Vertical Church Reprise

Vertical Church Reprise

James went on a long tour of many many cities preaching about what changes need to be made in our churches and about how the focus on God needs to come back.  It took 500 hours for him to write his book and he preached in over 40 cities.  Isaiah 64:1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!  The main reason he went out on this tour is because the church today in America is in trouble.  

It's not a right to have a good marriage, it's a privilege.  If you have it, it's so easy to forget that didn't come easy to a lot of people.  If you attend a good church, a gospel saturated, a vertical, word proclaiming, Christ adoring church, you're blessed.  If you have something, it's so easy to lose sight of what it's like for people who don't have it.  There are people that wish they were married that aren't.  People that wish they were married again.  There's people struggling in the marriage they're in.  

  

There are over 6,000 churches in America that are closing their doors each year.  What happened?  These used to be places filled with the glory of God and they are dead now.  Churches are for sale now and you never used to see that.  Soon we're going to be like those European churches that are big and beautiful with stained glass windows.  Us dopey Americans tour those churches all the time.  But those churches are dead.  If something drastic doesn't happen, our children, grand kids, great grand kids, will be receiving that kind of church.   Churches today are watered down, western world, hardly better than Dr. Phil church.  All this horizontal helpfulness is not about God.  Church is supposed to be life altering.  Churches don't die, God's voice in them dies.  Our problem is not a how, it's a who problem.  God just doesn't attend anymore.  James wants to do something for our churches. He doesn't want us to be a selfish little cloistered group of people that are so about ourselves, that doesn't have a heart for the American church.  

Only God moves mountains.  Isaiah 64:1 "Oh that you would rend..."  We believe God wrote the Bible.  Every word matters.  This verse has passion.  It's a prayer from his heart, crying out to God.  Our greatest expression of passion should be for God.  God wants you to come to church and reach down for the dial of what he made you and crank it to full.  We need that passion in church.  Preaching is theology coming from a man who is on fire.  

The heavens is the barrier between us and God.  How many of you say a prayer, then think afterwards that it didn't even get out of the room? Like there is a barrier?  There is one.  It's not God, he is ready to do all that we long to see him do.  The delay is what we see in the mirror and what we see around us.  God is making us spiritually fit to receive what he's already willing to do.  We pray for healing because we want to live a longer life, when we should pray so that we would be less selfish and use the days we have to honor him.  God is not unwilling or unable.  God forgive us for acting like somehow he's not on it, and we are.  He's working to get us on it so he can be.  The "mountains" is a metaphor.  It's about how to make something move, like a mountain.  Mountains make you feel permanent.  When you stand at the base of a mountain you feel small. The bible uses mountains to describe God; unchanging.  It describes God's eternality, Father, Son and the Holy spirit.  Isaiah 64:1 Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, the mountains....  It is not a mountain verse, it's a thing that makes me feel small that cannot be changed verse.  We all have mountains in our life that make us feel so small.  Alone in our marriage, broken hearts from our sons or daughters, loss in our lives make us feel stuck and like they are never going to change.  Now you know why Isaiah is so passionate in his prayer.  He's crying, "OH" to God to help him break down this mountain.  Jesus said, "If you say to this mountain be removed and be cast into the sea, it will be done for you."  If you have something that is not God's will for your life, that you think can never change, God moves mountains.  At church addicted people are finding freedom, sick people are finding healing, lost people are getting found, lonely people are finding fellowship.  God puts mountains in our lives and is using them to change you and to make you into who you need to be.  

God is omnipresent.  While it is true God is everywhere, God is not working equally in all places.  That's why we pray in the Lord's prayer we are acknowledging in some places things happen precisely as God wants on time, every time.  And other places not so much.  Some day his will, will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.  But not today.  He says draw near to me and I will draw near to you.  We think why?  He's everywhere.  But in that he's promising though he is everywhere, to manifest himself more powerfully in the person that draws near to him.  Psalms 34:17  The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles.  The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart.  What we're longing for is for our church to be increasingly.  God is willing to do so much more. We have so much room to grow.  But we have to deal with what's in the way.  

Exodus 32:33 The LORD replied to Moses, "Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book.  Moses was called to lead 2 million of God's people who were slaves to the promised land.  It didn't go good.  He murdered a guy and it all got sideways, so God sent him back to the wilderness for 40 years.  So he shows up when he's 80 and says to the pharaoh that 2 million of your people are coming with me, and the pharaoh says I don't think so.  Moses warns him, but he says get out.  Moses brings 10 plagues onto him.  So he takes the people and they are walking to the Red Sea.  You know that story.  A lot of miracles happen in Moses' life.  There is a reason God doesn't come down and render the heavens anymore.  You're not wrong that there's a barrier.  You're just wrong that it's God.  

Exodus 32:9 "I have seen these people," the LORD said to Moses, "and they are a stiff-necked people."  God sees what happens.  He sees into our hearts.  The stiff necked people, as if to say "Don't tell me nothing. I don't need to hear anything from you.  I know."  We have a skill that we've all become too familiar with.  It's the ability to twist what happened in such a way that the responsibilities lies with others and not me.  It's my parents, kids, past.  We've got stories for why the way we are.  Are we submissive to let someone lead us to a better person?  God says to the children of Israel, Isaiah 33:3 Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.   Imagine if God said to you, you go do what you're going to do, I'm not coming with you.  We might as well close the doors without God's presence in the church.  It's a God thing, a God place.  Why Lord?  He says lest I consume you on the way.  We say God come to us, to all our stubbornness.  

We don't look in the mirror.  How many times have you been told by a preacher or someone that you need to spend regular faithful time in God's word?  You've been starving yourself of spirituality when you don't do it.  Jesus said, "If you will not forgive your brother in your heart, neither will your father forgive you."  A family member, former spouse, former neighbor, if they sat beside you it would make your skin crawl.  But you bring that unrighteous, unforgiving resentment and bitterness into God's house.  We let those things we have not resolved become the barrier that we're asking God to rend.   And he's willing.  How many men have been taught that the emotional nourishment of your wife is your responsibility?  You pride yourself on the fact you're not out running around on you're wife, but you sleep with your back to that woman.  Who's more unfaithful?  The man out running around?  Or the guy in the house, withholding his heart, closing himself off, causing her to live alone in a marriage.  Both are incredibly unfaithful.  1 Peter 3:7 Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.  God has so much more for us as a church.  You say God isn't hearing me.  Isaiah 59:1 Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.  His arm is not short.  It's not God.  His ear is not dull that he cannot hear.  Isaiah 59:2 But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.  Your sins have separated you from God.  Psalms 66:18  If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened;  If the church is going to continue to be a place where mountains are quaking, and God manifests his power, we must remove the things that hinder us.  You have to be willing.  Exodus 33:16 For how shall it be known, that we have found favor in your sight if not in your going with us we have been distinguished.  It is not that in your going with us that we are distinct as a people.  Go into church with your hands clean and your hearts pure.  

My prayer to you:  Oh Father we turn to you in this moment we ask oh God that you would by your spirit touch us and convict us about those things that convict us, my stubborn heart.  I am stubborn and serve with stiff necked people that need to hear your word far too often to obey it.  Often we have wandered from the path of your truth and regretted it.  Never have we stayed and obeyed and found it to be less than blessing.  Why is there still debate?  Why are we not running the way of your commandments.  Oh forgive our stubbornness and let your goodness let us pour out with repentance.  And oh how we pray that the mountains that we are facing in our lives will fall forward and crumble.  Give us a story to tell our kids to tell of how great you are Lord.   We lay our burdens before you.  Nothing is beyond you.  Nothing is out of your reach.  We trust you and love you.  You can do it. Amen.