10.01.2009

Jesus Saves From The American Dream

Monday night at Bible Study, a man spoke about his recent missions trip to Mongolia. Mongolia is a really interesting country. It's huge, about the size of Alaska, but only 3 million people live there, and a third of them live in the capital. The rest of the people are scattered hundreds of miles across wasteland. Dirt roads connect villages made up of just a few tents.

The people aren't rich at all by our standards. Most of what they have can be fit into their one room tent. This man went over to teach courses for college credit to members of a church in the Mongolian boondocks. They crammed into a building for nine hours a day for weeks, simply learning about the Bible.

The church is young. Most are first generation believers under the age of 25. They really don't have much, but from the pictures we were shown, they live a whole lot like the end of Acts 2. They do life together. They don't care about stuff; they care about each other. They are a true chuch, growing closer to God together.

It's such a contrast to the American church.

We treat church like a social club. Yeah, the gospel may be preached, but church can still be just a social club. We show up on Sundays caring more about how our external looks than our internal. We talk about things that get us status: our jobs, our sports teams, our girlfriends. We tell other believers about how we prayed and God provided us with a raise, a BMW, or a huge house.

What happened to Acts 2? What happened to sacrificially providing for other believers? What happened to encouraging others, building them up in their walk with Christ? Where is that in the church today?

It's easy to give God credit for giving you wealth. It's not easy to give God glory by giving it away. It's easy to show up on Sunday to keep up appearances. It's not easy to repent of all the crap you did the week before. It's easy to talk about football. It's not easy to ask for help with your addiction to it.

Where'd the church go?

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