subject: Mental Laziness: The NOW Problem of TODAY Christians [print this page] Mental Laziness: The NOW Problem of TODAY Christians
One of the fastest growing and most profitable "businesses" in Africa today, is the church business. Several people have taken advantage of the poverty situation to preach prosperity gospel. In some of these churches, one hardly hears anything about the gospel. It is all about a God who would make people rich especially people who give large sums of money to the preacher. And unfortunately, people fall into this trap because of they are mentally lazy to know more about God. They swing on the couch of sleeping spirituality. Forgetting that God is more concerned with our level of spirituality maturity; which even is one of the sole reasons we need the spiritual formation process "That we may know him more"
The truth is; most professing Christians don't want to grow-out from being babies. They are so so afraid of spiritual maturity! Or may be, it could be that they are not properly edified by their pastors. And the trifling thing is that most pastors are sacred of telling this truth in order not to lose their members. They want to retain their congregation at the expense of biblical truth. We must recognize that God-centered ministry is one that is sensitive to what God is doing.
God does not suspend our thinking when we are born again. We have to do some things because the spiritual formation process necessitates so. Let's stop deceiving ourselves! God will not do what we ought to do ourselves for us! A lot of Christians suffer from "this" mental laziness; that's our problem! Most Church leaders now continuously entrench in their members, pseudo-teachings that are nowhere found in the bible, and then cover it under the cloak of "Rhema". I think that's pathetic!
We don't want to decode the coded wisdom in the sacred Scripture, the Bible. We hate knotty assignments. Even, some take literary, everything they read from the Bible without properly construing the message of the writer. Take for instance, in 3 John 1: 2, where the Bible talks about Gaius, the well-beloved. It reads,"Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." Funny enough, most preachers today have taken this single verse of the Bible to embellish their own hoopla, prosperity gospel. They say,"God wish above all things that you prosper and be in good health". Therefore, any mark of poverty or sporadic illness is not from God. They eject the post-texts and pre-texts to infer their own self-centered meaning to Bible texts. And their members swallow these delusions.
Let's just examine the above passage. John was writing to Gaius, the well-beloved, because of his hospitality to missionaries and the way he treated visiting brethren. Certain brethren who had been where Gaius lived, had enjoyed his hospitality and had spoken well of him to John on their return. Then John on hearing about this good man writes. He wishes Gaius allgood things, but most of all prosperity of the soul. What is the prosperity of soul?This is salvation! And remember, is even a wish. "I wish above all things" Is not a statement of assertion! Paul only prayed this prayer for him because of his devotion to the course of Christ. How many of us are devoted to giving and hospitality like he was, to demand such release of blessing? The prosperity of Gaius is not what to claim except you've done what he did. You don't seize an opportunity you're not qualified for.
Another passage of the bible to learn from is seen in Phil. 4: 17:"But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus." This has turned to one of our maxims of faith. Yes(!), our God will supply to usaccording to his riches Of course, He will(!), but not when we dont labor in giving and receiving, like the Philippians did for Paul before he could release such grace upon them. Notice in verse 14, 15, and 16, Paul was thanking the Philippians, for having remembered him in love for his labor. After leaving Philippi Paul next labored at Thessalonica. See Acts, chapter 17. While there, the newly founded church of the Philippians sent to him contributions at least twice.They also aided him later while he was in Corinth (2 Cor.11:9). The question before us is this: How many of usdoubly honor those who labor among us? Our ministers, church workers, missionaries; how often do we remember them and bless their lives for a job well-done? Do we ever think of sustaining those in Mission fields; the missionaries of our time? How can we profess this verse to our own good only without reviewing its requisites? How can God respond to this prayer if we grow stony hearts towards those he cherish? It is a good work to succour and help a good minister in trouble. The nature of true Christian sympathy is not only to feel concern for our friends in their troubles, but to do what we can to help them.
Language is a form of human reason and has its reasons which are unknown to man.Besides, do we ever try to read and understand the bible ourselves, or apply the hermeneutical principles of interpretation to a text for a better grasp? Even as a Minister, do you copy others ideas and deliver it to your audience as if they were yours; and they respond with a thunderous AMEN-HALLELUYAH shout? Trifling indeed! But what if your source was wrong? Most ministers don't even care to do proper exegesis before sermonizing. They pick a catchy verse and philosophize from it.
For congregants, they only want to swallow all that have been preached by their clergies without going back to the Scripture, to decode the meaning of the text themselves. "I just need a prophetic declaration from my pastor so that things will get better"they say without understanding kingdom principles.
Our problem is that we don't want to believe in the truth of the gospel, rather, we all cling to faith for "rogue" reasons; all for what we can get! Failing to realize that God cannot prosper us if we fail to do what we ought to do ourselves!
In our theology class, we were taught that true knowledge about God starts from FAITH and then REASON. Faith, the illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbableis one of the unfathomed concepts in Christianity. Faith can't work if we don't respect its timely duration. Some deposits of our faith are realities waiting to be embraced, but until we empathize with these biblical characters, and think as they did, talk as they talked, and work as they worked, then am sorry to say that professing those elating verses are vain and nonsensical; thus our faith dims fake.
The church must imbibe the discipline of spiritual maturity; that's what the Universal Church needs!
