When Spirit-filled Christianity stops allowing spontaneity and succumbs to structure and systemization it soon gets stale. When every faithful Christ-follower is recognized as a priest of the living God, Christianity will be revolutionized!
God’s voice, heard without ears, but with your spirit, is the key to vibrant Christianity that rises above religious routine. Too many Christians are focused on self and their personal prosperity rather than on holiness, obedience, and faithfulness to Jesus.
When preachers and priests know that those they call “my people” will passively overlook their behaviors, the risk of abuse goes up! It’s hard for people on the bottom of a hierarchy to hold the higher-ups accountable. We need equality in the body of Christ.
Too many people blindly believe that the ability to give a nice talk about God makes a preacher or priest godly. Let’s go beyond religious systems that often break hearts and allow abuse, to a direct relationship with the risen Jesus. People who follow Christ in the light are convicted by the Spirit and by their conscience and don’t live in sin and abuse.
Christians need to be encouraged and allowed to personally seek God, not to just sit through “services,” liturgy, or programs. If you keep bars on your heart to keep people out, the bars keep you in. Perhaps the best strategy for church is to let all the people of God listen to Jesus & then say or do what He tells them to.
A priesthood above accountability to the brotherhood and sisterhood of the body of Christ increases the likelihood of victimhood. In the institutional church system, one ungodly priest or preacher has more authority than a thousand godly church members. Ungodly priests and preachers are false prophets. They can’t teach what they won’t live. Jesus said, “Beware of false prophets.”
Your conscience isn’t an inner judge to condemn you; it’s an inner Light to guide you out of darkness. Follow it and see! Many people never get beyond outward distractions & inward torments to discover the quiet voice of peace and comfort in their soul.
Life goes awry when we base it on the internal perspective of how we feel rather than the eternal perspective of what is real! Don’t let life’s distractions, deceptions, and disturbances block your view of what really matters. When inner insights are ignored, nothing happens; when explored they lead to freedom. Revelation can lift you to higher elevation.
It’s time for church to go beyond being “seeker-sensitive” and instead give people hands on training in being Spirit-sensitive! If you don’t control your mind in the minefield of life, you’ll step on many landmines along the way.
