But my little girl is up and it's only 4:45am...this is too weird for her but she had a really wet diaper and a very cold room. So I changed the diaper, covered her up and turned up the heat. She's mad though that i didn't get her permanently up but i don't want her wake up time to be 4:30am from now on so we'll just start with this and see how the rest goes.
In the meantime while I wait for her crying to dim down (which it's starting too) I thought I would share a few thoughts that I was thinking about right before I went to sleep last night. Remember it's 4:30 in the morning so we'll see how well i can place my thoughts together for you.
The big thought of the evening was what would the American churches look like if America was a country where Christianity was either outlawed or highly persecuted against by the government and locals?
The answer that came to my mind was that I think that the way we 'do' church would be highly more simplified. The things that we place so much emphases on as being necessities for church ministry would be of little to no importance. No PowerPoint presentation, no worship band, no stage, no pulpit, no pews, no arts, no microphones, no piano, no organ. It would just be us, in our homes, with other believers and just our bibles or maybe only 1 bible, maybe no bibles at all. But this wouldn't be a small group meeting this would be our church service. A sermon may or may not be had depending on if anyone felt strong enough to, or lead to preach. There may only just be prayer for strength, protection, and for others to come to know Christ.
What would evangelism look like? Pamphlets may be passed out in secret, actions of love would probably be done on an individual bases. But mostly a church would grow in numbers not because of the programs or the type of service they had to offer but because of the gospel being spread by word of mouth by fellow christian believers and the holy spirit transforming lives. Ironic that we often place so much emphasises on how we evangelize and most people even in America are not drawn in by 'programs' but by word of mouth and the holy spirit.
It's a strange thing for me to think about persecuted churches because I don't live in a persecuted country. I'm not threatened with the idea that at any moment the government or other religious activists are going to bust into my church and arrest or kill me. If that were the case I think that all of our churches would be a little more simplified, our focus would be very different.
So I then thought to myself, if church would be more simplified and full of a lot less noise then why doesn't God allow every country to be that way? And I think that's because not only does God enjoy variety, and enjoyed to be worshiped in different ways but also because if countries were all the same then there wouldn't be a way to fill the spiritual and physical need for people in those countries. Who would send/deliver them bibles? Who would come and train someone in the teaching of the bible to others? Who would aid in bringing them food, clothing, and other simple monetary items?
We have a really big privilege and blessing to be able to worship God in our country and we take it for granted. Even more so i find myself convicted that I am selfish and care more about my ability to worship God and to be able to express that love in my own comfortable way, more than I care about my brothers and sisters in Christ across the globe that can not.
Maybe He has us here in America not to just be able to worship in a different way but to aid those across the globe that are not as free.
It's definately a reminder to me that our life in Christ is not supposed to be about us.
So that is what I was thinking about.
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