We are having record cold out here in Kansas City, it’s been below freezing for 120 hours straight and is not supposed to go above freezing for another week! Saturday night there was a Chiefs NFL Playoff game, the windchill at Kickoff was some 20 degrees BELOW zero! BELOW! I just knew that I would turn on my TV and see the Chiefs playing to an empty stadium. Right! No! Instead I see a near packed house. People screaming at the top of their lungs cheering on their beloved team. I even saw grown men out there with their shirts off celebrating every play. Shirts off in frostbite weather. I told my kids isn’t strange how people will go crazy painting their faces, looking like fools, sacrificing lots of money (let me tell you NFL tickets aren’t cheap, the average playoff ticket is $1,364), losing their voice singing the chants of their team, even risking their life driving in the ice and snow all in the name of Football. Yet people balk at Sunday morning, sacrificing a little sleep to go to church where they half heartedly sing and begrudgingly toss in a few dollars as the plate is passed. Jesus warned that it would be better on the day of Judgement for Tyre and Sidon than it would be for other places who had seen a demonstration of His power and yet who rejected it (see Luke 10). As judgement day gets closer I am getting more and more nervous for the United States of America; our priorities are all messed up. We are a people made to worship but instead of the resurrected King it’s a muscle-bound man carrying a ball across an end zone that makes us lose our minds.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love football as much as the next guy, I just sometimes am stunned when I juxtapose the authenticity of our worship at the arena on Saturday night with the reserved nature of Sunday morning. Which don’t be fooled, at Rupp Arena, at Arrowhead Stadium, that’s what people are doing, they are worshipping. But why is it that way? Why are ball games so fun and church can be so solemn? Maybe it’s because religion entered the scene. Somewhere around 300 AD satan realized he couldn’t beat the church so he joined it! And brought with it his demonic spirit of religion which persecutes authenticity and any dramatic expression of love towards God. The church experience should be one of joy and exuberance, Paul commanded don’t get drunk on wine but instead be filled with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). Evidently being filled with the Holy Spirit should be far more intoxicating than what the world has to offer. Maybe that’s why on Pentecost as Peter preached so boldly the crowd accused him of being drunk (Acts 2:15)! What if Christians worshipped so freely that it looked like drunkenness? Most religious folks would run from a place like that, yet that’s what the Bible calls Christianity. Last time I checked dignity was not a fruit of the Spirit. Church should be a place of encounter, the Bible says God rides on the praises of His people (Psalm 22), literally as our praise goes up His Spirit comes down (Psalm 133); and I believe its to the degree in-which we express our urgency and hunger. The Bible says God is the rewarder of those who EARNESTLY seek Him (Hebrews 13:6). Most believers search for God the way they would search for a penny that falls out of their pocket, maybe a passing glance but no real effort exerted, why? Because it’s just a penny it’s not that valuable. But could you imagine losing a large sum of money? Remember that old movie “Its a Wonderful Life” when George Bailey thought he was short $8,000? He stuttered and stammered and searched, and through open drawers and flung open cabinets and retraced steps…man what if we looked for God like that? After all, what is He worth to you; is He just a one cent kind of God? You see, Church should be a place for the hungry, for the desperate. A worship leader friend of mine once said, “If you leave church and haven’t lost your voice you have done it wrong!” In other words you should be crying out in worship and praise, in prayer and contending, in declaration and authority, with such urgency that you lose your voice. When was the last time you lost your voice at church? Church should be a place of demonic deliverance, physical healing, prophetic encouragement, reading of Scripture, supernatural exhortation, true hope, a genuine family…in other words a place of His presence for in His presence is the fullness of Joy and Pleasure forever more (Psalm 16:11).
If we strived for that, I mean if that were our metric as opposed to attendance, baptisms and budgets, if that were the case I think Church might look a lot more like Arrowhead Stadium than some dark cathedral some where. Let’s strive to create the type of place that Jesus envisioned as He was spilling His blood to start this family of God called His Church. Oh, and church isn’t for the seeker, it’s for the believer according to Scripture, but let me tell you an authentic environment like that would be irresistible to a watching, starving, dying world. At the end of the day its not our buildings, paradigms, programs, impressive services, big screens, fog machines and skinny jeans that will get ahold of a lost world, turns out It has been the Presence of God that has always been irresistible. So Cultivate the presence of God in your church and in your life and in your family, and when He arrives don’t quench Him.
