Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Received more revelation from God than in 20 yrs of "going to church”

church

I saw the subject line above on Twitter. The full tweet behind the subject line is: “I havent listened to/heard a ‘sermon’ in 3 yrs but have recvd more revelation from God than in 20 yrs of ‘going to church’...” Obviously, there could be several ways to look at this. The problem is that this message was re-tweeted by at least two people by the time it reached my Twitter page.

It could be that this guy lives somewhere in the forest with one church around, and unfortunately it is a liberal United Methodist church. But, this is highly unlikely.

It is difficult to get enough information from only one tweet (a Twitter message that cannot be longer than 140 characters), so I could be summing this up incorrectly. However, it seems to me by the way the quotation marks are used that the message is based on some form of pride. When church members no longer get any “revelation” from the sermons at church, several factors could be involved. Here are just a few:

  1. The pastor has lost his way.
  2. The member has outgrown the pastor.
  3. The member has been infected with the “pride” virus.
  4. This local church has literally gone backwards.
  5. This local church is not adhering to the truth of the gospel.

I am sure there could be many more reasons why this person has received “more revelation from God than in 20 yrs of ‘going to church’.”

Pride is a deadly sin. It truly is a sin that blinds us. We no longer see ourselves as we truly are. We start looking down on people, critiquing preachers to see if they have dotted every ‘i’ and crossed ever ‘t.’ Suddenly you see faults in everyone, that they simply do not know as much as you do, and aren’t as meticulous as you are! Pride will drive you to loneliness. You will end up in a church for 20 years, not receiving any “revelation” at all, since you know better! Someone once said that Satan’s number one weapon is pride, while God’s number one defence is humility.

Erik Raymond wrote a short but insightful article on pride called “You cannot domesticate pride.” Another great article on pride is by Jeff Keeney called “The fifty fruits of pride: A self-diagnostic.” It is always good to check ourselves in relation to pride, and these two articles make a good start toward that end!

When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.
Proverbs 11:2

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Proverbs 16:18

and finally…

Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders.
Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another,
for "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."

1 Peter 5:5



Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...