Dirty Old Church Mouth

I have been looking forward to writing this for some time. Ever since I started to be more honest with God and some other people, I started to really look at the book of Acts. I wanted to see what the church in Acts was all about; how they did things, how often they met, and other things like that. I was amazed at how God was showing himself to me, but Acts was amazing me even further. I would get so excited when I read Acts, and it made me wonder why I am not experiencing these great things with other people. So then, I got the idea to write a blog about it. I tried to convince myself that this blog entry would be about showing a few selected people what the church really was, but really, I was just going to use it to show them their flaws. I wanted to show them they were doing everything wrong, and their idea of the church was totally polluted. Then, I realized who am I to show them what the church should be? Why should someone like me, one who tries to use God's church as a tool for condemning, show a few other Christians their flaws?

As a result, this blog entry was born; not out of judgment, but out of compassion. When I went through Acts and Jesus' prayer for future believers, I realized that what Jesus wanted was not a check list church. And once again, who am I to speak for Christ, but one thing I can be sure about, since he says it so many times in just one paragraph, is that he wanted and still wants us to be united. In John 17:21, Jesus prays that we will become one, just as he is one with God. In this short prayer, Jesus asks for our unity about four times, and not just any unity, but a unity that makes us as close as he is to God. That's pretty close.

So instead of writing this about where the church is screwing up, I focused on the unity, whether we have it or now. I, personally, can't show the joy that Christ offers us Christians and the church, but I can point us to Acts. I get so excited when I read the first couple books of Acts. How amazing would it be if we were united like that? How much joy would we have if we were honest with each other? How great would it be if we met regularly just so we could be with each other? Can we even comprehend the fact that we could be as close to each other as Christ is to God? I know I can't. At first, I thought that I was not doing my best to make that happen. The truth is, I'm not, but it's not up to me. It's up to us to invite God to unite us. If we invited God to actually be part of us instead of only viewing him as the reason we meet, think of the doors he would open for us!

I don't claim to absolutely know God or his plan, because that would simply be an untrue statement, but I have experienced the huge amount of joy that he has given me from just trying to be united with him. Because of that, I am not going to sit here and type out a list of things we need to do. I'm not going to tell you everything that's wrong with the church. If you want an answer to that, just look at me and my faults; there are a bunch, but God's helping me through them! Anyway, I still think it is important to point out the great joy and other unfathomable things that God gives to the church, and to us individually, through becoming one with him and his other followers.