because we aren't meeting the prerequisites (the first of which is true repentance--I promise to discuss this in a future post)! We've constucted so many obstacles to God's Spirit actually having any sort of sway among us that we're as close to revival as we are to the Crab Nebula. Too many of our churches simply are not in any posture spiritually to receive the fullness of God's Spirit. If I may wax pessemistic--our spiritual glasses aren't even half-full.

To my relief, the pastor followed all this up with a word from God the likes of which I too rarely have heard. It was a passionate and crystal clear explanation and invitation to enter into the fullness that God has for us by His Spirit, and as the service concluded, I realized one thing. Just as that message stood at the center of that service like a fine jewel caked in mud and dirt, so too we in the church have too often mired the jewel of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the mud and dirt of our own ignorance and selfishness. Week after week, we erect myriad obstacles which keep at arms' length our loving Father who, because He limits His own limitlessness in order to give us the freedom to truly love and worship Him, finds those obstacles insurmountable. In the end, it simply may be that our worship gatherings, indeed our churches, are more about us and less about the One that we claim them to be.

God forgive us.