CHRISTIANS FOR A HIGHER STANDARD: GOD'S STANDARD

www.breakingstrongholds.info

Is The Church Living Up to God’s Higher Standard?

What is the condition of God’s people in the United States today?

If you were to believe the word of the common church, we live in an enlightened age. Everyone who claims to be a Christian is doing a great job and has a clear conscience, minus those little mistakes we make from time to time because we’re “just” human. We know where we stand and we exercise our faith well. ⁽¹⁾ You might hear in some circles that God loves us so much that He forgives us for all of our sins, which is true. Taking that a step farther, some say it doesn’t matter what we do, we can continue to do pretty much what we please because God’s patience is inexhaustible. Besides, we’re all pretty good people at heart and aren’t we all saved as Christians anyway? ⁽²⁾ We wouldn’t consider using God’s grace as an excuse would we? Don’t we live in harmony and usually get along? Don’t church bodies and ministries have a sense of brotherhood, certainly never in competition with each other? And what about skin color? People are people, aren’t they? And don’t we love our dear brothers and sisters dearly with humble hearts?

When you ask these questions, what do you see in the body of Christ where you are? How you answer this question could mean your life and it certainly involves the life of the body of Christ around you! If you truly see the fruit of the Spirit manifest continually in your church home, you can consider yourself and those around you truly blessed. You are well poised for upcoming events, miracles and blessings that are in store for faithful Christians. Unfortunately, the church body at large is not God’s unblemished bride ⁽³⁾ and is in fact something altogether different. ⁽⁴⁾ Let’s look at this together.

In Matthew 24:12, the Bible says that the love of the greater number will cool off. Is this something that we should naturally expect in Christians because it is happening in the world around us? I speak with a resounding no! Scripture is full of admonition about Christians living in brotherhood ⁽⁵⁾ and showing the love of God. Scripture tells us what to do. It’s not a mystery. Faithful Christians are NOT the greater number, so in these times, our love will not be cooling off, regardless of what is happening around us. Remember, I am talking about faithful Christians. Claims don’t mean a thing. You will know God’s people by their fruit! We are entering a special time of miracles and blessings, an unprecedented season of changes and events concerning God’s faithful people. Remember that faithful Christians are not the greater number, but God’s faithful remnant. A remnant is a comparatively few people compared to those around them. When you couple this with Mathew 7:13 and Luke 13:24, it is clear that a lot of folks who make the claim for Christianity simply aren’t going to cut the mustard as far as Our Heavenly Father is concerned, simply because they fail to appreciate the need to exercise God’s love, the fruit of the Spirit in their lives and lack a relationship with Him. The blood of Jesus made it all possible for you and me to have a chance with Our Father, being able to stand before Him as perfect ⁽⁶⁾ in Christ. ⁽⁷⁾ We need to act on the opportunity while it is before us. I am talking to you!

We have the cooling off of the greater number in the world, which is also in the proclaimed body of Christ. This proclaimed body of Christ doesn’t recognize the need for godly love as set out in the New Testament, partly due to the fact that they rarely crack their Bible, let alone read it. The other factor has to do with the heart condition of much of mankind ⁽⁸⁾, which has flowed into the proclaimed body of Christ. If they actually hear or read God’s Word in their church body, their stony hearts ⁽⁹⁾ don’t allow God’s Balm to have any effect. Because they fail to understand that they must be born again in Christ with a new personality and the need to cultivate it, they act just like the rest of mankind ⁽¹⁰⁾. They have a form of godliness, but prove false to its power ⁽¹¹⁾. What a tragedy! This is not what God wants and yet He knew from the beginning that not everyone saying “Lord, Lord” would enter into the kingdom of God as Jesus told us in Matthew 7:21. God knows that even Christians can and do harden their hearts, even against Him and turn away from doing His Will.

Because of their hardened hearts, proclaimed Christians don’t recognize the need to operate in godly love. They not only fail to treat their own brothers and sisters in Christ, let alone their own family, with God’s love, but they often cast a suspicious eye at the body of Christ around them, for fear that they are discovered for what they are. They are miserable and lost. ⁽¹²⁾ Their hardened hearts become prideful and unreachable. Proclaimed Christians look at physical differences in the brotherhood of Christ and make a big deal about it. They get together in clichés, just like the rest of the world: “Birds of a feather, flock together”, as the old adage says. Skin color and ethnicity is a big deal with proclaimed Christians. Racially mixed marriages are looked upon with disdain and disgust by proclaimed Christians. Whole bodies of proclaimed Christians ignore those of different or mixed ethnicities in the hope that they will simply go away. Everything that is in the world is in these proclaimed Christians, as they haven’t bothered to look at their attitudes and how Scripture, God’s Love or the sacrifice of God’s Son has really touched their lives. ⁽¹³⁾ In short, they are as doomed as the world. They persecute outright these physical differences in others or simply ignore their brothers and hope they will go away. Proclaimed Christians love to passively ignore those that they want to shun because that conduct doesn’t make a scene. They don’t want to look bad and like the Pharisees of old, they want to look really good! Remember that Jesus compared the Pharisees to whitewashed graves. The judgment of proclaimed Christians upon their brothers and sisters of color and mixed ethnicity is quiet, cool and calculated, designed to alienate and discourage them so that they will go somewhere else. This design usually works. In fact, when we visit a city, if we are rejected, we are kick the dust off our feet and bear testimony to the fact where we have been rejected. It will be better for Sodom and Gomorrah that for that city or in this case, proclaimed Christian body of believers. ⁽¹⁴⁾

In much, if not most of the United States, the church is heavily segregated, the last bastion of bigotry in America! Whites have their gathering places. Blacks have their gathering places. Asians have their gathering places. Latins have their gathering places. Jewish Christians have their gathering places. They rarely mix. Why? This lack of fellowship is because of ungodly attitudes in the proclaimed body of Christ.

Proclaimed Christians in churches and ministries have no problem going overseas to feed the hungry and to “save” lives in other countries because it looks good and it gives them tax advantages by fulfilling their ministry charter. They are simply using the flesh of others to profit themselves in many cases. Would they taint their sanctuary with these people if they lived here? They say they love them, but do they really or is it simply a humanitarian work? I would say that you would look at the body of their church or gathering. What do you see? Are the races of the world represented at all in their gathering or church body of believers?

History shows that “the church” in America (notably in the south) was used to force and perpetuate racism and bigotry on others. In many places, this attitude hasn’t changed in 150 years. In other places, it has softened to a quiet and complacent rejection because “we can’t do anything about them anyway”.

Professed Christians commonly stand off from one another and make judgments in their hearts against one another. ⁽¹⁵⁾What a tragedy! These professed Christians are as doomed as the father of the attitudes that they display! ⁽¹⁶⁾ When Satan is cast into the lake of fire, all bigotry and evil attitudes, including those that carry them must be cast into the same place. God loves you! Don’t let Satan carry you off with him into the abyss and eternal damnation! Sadly, that is where most of proclaimed Christianity is heading unless they open their hearts, change their minds and operate in the fruits and giftings of the Spirit.⁽¹⁷⁾

--- Christians for a Higher Standard

www.breakingstrongholds.info

⁽¹⁾ Our Freedom In Christ: Isaiah 61:1; Galatians 5:1; John 3:16,17; Romans Chapters 5-8; 1 John 4:10,16

⁽²⁾ Romans 8:9-17

⁽³⁾ 2 Corinthians 11:2; Revelation 21:2; Ephesians 1:4, 5:27; Philipians 2:15; Colossians 1:22; 1 Peter 1:18, 19; Jude 1:24

⁽⁴⁾ God’s Faithful Church: Matthew 23:23; 1 Peter 4:19; 1 Thessalonians 5:24; Galatians 5:22; 2 Timothy 1:12; 1 Corinthians 1:9

⁽³⁾ 2 Corinthians 11:2; Revelation 21:2; Ephesians 1:4, 5:27; Philipians 2:15; Colossians 1:22; 1 Peter 1:18, 19; Jude 1:24

⁽⁶⁾ Matthew 5:48, 19:21; Romans 12:22; 1 Corinthians 2:6, 13:10; Philipians 3:12

⁽⁷⁾ Romans 8:7-17

⁽⁸⁾ Romans 8:5,6; John 5:42

⁽⁹⁾ Ezekiel 11:19, 36:26; Matthew 13:15-21; Mark 4:5-17; 1 Timothy 6:1-6

⁽¹⁰⁾ Ephesians 4:22-24; Philippians 2:12-16; Colossians 3:1-10; 1 Peter 4:1-8; Proverbs 10:12

⁽¹¹⁾ 2 Timothy 3:5

⁽¹²⁾ Matthew 7:12

⁽¹³⁾ 1 Peter 2:4-5

⁽¹⁴⁾ 1 Peter 3:16; Matthew 10:15

⁽¹⁵⁾ John 16:33; Psalm Chapter 42; Romans 8:31-39

⁽¹⁶⁾ Proverbs 25:12; 13:18; 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17; Hebrews 6:9-12

⁽¹⁷⁾ Revelation 9:11;12::9,10; 1 Peter 5:8; John 8:44; 2 Corinthians 4:4; John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11 ;Romans 6:21; Galatians 5:22; Ephesians 5:1-11; Colossians 1:10; Hebrews 12:11; Romans 8:1; 1 Corinthians Chapter 12, 13; 2 Corinthians 3:3