This Has Been On My Heart For a While...

If we were to ask ourselves, "Where do I find comfort?" I'm sure we would get about a million different answers. Lots would say religion and church, others would say family and friends, and some may say food and material things. In Psalm 119:76 it says "May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant." Who of us can say we have this much faith?
To find comfort in religion and church, but little or no comfort in God, can't work. I think churches are doing a poor job of defining that line. It isn't bad to love your church. I absolutely love my church. I love the people and the worship and my youth pastor is awesome, but if that is my only reason for going, then it totally defeats the purpose of church and what God made it to be. Yet, churches will do anything to get their people coming back week after week and everything is always very...comfortable, even if it means its people will lose their intimacy with God.
At my church, you can't keep your expectations, which many of us have. There have been many times that I walk in and expect the same kind of worship and the same kind of message as the week before and Freddy will completely get rid of all those expectations, which is one of the reasons I like it so much. I think that churches should stop trying to live up to their people's expectations and be more spontaneous.
Today, Freddy spoke in "big church" (hehe) and he told all of them what he has been telling all of us high schoolers for weeks, er, months now, which is that the church needs to love more. We are losing our influence because we aren't loving like we need to. We are just throwing pamphlets in peoples' faces and telling them to get saved, but that isn't working. One thing that Freddy said that really stuck with me was that we should love first, then talk. So many of us have this twisted idea that if we give people some survey and have them recite a prayer, they are saved and our work is done, but that is sooo wrong. The best form of witness is LOVE.
One last thing that I wanna leave you with is this statement: "When people need us the most, it becomes too easy to judge." We need to love those that need us the most, not marginalize them. We are all broken. We all need love, even if we are too proud to admit it. Love is the movement. Go out and change the world. Peace.

-Liz