From Eggshells to Fortresses

Crackling Croons

Instead of seeking and securing a spiritual revival, we are instead trying to secure our earthly survival.  So our problems increase and self life lives on and the church has lost its purpose wandering in a wilderness of barrenness of programs and lists.

The church is meant to be powerful and victorious carrying on her wings the winds of powerful spiritual change and revolutions, which touch the spiritual realm and change the very dimensions of the earthly sphere, simply because the Church knows and abides in Christ, listening and obeying.

Cackling croons is the material minded, earth-bound and earth-wound church destroying itself in the gallows of gossiping, position, gain and fame.  These are churches of flesh submerged in human self-effort, dozing comfortably like hens warming their little brood, and cackling conversations of worldly content of gossip, bickering and separation.  Many church leaders have a shift in priorities, searching for material gain and fame, cool and compromise.  They enjoy their positions, offices and "respect."  They are not aware of the catastrophic missile-hit limping broken, depressed and defeated church with powerlessness, brazenness of sin and cacophony of senseless noise or they conveniently choose to pretend it is not there.

There was a place in time when the word "church" was uttered, pictures of love, fellowship, spiritual growth and even a mighty spiritual fortress flashed through the mind.  The original plan:  The church was meant to be the Bride of Christ, powerful and protected by the Christ that even Satan would shiver to tamper and dabble with it, where the gates of hell could never prevail against this powerful Church.  This Bride of Christ cum Fortress hides us from an evil world of spiritual arrows that aim to pierce and debilitate our walk with God wanting us to walk crippled and rippled by defeat.

The original mighty fortress has true worshipers of God who live in harmony with one another.  Today, many of us sigh sadly and weakly state "No church is perfect" and we all heartily agree with one another relieved to find another fellow believer who thinks the same way.  But we never go beyond that statement.  Everything lies and falls in the finality of the truth of that statement.  The option of church hopping is lost, because as time goes on, we find out that each church has its own paraphernalia of problems.

Due to the internal problems, the walls of some churches are becoming weaker and as delicate as eggs shells, "Step on me and I will crack!" is the cry of the church walls.  The walls, like eggshells can be smashed by the fiery darts of the evil one in their fragility.  The watchmen are asleep.  They do not have the ammunition to fight back because intercessory prayers was lost long ago in the backwoods as present church-going people feel God is already on their side.  They did not feel the need to get down to long-winded prayers and bore everyone.

So, well, the walls of the church are not fortress walls, but eggshell walls so any tiny trickle of attack can crack up the walls and bring calamity into the church.  This is why we see church splits, families falling apart, children attacked, and disunity and discord among Christians.  They are easily attacked and they fall down like ninepins without much fight back when a battle rages

Self Life

We were meant to be living stones of the church, but cold hard separatist walls of concrete now replace the living stones.  Within the concrete wall, church meetings draw out their own manifestos, long-drawn out plans and programs with extended board meetings and discussion. There are many organizers in the church but no agonizing intercessors.

People are not perfect.  They come to church with a self-life buried deep within them with wounds in their soul, unresolved conflicts, and just plain cold hardness and indifference to others, as well as some are really sick in their souls.  It is alright because Jesus said He came for such as these when He said "I came for the sick, the sick need a doctor".  This happens because the sick are not communing with God and abiding in Christ and because of this, their self life cannot be crucified on the Cross.

Because people have unresolved conflicts in their soul and have a large amount of unmet needs, they start walking in unknown strange dark territory.  Some people look very normal on the outside, but the secret soul is on a different trip within that only God can see.  Here is a situation of a woman who started walking in dark strange territory because her soul was in conflict with the Cross.

Charlotte* (name has been changed) is a church member of a large mainline church in Bangalore.  She is a prominent member of the church and member of the church board as well as was in charge of a Saturday Bible study.  She and her husband attend church faithfully.  They looked good Christians to the world outside.  Yet they led another life at home.  They would throw parties at home where Charlotte would call over some lady friends and they would play on the Ouija board just for fun.  It was a kind of exciting game for them.  When another friend warned her it was wrong because it was inviting in evil spirits to plague their lives, she refused to listen and would joke about it.  Even though she had biblical knowledge of the Bible, Charlotte is not born again.  In time, an entrance of an evil force in her home actually walked around the house, banged on the doors at night, and also brought a coldness and hardness and distance with her husband as well..  In all appearances, all would say they were a good Christian couple because of their church attendance, Saturday Bible studies and help works that they performed in the church, yet they dabbled in the occult knowing it was wrong.  It was a fun game and in reality, they did not really believe God was watching them or did not take God seriously enough.

One cannot gauge the temperature of the church by attendance and being involved in activities because the soul is hidden and deceptive when living in the flesh and ties up with the world and demons.  This brings further confusion in the church.  Charlotte may never even realize that she needs help as she is a powerful "church member" a leader in many areas and is actively involved in church activities and even mercy ministries.

When church leaders live in their own personal conventions, conferences, and personal seminars, regrouping and meeting up with each other all the time, their own churches become casualty wards where many need a lot of help, personal attention, love and deliverances.  Yet, no one seems to hear them or understand how badly they need help.

Individuals do have a responsibility too to have a life in the Holy Spirit.  If not, the "casualty ward"  incidents keep recurring, hurting one another, snubbing one another, factions, fights, cliques, even verbal words among each other, tearing one another down, walking out of church meetings in anger, while the puzzled flock of innocent sheep sit in the pews wondering what on earth is happening!  Something is wrong, but they cannot nail it down.

Breakthrough in churches can happen if we learn how to develop a walk in the Spirit and a deep intercessory prayer life, thus love will automatically follow.

Club Cultures

Here is one little incident that happened to Fiona, a new comer, which keeps happening very often on a Sunday morning.

It was a cold morning as Fiona stepped out of her flat to church.  Fiona lived far away from her home in Shillong, and she was in Mumbai working in a little company as a consultant for a publishing house.  She had just recently started attending the *"Agape" church nearby.  This morning, as she was entering the church, she nearly bumped into another lady who gave her a hasty smile and rushed off.  The service began and everyone rose and sang gustily with all their hearts.

"Lift up your hands people" thundered the song leader, "Did you eat your breakfast this morning!" Why are some of you so grumpy, smile, laugh, and worship God.

Fiona felt a little guilty, she had not been lifting up her hands, but she had been sincerely worshipping and praising God.  Fiona suffered from frozen shoulder, which made it difficult to raise her hands fully. Later, as the pastor spoke, Fiona felt her cup running over with the heart-warming message of the pastor interspersed with God's Word.  He spoke about loving and caring for one another as the Body of Christ.  After service, Fiona found scores of people rushing over to meet each other. Some people said "hello" to her hurriedly and rushed over to talk to their own friends.  She stood alone in the corner watching everyone busily and happily meeting each other.  Noone seemed to notice Fiona and even if they did, they were just far too busy catching up with each other.  Finally Fiona went home silently, slightly depressed.  She was just another figure that slipped into the shadows like many newcomers before her as they returned home from.  Fiona decided not to return to that church because she did not feel she was spiritually getting stronger, which she personally wished for.

How many folks are like Fiona?  They go to church and actually come out feeling an emotional low.  Especially on a Sunday afternoon if they go back to an empty room or house.  How could that happen?  Several reasons are there, one is church club culture, carnal self-life, and lack of real intercessory prayer in the church.

The simple truth is some churches have become clubs where people who naturally in their flesh take a liking to some other people and seek them other out, ignoring the common congregation.  The flesh is magnified and social exchanges grow stronger where cliques are formed and nurtured.

Clubbism is becoming more and more organized in contemporary churches.  This obstructs the oneness and unity of the Body of Christ causing divisions as certain people gravitate more to each other in soulish relationships where they exclude the "commoners." Cozy clubbism is becoming building stronger inroads in today's church than ever before and sometime even refer to themselves as "the inner circle."

Club culture should never happen in church:

James 2:4 "Have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? 

Romans 2:11 "For God shows no partiality"

Galatians 3:26-19:  "For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise."

If the Word sternly forbids favoritism and clubbism, why do we still continue with it?

It can be true one can meet new friends in the church and become closer to them, but if this is done at the expense of cold-shouldering others openly and having a very artificial hello and goodbye on a Sunday morning without real concern for other people, then something is really wrong.

The oneness of the body is very key for the growth and spiritual power of the church.  "Divide and rule" is the old saying.  Demons love to create division in the body of the Christ so they can rule and they deliberately blind people to caring for one another.

The Key:  If church members are practicing love, caring, and avoiding the club culture, a lot will be overcome. and share fellowship with one another was the heart of the early church.  Paul says in Galations 2:10 All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.

Oneness was the pulse of the early church.  The early church grew beyond proportions though they were not planning programs, counting numbers, statistics, chalking out targets or having large-scale campaigns nor did the early church have personalized leaders conferences of "How to be a Leader" and many Leadership Conferences, the trend of our times.  Jesus taught us "How to be a Servant!" The early church walked together in oneness, praising God, worshipping Him, studying the Word together and great miracles started happening, souls were added all over, and in spread, finally all over the world in its continuing revival fires

 Today, as the gospel reaches the furthest corners, touching unreached, credit is given to the pure-hearted missionaries who walk with God and talk with Him and grow in spiritual dimensions. 

Impersonal Programmed Prayers versus Intercessory Prayer

Many times, Christians have a church list, and pray for a string of people on that list.  Yet, somewhere, out there in the dark, someone known to them might need prayer desperately but that cannot be known of course.  Only the Spirit can show us how to prayer, and we need to get more in the habit of asking Him to specifically show us if there is anyone we can specifically pray for.  The more we walk in the Spirit, the more He will reveal and show us specifically who to pray for and how to prayer.

Then, there is another kind of Christians who do not prayer at all, and maybe only pray for their personal needs.

"Have you heard of the dark ages?  People lived prayer-less lives at that time.

We cannot physically pray for everyone all the time, but we can carry prayer burdens and keep being open to the Spirit's leading to pray for different people at different times.   We pray for the church, the people of the country.  In countries where Christians prayed for their nation fervently, entire nations have turned to Christ, not by force conversions, but by the work of God's Spirit through the prayers of the people.  We also need to pray for the intervention of God's angels to deliver little children from evil. Not only that, but overall, the tide of evil will be reduced through our prayers, for more angelic intervention in worldly affairs to bring eternal change for God's Kingdom.  If we do not, more evil will overtake the nation.  It is our duty otherwise evil will start stalking the land.  The Bible never told us to stop praying.  If we did not need to pray, the Bible would not be commanding us to pray for our nation and governments and to pray without ceasing.  We are commanded to pray for laborers for the harvest.  Our prayers will make a difference.  See history and the people that prayed and the differences that happened in those nations.  It is recorded in history.  We cannot do this kind of prayer without a burden and unction of the Holy Spirit, as we wait on Him to lead us in this kind of prayer.  We never, never pray these kind of flesh in the energy of our flesh.  It will avail nothing, we will actually get very tired.  We have to wait upon the Spirit and He will show us exactly how to pray, we groan and pray for people in the Spirit, many times you will weep for people, these are not your tears, they are the tears of the Spirit of God".

No one really knows this, but on Sunday mornings, Christians need double prayer because demons sit among the pews of the Christians.  It sounds very extreme, but this is a reality, which is why church members are so attacked if we are not abiding and obeying.  Every Sunday morning is the Devil's playground field when Christians are unguarded and without prayer.  He causes Christians to be judgmental, critical and shallow and keep them entangled in a cozy club among themselves with friends of their personal preferences, ignoring many who they do not "click" with.  So, in reality, cliques are formed within churches.

Satan especially throws fiery darts at Christians aimed to destroy lives, break up churches, cause factions, jealousies, comparisons, and even competition among each other.  This attack is continued through the week in their lives, even breaking up marriages and homes.  In this way, some Christians are too busy fighting among each other, exhausted, and they will not be anointed to walk closely with the Lord, the ultimate goal of God, to have a deep intimate relationship with Him and be powerful witnesses to the world and draw many to Christ.  The demons are fully active on Christians who do not intercede for one another as well as who do not even pray for themselves. 

The Key:

"Pray without ceasing", which is to be in a constant state of uninterrupted connection with the Lord, this is a kind of art that can be mastered with the ever present help of the Holy Spirit. and commune with God, the Holy Spirit who dwells within you, the more you commune, your spirit will become stronger and you will have the power to overcome sin and your weaknesses and can do great things.

It is through deep prayer and communion with God that churches will rise out of their delicate cracking eggshells and become living stones and strong walls and fortresses against the ammunition of the fiery darts of evil and rise up and shine in the land with power with the Love and Light of Jesus.

By Rita Farhat Kurian

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