by Glenice Mills
Many people suffer from high cholesterol, that is, a blocking of the arteries caused by the eating of unhealthy foods. It does not happen quickly but rather builds up over a long period of time, slowly doing damage to the body. Often it is not until a major health issue occurs, such as a heart attack or stroke, that our cholesterol level is exposed. We know it as a silent killer. Our arteries are a source of blood flow throughout our bodies, bringing health and life to our physical beings. However, to restore health requires a change in diet and a close monitoring of our cholesterol levels. It requires a change to our lifestyle. This change results in new life coming, with a renewed zeal and energy not felt before.
High cholesterol can be likened to religion. Religion is like the life is sucked out by an insidious, hidden, existing, doing the same things over and over again, lulling people into a false sense of comfort. It is quite literally a stranglehold affecting thinking, actions and behaviours. The arteries, the life giving flow of the Holy Spirit, is blocked, causing a ‘silent killer’. Like high cholesterol we don’t know it is happening, but at some opportune time comes a ‘crunch point’.
There is a choice to be made. Choose the same old ways or make a decision to change.
The problem arises because we need to know what religion is, and how it is subtly outworked through the body of Christ. The reality is no church is immune to religion, not even one that appears to be flourishing and meeting the needs of the people. Why?
People, that is you and I, like to do the same things over and over again, as it keeps us feeling safe. We like routine, and the security it gives us. We then try and add Jesus to the mix and think that He endorses what we do. The reality is: we can become deceived and call it ‘church‘, and think it meets the Lord’s approval. His grace covers so much of what we do in church but it doesn’t necessarily mean He is with us. The power of man’s soul can override the Spirit of God. We need to, at this point, stop and consider this statement. The power of man’s soul can override the Spirit of God!
If we want something bad enough we can ‘make it happen’ using our soul power rather than letting the Holy Spirit have His way. Our souls - our mind, will and emotions, can easily push us to believing we are doing the Lord’s will.
This is where deception comes in. We deceive ourselves into believing this is the truth, that we are walking in it. It becomes our ‘life flow’ and slowly starts to move among us clogging up the flow of the anointing and the moving of the power of the Holy Spirit. This is how the false comes in, where we can easily camp at a truth believing we have the fullness of the Lord within our church. Our foundations are on sand and it soon becomes obvious that we cannot and are not moving in the Spirit as we should.
I want to issue a challenge here. How much of what we do in church actually blesses the Lord? How much are we just going through the motions, playing church, to make ourselves feel good in the moment? Can we truly say our meetings have the Lord’s ‘seal of approval’ upon them?
I believe in this hour we must stop and evaluate where we are going and whether we truly bless the Lord by our coming together and meeting with Him.
We are very good at meeting together but do we truly meet with Him? Does our worship take us to His throne room where we encounter Him and know we are changing?
Amos 5:23,24
Take away from Me the noise of your songs,
For I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments.
But let justice run down like water,
And righteousness like a mighty stream.
It is a very fine line between doing church and being church. One will change the hearts of man as they encounter the Lord and the other will bring a superficiality that will not sustain. There will be no lasting fruit. It is either about encountering the Lord or being seen to do the right thing appeasing man’s traditions.
Are the arteries of the church clogged? Can His Holy Spirit flow freely, bringing freedom and change into the lives of the Lord’s people? Can we do this while remaining in tight time constraints because of man’s fleshly demands? Is the Lord really pleased that we give him a token hour and a half meeting, then the next meeting takes place - not unlike a factory assembly line? What say the Holy Spirit wants to move and bring healing or repentance or deliverance to His people but He cannot do this because He does not have the freedom to move upon and among His people?
Perhaps we have subtly bowed to the having a form of godliness but denying the power of God? Are our meetings more emotion based rather than Holy Spirit led?
I wonder are we in fact worshipping self, rather than the Lord? If our whole focus is what can I get out of it for me, are we not in fact practicing idolatry - that is self idolatry?
This is the challenge in this hour for we need to consider how effective the church is.
Playing church will not suffice in the hour we live in. When troubles come, and evil increases will we have the ‘staying power’, the fortitude deep on the inside of us or will we crumple at the first sign of hardship and persecution?
Act 17:22-25
Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription
TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.
Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshipped with man’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.”
This is the time to question where our life source flow is coming from. When the Holy Spirit moves He is not constrained by time or by whom He would use. Maybe for too long we have looked to a church minister to give to us all we need forgetting that they are one instrument the Lord would use. They don’t have it all, and perhaps some quiet lady sitting in the back row has the Word of the Lord.
It is time to take off the shackles of religion that would hold us back and keep us in the old ways and traditions of man. Perhaps we could be daring enough to risk allowing the Lord to move in His services giving Him permission to do and use whosoever He wants. If we all carry an aspect of the Lord, and we do, then maybe the unique individual expressions of the Lord need the opportunity to be expressed? Who knows what amazing things can and will happen if we truly give the Lord permission to have His way. We sing songs about the Lord having His way yet we don’t actually practice what we sing and what we say. This hurts the Lord. He wants to have His way. Man’s agenda must yield to the leading of His Spirit.
It is time for repentance to be preached! Man’s sin and rebellion needs to be spoken about. The enemy has done a number on God’s people by lulling them into a safe place of false security, holding them in bondage, requiring nothing of the people.
Now is the time to act, to come back to the truth of repentance, and forgiveness of sins, and to confront that which is an abomination to the Lord. Secret sin, such as pornography, must be spoken about so freedom can come as truth is spoken. Superficial façades must come off and the real issues of sin and man’s hearts must be spoken of. That requires time in services and one on one with people.
It is time for the arteries to be unclogged and for the source of resurrection life to flow through God’s people. Now is the hour!
Acts 17:29-31
“Therefore since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising.
Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”
