As hard as it may be for people to believe, many of God's people are held captive (by church programmes) within the church, rather than Sunday, the Lord's Day
being a day when God's people come to rest together before the Lord and worship him. A day of refreshing and encouragement, a day of celebrating together the good things God has done, a day of liberty where everyone can speak, share, testify or bring a song before launching again into the work of building the Kingdom of God.
Sunday has become an end ...in itself. Rather than being a place of empowerment and release, it has become a cage that limits many of God's people to being nothing more than onlookers. Spectators. While others who have found expression for their gifts often become not much more than performers. For them the church has become a stage. A hierarchical ministry model church affords only the most 'gifted' the opportunity to express their gifts. The key question in all that is done is whose glory do we seek? And whose kingdom are we building? Psalm 118 speaks of Christ as the stone the builders of such churches have rejected. If Christ does not build the house our labor is in vain.
When Jesus builds the house we will know he is in the house by the evidence. All his people being embraced and accepted as His priests and all being equipped for such a purpose.
How many sincere believers still sit looking on, languishing, their fire almost gone because they have gifts that find no place of expression in the programme driven church. They waste away, square pegs and round holes don't fit together. Yet we read that Jesus said he would build his Church and "fit us together" as perfectly as the joints and ligaments, bone and sinew, tendon and muscle, flesh and blood of the human body. Who then is building this current model.
Yet these same churches, when it comes to increasing their 'own' numbers and the subsequent push to evangelise and invite people along, have no sense of the state of their flocks, who are now exhorted to arise...and do the work for which they have been equipped. What is this if it is not a double whammy to the head and the heart of these sincere believers who have waited so long in the grandstand watching others perform that their spiritual muscles are now cold and their spiritual movements slow.
How many people have suffered quietly this demeaning treatment and then left just as quietly by the back door. What we need to cry out for is a revelation by God's Spirit to ours of the glory of His Kingdom and to have our eyes so opened that we will gladly lay every thing else down. Laying down Our Hopes, Our Dreams, Our vision, Our Programmes so that corporately we might have "single eyes" and single hearted devotion for His Kingdom. This would lead to such a unity of spirit because we would then be rightly connected to each other, because we are firstly rightly connected to him who is our Head.
Upon this foundation Christ will build his Church. Sunday programmes would be tossed away and the hierarchical priesthood that divides the Body would be dismantled. This would allow the elevation and promotion of the priesthood of all believers, uniting us to our King. Walls of separatism, denominationalism and elitism would be torn down. The effect would surely be "like captives set free". God's people released into His endless life, to flow with him in His purposes. Brought into the glorious liberty of the sons and daughters of God. When this unity comes Psalm 133 tells us God commands the Blessing!
Malachi paints a beautiful picture of this day of release (Mal 4:2) 'But for you who revere my name, the Sun of Righteousness will arise with healing in his wings and you will go out and LEAP like calves released from the stall'. God builds churches with no walls, so that we might build his kingdom and become His Body. Follow THIS JESUS with the desire to "lift HIM up" above all else and his promise to us is FOLLOW ME AND I WILL MAKE YOU FISHERS OF MEN.
