Getting ready this morning my song of choice was Clocks by Coldplay. Now, while pondering the words of the song this line stuck out; “Am I part of the cure or am I part of the disease?” This got my mind racing down a rabbit trail that you get to read about this morning. Am I part of the cure or disease? Am I helping to bring grace, mercy, and love into a world that so needs the love of Christ, or am I being the individual who is tearing down, judging, and condemning the very ones who need grace, mercy and love to hell? Which one am I, which one are you?
The Disease
Church can be the most brutal place to be at in the entire world at times. You can actually walk through the doors of a building expecting to have a life changing experience and leave feeling as though you are more broken and beaten down than you were some 2 hours earlier. How does this happen?
To me the answer is simple; we placed our own desires of what Church should be over the truth of what God says Church is. I find it remarkable as I read the Gospels that Jesus spent a majority of His time with people who had been rejected, hurt, or broken by the Church and the other part of it changing the mindset of those in the Church. Case in point, in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus Himself begins to attack the way the Pharisees approach the Law. He deals with not just what the Law, but the motive behind their ability to keep the Law. Don’t murder or commit adultery; instead if you lust or hate you have already committed both of these sins in your heart.
The Pharisees didn’t want to hear this because they knew they would have to change the way they approached life and church. We become part of the disease when we won’t allow ourselves to be changed. The Pharisees where so entrenched with a legalistic attitude that they couldn’t move forward. Skip ahead some 2,000 years and many in the Church are still dealing with the same thing. Our mindset is tangled in “man made traditions, rather than pleasing God.”
The Church is saturated with individuals who want to serve their own agenda, and what does it produce? It produces a culture of skeptics who claim that the Church is full of hypocrites who don’t care about the things of God. Take a minute and think about what we have in American culture today. The disease has produced Bill Maher’s, TBN, and the prosperity Gospel. You see the disease affects those not in the Church and those in the Church.
There are times when we could almost feel hopeless at the condition of the Church. What can I do? Can it be changed? The short answer is yes.
The Cure
2 Corinthians 3:5-6 -“Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” I love the Church. Saint Augustine said, “The church is a whore, but she is also my mother.” Although there may things wrong with the Church, you can’t just toss Her away.
Pastor Jud Wilhite pastor’s Central Christian Church in Las Vegas, NV. This man loves the Church, in fact, he credits the Church for saving his life. Not only does he claim the church saved his life, 98% of the people who attend his church claim that the Church saved their life. What they mean by this is the Jesus Christ through the work of His body, the Church, led them to a personal encounter with the one who changed them for all of eternity. How can this man and his congregation not be part of the Cure?
I had the amazing opportunity of receiving Christ in my 3rd period gym class my sophomore year of high school. It happened because a Christian teenager took the time to open up and share his story with me. I had never seen Christianity like this before in all my life. In fact, the Christianity that I knew was part of the disease. What happened is eventually my heart warmed to the point that I accepted Christ as my Lord and savior in October of 1997. The Cure for my life was Jesus.
The Bible tells us that we are the reflected image of Christ, more importantly that the Church is that same image. In knowing Jesus I become part of the Cure. If my church knows Jesus it is part of the Cure. The Spirit has brought forth life and now I can walk in that newness.
Church was meant to be the Cure for the Disease of sin. When I allow my will and my wants to interfere with what God desires, I become part of the Disease all over again. When I allow grace, mercy, and the power of the Holy Spirit to guide my life so that I am the image of God’s Son, then I aid in bringing into the word the Cure for all brokenness.
Which one are you? “Are you part of the cure or are you part of the disease?”
Blessings,
Pastor Jason
