A Call to Anguish

David Wilkerson is a pastor I really enjoy listening to.  This is an excerpt from his sermon "A Call to Anguish."  This is an important message for the people in the Church (as in Christians as a whole).  If you want to listen to the entire sermon you can on YouTube, it's nearly an hour long.  Anyway, let's begin.

When you think of people - whether it's a family member, friend, or someone you just met.  What about people you just walk by in the street or in the grocery store?  When you think of people who don't follow Christ, what do you think?

There was a church we used to go to for about a year, and when we were at a Bible study there, a woman said "I'm just waiting for Jesus to come back!  My family are all Christians, my kids are all Christians, we're just waiting for Jesus to come back."  This greatly angered me.  "That's great your family are all believers, but what about the rest of the world?  Do they not matter?"

Then you've got people who follow preachers like Joel Osteen.  So many believers want to just hear ear-tickling sermons that make them "feel good."  They don't care about sermons that would convict them.  They don't want to hear sermons that will point out how broken and screwed up they are.

Going to church for a lot of people is just something they do, it's not because they want to learn about God, it's for a good time.  It's so we can be included in a community.  They want to feel good and only hear how much God loves them, instead of hearing things that convict them.  They'd rather hear how God forgives them, than hear how they should stop that affair, or that addiction, or whatever sin it is.  Hell, I don't want to hear how bad my addictions are.  I don't want to hear that my addictions cause God grief.  But it's important to be reminded of it.  I would rather hear that I'm doing something wrong, than be told that God isn't bothered by my screw ups.

We, followers of Christ, should be weeping for the lost - inside and outside the Church.  It should cause us great pain to think of the people who think they are following Christ, but in reality don't really care.

I used to ask God to give me a heart like David, since he was a man after God's heart.  Now though, I ask God to give me a heart like Jesus.  This is a pretty dangerous prayer I think.  If we have a heart like Jesus, the things that give Him pain will give you pain.  What breaks His heart, will break your heart.  I can tell you, people who don't care about changing breaks His heart.  We should be in anguish with what's going on in the Church!  We should be in pain that the Church is no longer interested in showing the truth to people, but just to make people feel good!

We, the Church, need to get our act straight.  I know the church tends to go from one extreme to another.  Either they're saying everyone is going to hell like Westboro Baptist, or everything is all about love like Joel Osteen.  We need the middle ground.  God is love, but He also has things that anger Him.  We can't have one and ignore the other.  We need to pray for the Church to preach what matters to God.

We should be weeping for the lost.  It should cause us great pain that there are people who are lost and whether intentionally or not, are refusing Christ.  Pray for them, that the Lord will soften their hearts.  Pray that they'll listen to His voice.