Smallest Seed

Image from iStock. Here's Part 1 So Jesus went around preaching the Gospel to people and leaving them to make a decision on their own. He never encouraged or made it easy for people to believe his Gospel and follow him. He never visited people and checked if they were ready to believe in him. There were even times when he avoided crowds who were after him. Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!” 38 Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” 39 So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons. [Mark 1] I can't imagine pastors doing this today. Ignore a crowd that's after you? Pastors would give anything to keep that crowd. They'd sacrifice themselves just to have lots of people in their churches. But not Jesus. He seems to be saying, "You want to join me? Pursue

Image from Leisure OneHowTo. Here's the first part.  You can never kick out Jesus from his church---unlike most pastors today. They're often at the mercy of their members, especially the influential ones, and one mistake gets them kicked out so easily. So they try to please these members. I've seen it happen lots of times. How did it come to this? Because they started out pleasing people. They invite them to church and try to be nice to them and plead with them to attend church regularly and be regular members. They beg them to come back next Sunday and so on. This surely builds churches (by pampering people) and can make them grow fast, but Jesus never did any of them. He always had this challenge---take it or leave it. "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." [Matthew 16.24] I don't see this principle working in church anymore. I mean, for instance, here's this guy who tries your church and

Image from HuffPost. I've seen it happen countless times since I was among young people in church. Pastors doing everything they could to get people in so they can start a church. They'd been doing it then, young pastors are still doing it now. And what do they have? A disaster that often starts out right but turns horrible (and more horrible) as time passes. No "ever-increasing glory"  which Paul talked about to the Corinthians. Jesus wants a glorious church, without spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. He won't settle for less. I can't imagine Christ settling for a semi-glorious church with stains and folds and creases. They always say church is a collection of imperfect, flawed people God has accepted by grace and mercy. And that's what church has been---flawed and imperfect and getting worse as time goes by because some preachers pointed church to that direction. They taught us there's no perfect church so just settle for messed up