The church must change.  And, by this, I do not mean the way many people mean that it must change.  The church must go back to her roots, back to her source, and back to her faith!

The church is no longer what she once was even a decade ago.  She is filled with the sins of the world, and carried along by every wind of doctrine that comes along, good or ill.

Not all churches are bad, but many are struggling under the load of the filth of this world, simply because of it being brought into the church.

Allow me to put down the line as Jesus did…

If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.

Luke 14:26

If this Gospel is about love, it is also about “hate”.  You cannot love your children and love the work of a serial killer at the same time.  You cannot love a good, pleasant, and peaceful home, and love the disrespect and anarchy of some who have no regard for anything, and defile everything they touch and encounter.

Jesus said, you will love one and hate the other, or be despise the one and be devoted to the other.

Unless you have the freedom in your heart and in your spirit, and then in your body, to follow Paul’s guidance and “expel the wicked man” (1 Corinthians 5:13) when it is appropriate, then the little bit of ungodly leaven will leaven the whole lump.

Church can and always will be about helping the broken, and the wounded find healing, wholeness, and restoration in Christ, but it is never about complacency, wanton unending tolerance of obvious sin of which someone is unrepentant, or allowing spiritual compromise to be high watermark of our fellowship.

The only way to be holy is through the Spirit of Jesus, through His blood, and through an intolerance of any other spirit.  When we please men, we are no longer bond-servants of Jesus Christ, and when we even good-intentioned minister to a wounded soul out of anything other than that Spirit of Christ, we do not do a service to them to build up their soul.  We often merely recreate the same problem we tried to fix, at a higher level, one-hundred fold worse.

This can all be taken handled correctly, including training the young in Christ, in the care of proper shepherds and overseers, but without holiness, no one will see the Lord.  If His presence does not go with us, what will distinguish us from the other multitudes on the Earth?  If we do not have His glory in our midst, what are we doing?

Many will no doubt disagree with such a narrowly defined vision.  But, this generation is filled with thousands of other voices, and year by year, we see their fruit.  Jesus said there were four types of soil, and only one produced fruit of varying amounts, and it wasn’t one with a lot of other things going on.  In fact, it was the only soil in which there was absolutely nothing else hindering the seed!

God doesn’t need much of a person, so long as He can have all of that person.  In the words of Jonathan, “Nothing can hinder the LORD from saving, whether by many or by few” (1 Samuel 14:6).  There is nothing that can stand in the way of the person filled with the Holy Spirit.  Angry mobs can be passed through, raging storms can be stilled with a word, and death itself is undone forever, simply through the Spirit.

If this isn’t the fruit of our work, what do we have to compare to the Master?  It is enough to be like Him…

We will never continually have the fullness of the Spirit on a corporate level, except for fully on God’s mercy, if we do not make pains to guard, protect, and steward His house.  If it was the words of Jesus that brought us to His life, how much more should it be the vessel for His church, on a corporate level.  If hearing His word brought faith to us, how much more to those to whom we speak it.

The body of Christ must be beautiful and holy.  It must be pure and chaste in spirit.  There is no place for filthy talk or any corrupt communication.  There is no place for sexual uncleanness.  If any one who is caught in a fault, let you who are spiritual, restore such a one, but do so in a spirit of meekness, lest you also be tempted (Galatians 6:1).

Faith is not primarily a mechanism to get miracles to happen in your life, it is the walk of the Kingdom in the Holy Ghost.  It is not a means, but it is the ability to perceive, ascertain, know, and retain the Eternal Kingdom of God in the heavenly realms.  It is the invisible life of the Christian.  Another can talk the talk, but only the man with faith can walk it and have it work.

The church must return to her roots, to faith, and to the gospels.  Not to gimmicks, not to programs, not a doctrine, but to a living faith in the real, Eternal God, and in Jesus Christ His son.