Come on Home!

COME ON HOME[

Are you not tired of having just enough religion to make you uncomfortable at a cocktail reception and yet ill at ease in the presence of the Holy?

There is time to come back to simple holy living.
Time to come back to self-control, Christian simplicity, and spiritual discipline energized by God's grace. "Now is the time. We have been through it all-- the grasping, the looking, the searching. We have lived as people who try to serve God and mammon, and we know now that it cannot be done.
Too many Christians have drifted into letting the world tell them how to dress, what to drive, what songs and entertainment with which to saturate the soul, and just how to put me first at the expense of other people whom nobody puts first. Some who take the name of Christ seem owned by their ambitions, chained to a success formula, enslaved by the hunger for prestige-- diseases they have caught from our sinful culture. They fill up the ranks of the Christian jet set.
Visit any important Christian conference and you will see them-- "dressed alike, talking alike, smiling alike, looking over the shoulders of the people to whom they are speaking in order to see who else has come into the room."
The world has taught us to reach for the things that matter least while neglecting the things that matter most. Prayer, Bible study, devotion, and obedience have been elbowed to the margins as Christian self-help propaganda taught believers to dress for success, win through intimidation, fulfill themselves, enjoy sex, and lose weight.
Richard Baxter's 17th-century description fits today's cosmopolite evangelicals like a glove:
When we should study God we study ourselves; when we should mind God, we mind ourselves; when we should love God, we love our carnal selves; when we should trust God, we trust ourselves; when we should honour God, we honour ourselves; and when we should ascribe to God and admire Him, we ascribe to and admire ourselves: and instead of God we would have all men's eyes and dependence on us, and all men's thanks returned to us, and would gladly be the only men on earth extolled and admired by all. And thus naturally we are our own idols.
Even spirituality has become something to be utilized. We were coached to practice the spiritual disciplines in order to achieve self-fulfillment, discover happiness, become fully human, and overcome stress. Such behavior is a lilac-scented blasphemy. The only reason to practice the spiritual disciplines is because of who God is. Not even Hollywood has "out-glitzed" evangelical religion. Popular Christianity has been polled, charted, televised, and made "user friendly" by the best ad crews in the world. But now we know that making Christianity compatible with the loose living and undisciplined conduct of our culture does not work. The popular church "has lower standards for membership than those for getting on a bus."
But we have learned a few lessons, haven't we? "Now we can see . . . where uncontrolled living goes. We know the misery. We have felt it.
“ It is time to come home. Time to stop trying to be citizens of two countries. It is time to stop trying to blend God's way with our own wants and lusts. Come home to Christian simplicity, discipline, and holiness of heart and life. The journey is not easy. The worldly culture will try to sweep you back into its whirlwind of shallow gratifications, its conscience- deadening maze of greeds and lusts, its "cosmetic diversions and plastic pleasures."
Resist them in the power of the Spirit. They are vapors of fantasy that lead only to emptiness. On the other hand, the holy life to which God is calling you is "astonishing in its completeness," as Thomas Kelley writes.
Of the holy life, he says,
Its joys are ravishing,
its peace profound,
its humility the deepest,
its power world-shaking,
its love enveloping,
its simplicity that of a trusting child
... It is the life and power of Jesus of Nazareth.

(1) We need to deliberately break the insulation that separates us from entering into God's Presence, the "Shekinah." God's Presence is life-giving. We must enter into the Presence and worship, wherever we are coming from.
(2) We need to break the bondage of self-consciousness before the judgment of other human beings. "If I buy into this radical response I will be stepping back into the '30s-- I will be an ignorant sheep---

" NOT if it is truly GOD who is calling you to come HOME