Today is part three of six blog posts regarding why I am going to build an ark! May seem a little strange so check out this blog post to see what it’s all about, ‘Time To Build An Ark’. For those who can’t be bothered to click on another post, you’ll find out in part six what I am really building, and no it’s not an actually ark! Also check out part one if you click here and part two here.

Part 3

Over the last year God has opened my eyes to some things that I now see are so broken it’s going to take a movement on a huge scale to fix.

In part two I discussed how church had become boring and dead to so many. How? I mean we preach God’s word! We preach Jesus Christ! Doesn’t the bible say that the word is like a two-edged sword that pierces the heart of man?  Isn’t Jesus the author of life and his words are truth and life?

The problem I have found is that for so many years many have been using the sword incorrectly. Furthermore, the words of Jesus have been twisted to fit our needs and our culture. This takes the power and the life out of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what I’ve seen:

• We preach how to instead of why - Jesus never told the people to do something without the reasoning behind it. The problem is we have told people for years how to be a Christian, but have never truly discovered why we should be a Christian. We have told people we shouldn’t drink, smoke, have sex outside of marriage, say no to abortion and it’s wrong to become gay but have never explored what the bible really says and why it says it. Quoting a few verses will not change the lives of individuals today, opening up the bible to the why of God will change those same lives forever!
• We are answering questions no-one is asking - Let’s be honest, how many sermons have you heard that have let no impact on your life? Way too many, and I’ve preached many myself! The thing is that the words of the bible are life, powerful and transforming, yet people have switched off and become numb to what we have said because people don’t care about the things we want to talk about.
• We refuse to answer the questions people are asking - Jesus always answered peoples questions. They may not have liked what he said, but when a pure question came from someones heart he answered it. There is a generation of people living today who have been asking questions that the church at large are refusing to answer. I believe the reason is because we don’t know the answer ourselves! Well for the millions of people asking those questions, if we don’t answer them they will go elsewhere for those answers.

As I started to see these three problems things started to click into place with me. God wanted to reach the heart, mind and soul of people yet what we were facilitating in church rarely engaged all three.  I discovered that when the HOW comes before the WHY, the only thing that is left is rotten religion. When the WHY comes before the HOW, people discover purpose, meaning and life!