Our Playground the Church

Church has become country clubs, three-ring circuses, fight clubs, and/or Broadway spectaculars, sacrificing biblical principles to fill pews.  Ravaging smaller family sanctuaries to a point of ruin in order to meet attendance goals and finances supporting elaborate, unnecessary programs and projects so they can be boasted about to distract from disobedience.     Places where any scripture that makes us feel uncomfortable is quickly removed and replaced with seven-step programs, moronic mottos, ten piece bands, and a slew of self-indulgent musicians who believe repeating the same chorus ad nauseam somehow equates to worship.   Gone are the days of the teacher/pastor replaced with the spin doctor who pours out his endless smile and positive dribble watering down the gospel so it is never bitter or harsh.   We have abandoned Psalms and Proverbs for mimes, comedians, MMA fighters, dancers, and poets.  We replaced truth, conviction, discipleship, and submission to an Almighty God because modern culture, fad, and the pseudo-religious have dictated us to do so.  We take down the crosses in our sanctuaries to avoid offending anyone, exchanging them for unique, cutesy names designed to hide our true identities.  We so quickly judge others all the while ignoring the daily secret sins we commit with little or no hesitation.   We bow when we should stand, talk when we should listen, complain when we should fall on our knees and thank God for every single breath we take.    We call ourselves persecuted when inconvenienced all the while others die without pause in places where their beliefs are deemed criminal.  We proudly wear blinders while others are forced into slavery, tortured, maimed, imprisoned, and martyred by the thousands.  The great I am has become who we are, at the moment we are in, trading service for complacency, obedience for avoidance.   And who is the enemy who brought us to this ignored low?  The devil has his day of rest, because it is us, we as Christians that have collectively turned our backs and become domesticated by our desire and selfishness.    Serving only if seen and published, praying only when all else has failed, worshiping only if the formula for it is provided.   The evil one needs not lift a finger as we continue to exert all of our effort to dismantle what greater men and women who have come before, achieved.  We don't need revival; we need only to open our eyes, face our shame, and rise with the strength that never left us.  Return home on a path that was always there before us.  Open the book that has the answers for those brave enough to ask the questions.  But alas, that would mean doing God's work, with His reward, one that includes trial, tribulation, and refining.  Things that would thrust us suddenly from our comfort zones, holding a mirror up the hypocrisy we would have no choice to face,   Can we move past convenience or we will face God with empty hands and broken crowns?   Will we learn that all that we thought we did for the Lord proved only to be vanity and superficiality, something we knew, deep within our souls, all the time.  Please Lord Jesus forgive us all, for taking your church and making it our playground.