The only cure for your hurting heart is the risen Jesus. If you’re looking anywhere else (even to church), you’re looking in the wrong places.

Meetings in the body of Christ are supposed to be about empowering, releasing, and sending Christians to daily follow God’s Spirit. They should never be about corralling and controlling them. Whether in robe and hat or T-shirt and jeans, there’s no place for heavy-handed church authority.

Human hierarchies can command, coerce, and compel obedience, but they can’t cancel the corruption that is in people’s hearts and replace it with God’s glory. Even the best ecclesiology (church government) can’t lead a church to splendor and set the captives free. Only “Christ in you” can do that.

Jesus calls His disciples to surrender to the kingdom of God and to be transformed by His ongoing inner presence. He wants His followers to be ever led from within by His Spirit, not by the demands and domination of a religious authority structure.

Jesus has been programmed, canned, boxed, and scripted. Perhaps it’s time that we let Him be Lord. It’s easy to preach that Jesus is Lord, and yet not even allow Him to be the hands-on Lord of a church service. Instead of telling people about preachers we like, perhaps it would be better if we told them about Jesus and what He’s actively doing and saying.

When Christianity shifted from being about the presence of Christ to being about sermons and ceremonies about Christ, it lost its power. True Christianity is about making the risen Jesus the focus of each day. It isn’t about trying to get Jesus to show up in power. It’s about getting out of His way so He can.

Have faith in Christ living and working in you. Get out of His way. Trust the Holy Spirit and continually obey His inner promptings.

If sedation
Or even meditation
Hasn't healed
Your heartache,
Fully open your heart
To the risen Jesus
And experience
What He can do.