Focus: Palatable Christianity

Text: Rev.3:15,16

"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."

This is the lukewarm church. It is flashy, trendy and crowded, but lifeless and powerless. It lives and thrives in the ethical squalor. Palatable faith allows the accommodation of every form of fleshly compromise. Modern-day Christianity, to a very large extent, is awful. It is a sort of Christianity that is all lips and no life. It is what another has described as "heaven on the lips but nothing on the hips." And the truth is, as another has opined, that "if you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." It is the brand of Christianity of which we have little or no price to pay. There is nothing at stake and certainly no sense of urgency in our souls. We practice the kind of Christianity that leaves no room for loses. We regard the cross of Christ as enough, but we do not consider carrying our own cross, and following Christ as an integral part of our Christian life. The 'old man' is still actively on the throne, and the new man is left under the domination and enslavement of the flesh. It gives us great pleasure, indulging the flesh

Like Peter, we cannot say, "Lo, we have left all, and followed thee" (Lk.18:28). Like the woman of Samaria, is it ever said of us, "The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men…"? (Jh.4:28). She saw an urgency in discharging a sacred responsibility for the Lord and would not allow anything to hamper or hinder her mobility. As for us, our own personal issues are more pressing than those that concern the kingdom of God.

Can we say like Paul, "But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ"? (Phil.3:8). Think of the twenty four elders who "cast their crowns before the throne, saying…" (Rev.4:10). 

For us, we find it proper to parade our little crowns before the Lord. Jesus Christ our perfect example had the opportunity of being crowned by the people, but He rejected it and walked away from them.

Today, ministers have accepted the status of a celebrity, forgetting that they are servants of Christ and the people. We love the fanfare, the razzmatazz, the paraphernalia of being called and celebrated as stars, and we love the adulation and adoration of the people. We are even filled with pride for the little God is using us to do. We are a self-centered, arrogant and insolent church.

In his day, Peter said, "Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk" (Act.3:6). But the church in Laodicea said, "I am rich, I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing." And that is where we are still. Spiritual and material pride is consuming us.

Palatable Christianity is a mess. It is the Christianity of the comfortable pew and the conceited men of the cloth. We are given to fighting for our rights until someone ends up in hell, and we are happy to have achieved that. This caricature of Christianity keeps bringing me back to Mahatma Gandhi's Blunders of the World, which includes:

*Worship without sacrifice

*Wealth without work

*Knowledge without character

*Commerce without morality

*Pleasure without conscience

*Science without humanity

*Politics without principle

*Rights without responsibility

These blunders are playing out in the church, and we need nothing short of a heaven-sent revival to reverse the trend.

Like Ephraim, we are cakes not turned - half-baked, burnt on one side and unbaked on the other side, and therefore useless or uneatable. As you may know, ugliness is not about having a bad face or a deformed body. Ugliness is simply life bereft of design and significance.

I am not a hopeless churchman; I am fully persuaded that God is not done with the church or Christianity as it is now. I believe in Samson's 'hair' experience. It is said of him, "Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaven" (Judg.16:22). 

It is time to regain the secret and source of our spiritual power. Through revival and repentance we will surely regain our anointing and reclaim our holy mandate.

We will regain our sense of passionate faith and self-giving love. We need fresh encounters with Christ, an experience of a supernatural dimension. Roger Bacon said, "Without experience, nothing can be known sufficiently." Jesus Christ preached the word not so much as to be understood as it was to be encountered.

The church must move from the way things are to the way things should be. Until that happens, the church will remain in crisis. Our fleshly cistern does not hold water. We need that well of living waters that flows from the inner recesses of our beings. Our walls and cisterns are broken; they are in need of mending. 

And only the Holy Spirit can expertly and perfectly mend what is broken in us by way of repentance for sin, and also our willingness to realign ourselves with our living and vital center - Jesus Christ.

Samuel Chadwick said it long time ago that "the church that is man-managed instead of God-governed is doomed to failure. A ministry that is college-trained, but not Spirit-filled works no miracles." We must discontinue mixing things up, and getting satisfied with the subnormal. Our apathy, lethargy and atrophy must give way to the Spirit's fire. Play-it-safe, middle-of-the-road, indifferent, and mediocre Christianity is appalling, and it is not salable. The Lord Jesus Christ thinks that lukewarm Christians deserve to be spit out of His mouth.

Let us go for that buoyant and bubbling Christian life and love which everyone would happily stand in line for! Our palatable faith is not palatable to God; it is actually nauseating to Him. Christ never considers a palatable church for a pass mark. He sees little or nothing to commend for the lukewarm church. In fact He is outside knocking on the door for us to open for Him to come in. This is sad, but we repent and pray for a radical change. Amen!

by Bishop Moses E. Peter