A CLEAN HOUSE...

A Clean House….

Last Wednesday night I had to run back to the house to pick up a few items that the kids had left. I took someone from the church with me. We got out of the car, went through the garage, and entered the house by way of the kitchen. I proceeded upstairs to get what I needed while my friend stayed downstairs. We then left the house and headed back to church. On our way back, I was asked if our house was always that clean. Many of you know that my wife, Malia, is a very organized woman who loves her house to be orderly and clean. It is true that when we leave the house everything is in its place but there are times when the house looks like a tornado has come through. I am not aware of any house that is not messy at some time or another. I guess the only time that everything is perfect is when we aren’t home! We are the ones who mess things up. How does this relate to Church life?

Some people say that a “healthy church” has the following attributes: 100% of its weekend attendance participates in small groups, it is saturated with people carrying their Bibles to church and is dominated by the Biblically literate. What if we surveyed FBC Canton and we discovered that 95-100% of our regular attenders were tithing, reading their Bibles regularly, inviting people to church every week, consistently serving on the weekend, attending Sunday school, and attending our Morning Worship? Would that be considered a healthy church?

On the outside, it may look clean and orderly, but on the inside it is not what God wants. Consider a stable: “Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; but much increase comes by the strength of an ox (Proverbs 14:4).” When you seek to have an increase, messes happen, but with the mess comes a great harvest. So what does a healthy church look like? In John 4:34-38 Jesus makes this very clear, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

The local Church will not be exclusively filled with whole-hearted, Bible-believing, salvation-proclaiming, passionate worshippers. On the contrary, the local Church will be filled with people at all stages of spiritual development. It’s important we at FBCC remember God desires a good portion of our church be the not yet or the recently converted. When we seek to reach out to a lost and dying world, things get messy. Glory to God! It is not our job to clean the place up. That is the job of the Holy Spirit. We are simply charged with the responsibility of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with a dirty world. When we start to really be the Church God wants us to be, then things are going to get a little messy. Hallelujah! BRING THE MESS! For with “the mess” will come a great harvest!

Aaron Hodges