What! Sinners in the Church?

Recently I have come across several people who have made comments to me as to why they don’t go to church or leave a good church. Their reasons? Hypocrisy in the Church.It’s not friendly or no one reached out to me. I was hurt by so and so or such and such. So what they are really saying is that they don't go to church anymore because of "others". There are SINNERS in the church!

They sit at home because someone hurt them or disappointed them. They leave a good church and compromise their beliefs by attending churches that have stopped preaching truth. Why?  Because of "others". They have encountered people who aren’t perfect, who might be saved by God’s grace, but they still sin.

This is exactly where the enemy wants us. All of us! Nothing pleases him more than for our focus to be on others. His desire is for us to judge one another, speak critically, gossip, complain and over all have a bad attitude about the local church.He wants us to focus on people rather than the Lord, because people will always let us down.  He knows that if we watch the behavior of "others" in the church, we will get frustrated, we will be disappointed.  He also knows that if we get hurt by "others", and don't make it right, we will be driven out by our own bitterness.

This breaks the heart of God. He mourns over His children, His BRIDE because they seem so eager to destroy one another instead of loving one another.

We have lost sight of the Biblical reasons for attending a Bible-believing church.  If we are saved, we should want to go to church! (Psalms 122:1)  God refers to the local church as the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth, (I Timothy 3:15).We should desire to be apart of a body of believers that love their Lord God and preach the truth of the Word.

We should offer grace, forgiveness and love to one another. We need to understand that there are both unsaved sinners and saved sinners who attend church. We need to understand that we attend church, not only to grow and learn, but to reach out, love and serve one another and our community.

Church is not about ME! It’s about God and how I can serve Him through the local body of believers.

I have come to a place where I have realized that church is like family. If God has placed you in a certain body of believers then that is where He wants you. When things go wrong then you work them out in a Christ honoring way. You love, forgive and seek peace with one another.

Oh my dear brothers and sisters, may we all go to church with the attitude of David in when he said in Psalms 122:1, that he was glad when they said unto him, “Let us go into the house of the LORD.”

Are you glad to go into the house of the Lord?

Father I pray that I go into Your house it will be with the intent of helping someone rather than hurting. I would desire to bear the burdens of my family, not cause them. Help me to remember to examine my own work so that you might get the glory in all that I do. I pray that I would willingly share all that you have shown me with a loving and right attitude. Jesus I pray that I might be an instrument of peace, mercy, grace and love. (Gal 6)