Paul tells us, in 2 Corinthians 4:3&4
3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.
4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
How do you suppose Satan does this? Have you ever asked that question? Does he just randomly go into the brains of the lost and tamper with their synaptic neurons and cause their brains to misunderstand who Jesus is and the message of the Gospel?
Not likely!
Do you think his approach is the same in every generation? Do you think it is apart from what he is doing within each culture?
Not likely!
Satan is the great shaper of civilzations. I believe he is constantly at work to create societal pressures that are designed to deceive, sidetrack, distract, and allure potential recipients of the kingdom towards conditioned responses to the Gospel based on what they observe and experience within their respective cultures. He works overtime at creating images of Jesus and His Church that will confuse the minds of men and cause them to irrationally choose to reject the Gospel message.
As a computer technician I am in the homes of hundreds of clients every year, and in each of those homes I look for opportunities to share the Gospel. I cannot tell you how consistently and overwhelmingly I observe that the predominant methodology the devil is using to deceive this generation in our American culture into believing Jesus is not Who He really is is directly connected to the ridiculous and sad image the Church gives of Him. The worldly person looks at the actions of both past and present manifestations of the Church and they couldn't be more bemused and disgusted with what they see. Over and over again I hear valid expressions of disdain for Jesus based on His Church and how it acts and has treated its people over the ages. And in our generation they are most appalled by its ridiculous manifestation of a super marketing circus, hawking healing, prosperity, joy, books, etc., in a venue where excessive money is spent on pretentious buildings, showy preachers, religiously controlling leadership models, and largely irrelevant messages to day to day life.
The Church of the past has been abusive and the Church of the present is a joke. All one has to do is watch TBN to understand what the average unbeliever is impressioned by and you know why they think Christianity is not for them. Only those who are involved in such ridiculous environments place value on them. For the outsider there is next to nothing inviting by all the religious nonsense foisted on the public.
Where is Jesus in all of this? Hidden... Sadly, He is far too hidden. The Church, in its corporate business model, using Madison Avenue slick marketing methodologies is the perfect tool of Satan to blind the minds of men and women from the true Gospel, and to hide the true message behind programs, building, control systems, legalisms, religous abuse, etc., until they have no interest and can't even begin to see the real Jesus.
It is waaaay past time the Church wake up and realize that the image they portray of Jesus is completely different than the one portrayed in the Gospels. There it was simple, all about Him, and nothing to do with what the Church has become over the centuries. It is time for the Church to shed all the extraneous nonsense that the devil uses to blind the minds of men and women from how wonderful Jesus is, how loving, how wise, how glorious, how simple, how real, etc.. It is time for the Church to repent and come out of the babylon it has created that distracts mankind from God and His Son.
I can tell you, when I share the simple Gospel of Christ, and separate it from all the nonsense of modern Christianity, the overwhelming response of my clients is amazement. They don't immediately repent and receive Jesus but you can just see the scales falling off their eyes as the true Jesus emerges, disconnected from all the goofiness and abusiveness of religious Christianity, and stands before them as the Pure One Who simply wants to save and heal their lives, setting them free from bondage and bringing them into a Kingdom where He is Lord and where He can change their entire lives. They want nothing to do with modern Christianity, and when they hear they can come to know Him without having to get involved with the craziness of the modern Church in a building they are clearly interested and prayerful about Christ.
Wake up modern Christianity! Realize that your showy buildings, expensive sound systems, emphasis on buildings, programs, leadership, marketing, etc., is only feeding right into the devil's blinding plan. Wake up and see how it is time for the Church to come out of all of this stuff and return to a simple presentation of Jesus, lived out in small communities of those hungry to know Him, distanced from religious systems and plans of men. Let Jesus become the reason, the focus, the intention, and the passion of everything our faith is connected to, and remove all the distractions from the lost so that all they can see is Jesus. What will the result be? I believe it will result in a far larger number of genuine conversions and true repentance, with people loving Jesus, not religion.
Religion is and always has been the Ace Trump of the devil. All he needs is religious ways to deceive the minds of people and hide Jesus from the eyes of their hearts. All we need to do is let the world know, that while Jesus tolerates the modern building oriented Church, He has not mandated it, and they don't have to become connected with it to know and love Him. They don't have to become religious, ridiculous, and weird. Jesus is knowable apart from all that stuff, and His presence in their lives, marriages, families, and businesses will change everything. They can know Him among a small set of close friends, where prayer, fellowship, and study becomes a simple and edifying experience disconnected from the foolishness of the modern Church.
I am exposing the works of the devil and calling Jesus' Church to repent of all its distractions and present Christ crucified and nothing else. Wake up Church and come out of this worldly and ridiculous approach to Church life. Let Jesus be seen in all His simple glory again!
Knowing Him Together ministry is dedicated to "Knowing Him," and representing, as best we know how, what He thinks about His Church, truth, and the right ways of approaching God.
It's not a formal or professional ministry any longer...just a place to share the things we're learning in our own spiritual journey. Somehow a professional clergy doesn't strike me as being Jesus' goal for His Church leaders, and certainly in my life it was not a healthy thing. For me it seemed to generate religious excesses, hypocrisy, and addictions...thankfully it doesn't seem to so negatively affect all Church leadership.
Let's talk a little about what He thinks about "His Church." When you think about it, Church history is a story of what man has done with Jesus' Church. In many cases it represents significant departures from what appears to be His original intent.
It has always seemed to me such a strange thing that Jesus gave His life to provide the opportunity for mankind to know God and the vehicle of expressing God (The Church) for that to take place, and instead of followers of Christ honoring the fact that the Church is "His Church," all too often we have made it more about us, religion, and marketing schemes than about Him.
When we carefully study what Jesus taught and lived regarding the Church and what He inspired His apostles to teach and live regarding the Church, there seems to be a huge disconnect from His original intent and what we see today.
When one carefully studies the New Testament there is no mention that the Church would be patterned off of any earthly business model, yet the Church has become big business. There is no reference to a Pope, or Senior Pastor, or a salaried staff, or church memberships, church buildings, pews, stained glass, pulpits, being a vehicle of marketing the kingdom, or most of what we have come to know Church as, yet the morphing process from then to now is nothing short of amazing. There is nearly no real connection between the Church Jesus and His apostles envisioned and what Church has become. How can this be?
Let's be clear about something here... I'm not suggesting Jesus is completely detached from the modern Church. Certainly not! He is far too gracious and practical for that. You will find Him in just about every flavor of Church expression on earth. It seems that wherever His name is mentioned He is there to reveal Himself to the seeking heart. Praise God this is true, or we'd all be in big trouble. BUT, to say that He reveals Himself in just about every Church expression and compare that to His desire for His Church, and there we have a huge disconnect. Just because He graciously tolerates where His Church is does not necessarily means He approves of it.
I'm not saying we are on some grand performance oriented relationship with God either. In other words, our acceptance with Him is clearly not based on whether we do Church right or not. He stands at the side of His bride no matter how out of touch she becomes with His original intent for Church, but having said that, it is time we rethink what He desires for His Church, rather than continue developing a religious system that He merely tolerates.
This website is dedicated to revealing His original intents and to calling "His Church" back to His revealed approach to being His Church. Sure we can continue in the current approaches, and He'll work with us in them, but what would happen to the world if the Church said "Enough!!!" it is time we returned to gathering according to what He revealed. It is time we cast off religious systems, patterns, and ways, and let the Church be about Jesus again. It is time for Senior pastors to transition their Churches away from being "their" Churches and back to being "His Church," away from titles, traditional salaries, positions, hierarchical authority, control, and manmade systems of religion, and back to a place of simplicity where we turn Jesus' Church back to Him and wait on Him to lead us.
I'm not sayig there is no place for human leadership, but careful reading of the New Testament will reveal that the leadership He envisioned is radically different that what has developed over the last 2000+ years. We have much to rethink regarding how leadership should look in the body of Christ.
Most of the world turns a blind eye and deaf ear to Church, less because of true rejection of God, and more because of the hypocrisy, arrogance, and foolishness they see represented in the Church. Ultimately our re-aligning the Church with Jesus' pattern doesn't have as much to do with drawing the world towards the Church, but far more towards honoring the Lord again, but certainly one of the byproducts will be that the world will be brought directly before the living God, without excuse for rejecting Him, when the Church ceases to give them an excuse to reject Him.
Your heart knows that the modern expressions of His Church have departed from His original intent. Each Sunday you gather in state approved buildings, under the direct headship of a Senior Pastor, and compressed into some artificial program, you know there are places within you that sit there in your pew and wrestle with how "this just cannot be God..."
So, what do you do? You wait on God for clear direction. If He calls you to remain where you are then you will have no peace about leaving. If He calls you to leave your current Church environment then you will have no peace about remaining. Your life is not your own. You and I have been bought by the precious blood of Christ. The result needs to be that we wait on God for His guidance in all things. Don't be afraid of making a mistake if you honestly seek Him about these things. He has untold numbers of ways to reach and convince you of His will for your life. He doesn't require of you that you act rashly or impetuously. He will lead you!
We are praying for awakenings to take place across the earth. We are seeing and hearing of it happening. May God grant us the grace to boldly go where we have seen few others go...
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