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Losing Our Focus

This is such a great article by John Fenn of CWOWI. I know it resonates with me; I hope it resonates with you also.

What’s the buzz….

Rome burned in July of the year 64 for 6 days. Nero blamed Christians, which started the first federally sponsored persecution of Christians. 10 Caesars persecuted Christians on a federal level, right up to the time it was legalized by Constantine in June of 313AD. (Nero, Vespasian, Domitian, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Maximinus, Decius, Valerian, Diocletian, (Constantine & Galerius, early in Constantine’s reign would be 11)

Up to that point persecution had been localized and sporadic. In Jerusalem Acts 7 records Stephen’s martyrdom less than a year after Pentecost. James, the brother of John, was killed in Acts 12, about 10 years after Pentecost. 

As Christianity began to spread, unbelieving Jews followed Paul and stirred up trouble. In Acts 18: 12-16 in Corinth, Greece, the Jews tried to make their persecution of Christianity a federal case. 

The passage tells us the Roman judge Gallio, who would be like a Supreme Court judge in our day, ruled against the Jews, saying their case against Paul was not a federal case. This gave Christianity about 10 years of relative peace with Rome, though Paul continued to be persecuted by the Jews within their religious system – and when they could spread it to local government, they did so. 

What is amazing is the letters of the New Testament barely mention persecution. Peter’s first letter is about the subject, but without naming specific instances. The letters from Paul, Peter, James, John and Jude are about Christ in us, what He has done for us, what our lives in Him should be. 

Compare that with many Christians today and their focus. Were the authors of the NT informed on current events? Certainly. Was that their focus? Not at all. 

Today, we use the excuse of ‘wanting to know what God is doing’, to surf the web, and honestly, much of it is focused on what the devil is doing. But we don’t see that in the pages of the NT. They were all about what Christ in them meant to their lives, how they could be more Christ-like, and urging us to develop the healthy relationships in Christ so necessary for growth in Him and as people. 

Whatever happens in the world has not caught the Father or Lord by surprise. The Father is still going to provide just like He has always provided to this point – if your gaze is focused on Him and not on the fear of world events. 

The issue with many is not lack of faith, but a high level of unbelief. That comes by looking at circumstances more than looking at the miracles He has already done in your life. When you count up all that He has done to get you to this point, then whatever is ‘out there’ in the world seems rather inconsequential – for He had not change, His arm not shortened to save. 

Focus on what He is doing in you; that’s what He asks of each of us daily. If we seek Him and His righteousness, the rest will be added. 

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Books / Videos

House Church

House Church: Embracing Authentic Community by Vanessa Hensel. I really enjoyed reading this short and sweet (like the cover photo) book. Below is an excerpt from this book.

Over time, I realized that my perspective had been not just slightly, but majorly misaligned. My concerns were centered on myself, my perceived failures, and worries, when, in reality, they were inconsequential. In a thriving house church community, Jesus should be the focus. He is the reason we come together, and the logistics and execution are left in His capable hands. Since this revelation, hosting has become a joyful and adventurous endeavor, significantly liberating my walk with Jesus. Whenever I find myself magnifying trivial concerns into insurmountable obstacles, the Holy Spirit promptly reminds me of that transformational week, and His peace reestablishes itself in my heart. His continual presence is a paramount blessing and an absolute necessity.

As mentioned earlier, the weekly gathering isn’t the main objective of the house church community. It serves as a summary or a catch-up session encapsulating the events and interactions of the week. The communal life should permeate all facets of our lives beyond the weekly gathering. Every possible activity that can involve other community members should be an opportunity for engagement. Whether it’s a coffee shop visit during lunch break, taking kids to the dentist, retail therapy, or selecting plants for your garden, these mundane tasks can become communal endeavors. Similarly, shared interests and hobbies present excellent opportunities for connection.

We need to dismantle the American ideal of independence and self-reliance and foster interdependence within our communities. Our daily mindset should be reoriented to see every situation as a potential opportunity to spend time with our community, working in unity as much as possible. There is no task too big, small, mundane, or challenging that can’t be shared with the family. A collective effort makes tasks lighter, struggles less burdensome. We must let go of the notion that we can handle everything independently, even if it’s possible, because it contradicts God’s plan for us. The worldly view encourages self-reliance and individual resilience, but God calls us to rely on each other and live in community.

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Gospel Houses

Here is an excerpt from Gospel Houses written by Art Thomas. The book is a great resource for creating and sustaining House Church. It is packed with practical and real life scenarios of doing life together that will help your House Church grow and become effective. After reading this I found myself refreshed and fired up to go out and make disciples.

A shepherd’s primary responsibility is not to feed the sheep or make them healthy. A shepherd’s primary responsibility is to make sure the sheep are alive. Yes, this involves feeding them, caring for them, and monitoring their health; but these are all activities we do with living sheep. Otherwise, we find ourselves rolling carcasses from one pasture to the next, force-feeding and grooming them in hopes that something will change for the better.

The gospel is God’s power for salvation. It’s the mechanism that makes dead things live. And it’s the one meal that provides eternal life for sheep.

A moment ago, I said that the main problem isn’t the shepherd. But this doesn’t completely absolve shepherds of all responsibility. Yes, the main problem is dead sheep, but shepherds have been entrusted with a life-giving message that must be lived, proclaimed, and applied so that the sheep can live and thrive. When shepherds focus first on feeding and not on resurrecting, the work is hard, and messes ensue. Shepherds must make the gospel the priority in ministry to the sheep. As mentioned in chapter 13, it’s the solution to every problem. All other teaching or advice build on a gospel foundation so the Holy Spirit can express Jesus’s life through each person.

Far too many pastors are tempted to shepherd the old man. They give advice that even a person dead in their sin could follow. They try to manage people’s behavior. And when that behavior can’t be managed, they find ways to cater to unsanctified personalities.

Living sheep are harder to control but far easier to lead and serve. And that’s great because our mission was never to control the sheep anyway. Healthy, living, thriving sheep often take care of themselves. They eat on their own. They multiply without the shepherd forcing the issue. And they raise up the young with natural instincts and minimal help from the shepherd.

Jesus doesn’t expect you to shovel dead sheep from one pasture to the next. That’s not Christian leadership. He expects you to shepherd living sheep–people who have been made alive by the Spirit through the power found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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When the Church Was a Family

What does it really mean to be adopted into the family of Christ? Are we truly brothers and sisters in Christ? How far have we drifted from God’s original intent of His church being a family? Below is an excerpt from the book above.

Around AD 260, a devastating plague afflicted the great city of Alexandria. People were dying right and left, and the church family suffered some devastating losses. The response of the local church to the plague constitutes one of the most powerful examples of Christian brotherhood in the annals of church history.

Here is a section of a letter written by Dionysis, the overseer of the Christian community in the city:

“The most, at all events, of our brethren in their exceeding love and affection for the brotherhood were unsparing of themselves and clave to one another, visiting the sick without a thought as to the danger, assiduously ministering to them, tending them in Christ, and so most gladly departed this life along with them; being infected with the disease from others, drawing upon themselves the sickness from their neighbors, and willingly taking over their pains…In this manner the best at any rate of our brethren departed this life, certain presbyters and deacons and some of the laity…So, too, the bodies of the saints they would take up in their open hands to their bosom, closing their eyes and shutting their mouths, carrying them on their shoulders and laying them out; they would cling to them, embrace them, bathe and adorn them with their burial clothes, and after a little while receive the same services themselves, for those that were left behind were ever following those that went before. But the conduct of the heathen was the exact opposite. Even those who were in the first stages of the disease they thrust away, and fled from their dearest. They would even cast them in the road half-dead, and treat the unburied corpses as vile refuse.”

Dionysius began his description with the use of family words: “brethren,” “the brotherhood.” He closed with a pointed contrast, comparing the behavior of his Alexandrian Christians with behavior among the natural families of pagans in the surrounding community (they “fled from their dearest”).

Dionysius clearly viewed his church community as a well-functioning Mediterranean kinship group, and he was proud that they were living up to their family ideals, even at the cost of their very lives. As Tertullian had said some years earlier:

“The practice of such a special love brands us in the eye of some. “See,” they say, “how they love one another and how ready they are to die for each other.”

Tertullian, Dionysius, and the Alexandrian Christians were only following in the footsteps of their Master: “This is how we have come to know love: He laid down His life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3:16).

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Is This Book For You?

I usually wait until I finish reading a book before I add it to my Resources page, write a commentary and then, if something really touches me, create a blog post about it. I had only finished reading the introduction of the book When the Church Was a Family by Joseph H. Hellerman when I came across a truly honest and inspirational few paragraphs which I want to share.

Is this book for you? The author states that his book is for the Traditional Church Leaders and what he defines as the Emerging Church Visionaries (House Church included). The paragraphs below are addressed to the Traditional Church Leaders.

A good portion of those who serve the institutional church sorely recognize the need for renewal and reform in the way we do ministry. Our programs are tired, our services have often become repetitive and nonengaging, and – most notably – we increasingly struggle to keep people connected with one another in ongoing networks of mutual support and accountability.

We tried for a season to play the consumer game by appealing to our people’s felt needs through programs such as “Three Keys to a Healthy Marriage” and “How to Find Success at Work.” You have surely heard the sermons, and you may very well have preached them yourself. The spiritual bankruptcy of consumer Christianity has become quite clear in retrospect. Indeed, it has completely backfired where the cultivation of community is concerned. The “let us meet your needs” approach to marketing the church, which became so popular among the baby boomers in the 1980’s and 1990’s, has only served further to socialize our people to “prefer a variety of church experiences, rather than getting the most out of all that a single church has to offer.” This hardly encourages lasting Christian community, so we continue to long for genuine renewal.

I trust that those of you who are attempting to revitalize an existing congregation’s values and structures will find this book a promising vision for church as God intended it. But I must caution you in advance to prepare yourself for an acute paradigm shift. A return to the community orientation of early Christianity requires much more than a slight course correction in our weekly programming or the addition of another line item to the church budget.

Contextualizing New Testament social values in our congregation requires us to significantly revise the way that we conceive of church. And there will inevitably be a cost to pay as leaders. For as is generally the case during seasons of renewal, those of us who have the most invested in “church as it is” will inevitably be called upon to sacrifice more than the others in order to liberate our people to experience “church as it was” during the New Testament era.

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Relational Revolution

If you grew up in a healthy family environment you should consider yourself blessed. Not many of us grew up in a House of Peace (Luke 10). Many adults still shows signs of dysfunction. So how do we love and function as a community as we gather together to do House Church?

A new book by John C. White, Toni M. Daniels and Dr. Kent Smith addresses this and other topics in Relational Revolution. I highly recommend purchasing a copy. Below is an short excerpt from a chapter called “Maturing Spiritual Parents”.

Unfortunately, many of us did not have the privilege of healthy family bonds that help us grow into families of peace. In communities of practice, we spiritual moms and dads (at the adult, parenting and eldering stages of maturity) train each other in the skills we missed growing up. As we mature emotionally, we establish houses of peace where God’s good news overflows in us and through us. We are able to love the younger and weaker in our midst and compassionately accompany them wherever they are in their stage of development.

God is in the business of re-parenting us, inviting us into a life-giving family (the Trinity) and connecting us with brothers and sisters with whom we can train. We do not have to have all the answers; we do not do all the work. Christ commands us to “call on the Lord of the harvest to send out more workers.” It is our privilege to find each other, connect together, and train one another to continue to be “houses of peace” spiritual parents for those in need, not only in our own homes but in our extended families and beloved communities.

Becoming and training emotionally mature spiritual moms and dads is rarely ever a working concept in most current church systems. Intellectual maturity, gifting maturity, social maturity might be expected from leaders, however, none of these maturities actually ensure that we love one another. And sadly, spiritual maturity is often defined by how well we know Biblical principles, not how closely we sense God with us.

If we do not have emotional maturity then it will be increasingly hard to love those around us, especially those who disagree with us.

For more resources click here.

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The Epidemic Among Us

Mike Carroll Photo mikecarrollphoto.com

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,

Ephesians 5:25

If you’re a married man I’m sure you’ve meditated on this verse and tried to practice loving your wife as Christ loves the church. Denying yourself is never easy. In today’s times, Biblical family relationships are hard to achieve and maintain. Terry Stanley in his book The Way Church Was Meant To Be has a perspective that is important to consider. Below is an excerpt from the chapter “The Epidemic Among Us.” I’m interested to know what you think. You can reply below and you can find out more about the book here.

The family unit is where the strength of the church is maintained. When there are breakdowns at the family level, there is a breakdown in the church.

There is a sickness that has become so common in our families it is an accepted epidemic. It is an unseen and unnoticed plague that is destroying the very strength of the church. It is a vast and ever spreading plague in our modern society. This sickness infects the husbands, the wives, and the children. The worst part is the traditional church system offers a false remedy for this disease and allows it to go unhealed and largely unnoticed in our families. Therefore this virus continues to infect and to spread, potentially sweeping into every household in every city and every village on this planet.

What is this epidemic that has taken so many captive? What is this debilitating disease that cripples most households among us?

It is men not being men.

It is women not respecting their husbands.

It is children not respecting and trusting their fathers.

And the traditional religious system offers its counterfeit replacement.

The counterfeit intensifies the infection at the family level. The counterfeit legitimizes the disease and allows it to continue, undealt with and unhealed among us.

The apostle Paul told the Corinthians in I Cor.11 to follow in his example as he followed Christ. Immediately after he spoke this however, he said

“But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ,” (I Cor.11:3)

In other words, even though Paul was encouraging people to follow his example, every man is accountable to and ultimately must follow Christ and only Christ.

This scripture in I Cor.11 shows us the proper order of things. Paul was not any man’s head. Paul was not any woman’s head, (Eph 5:33, I Tim. 3:4-5 1 Cor.16:13, Eph 5:22,23).

Every man is to provide leadership and shepherding for his own household. Every man is to teach his family the Bible, pull them together for prayer, and actively speak into the lives of his wife and children. Every man is to provide shepherding and leadership in every way to his family, both physically and spiritually. Every man in the church is to be living an honorable and respectable life. If not, he should be held accountable by the brothers. Men are commanded to love their wives as Christ loved the church and the women are commanded to respect their husbands.

When you live with someone, you get to know them. You get to see all of their weaknesses. Women in the church don’t live with the pastor and don’t tend to see his weaknesses like they do their own husbands. When a wife sees her husband’s weaknesses, she is tempted to not respect him. Not so with the pastor. He speaks into the lives of families without confessing his sin to them on a regular basis. He doesn’t get irritated at the family, throw a temper tantrum, and then get to humble himself and apologize. The distance he has, allows him to better uphold his image of holiness. He is thought of as an extra-righteous man and he is respected as so. Why are families on their best behavior when the pastor comes over to their house? Because people believe he is in a different class than everyone else, and sometimes these men enjoy playing the part.

Many times women respect the pastor more than they do their own husbands. This is not healthy. Many times, subtly and sometimes even overtly, the woman leads the household. She also can lead the husband and the children into being enamored by the pastor. The pastor begins to have a place in the household that only the father should have. This is a subtle thing in the hearts of the women, in the hearts of the men and in the hearts of the children.

Often the men lack confidence, are too passive to lead, and would much rather have another man do it for them. They are quite content to let another man stand up before their wives week after week and provide the ladies with instruction and answers for their lives. The pastor is speaking more into the lives and hearts of the women than their husbands are. The women take it right in. Men can be so docile and so passive that they follow another man and allow him to lead their wives.

We’ve exchanged the authority structure found in the scripture of:

Christ

Husbands

Wives

For the more common authority structure of:

Christ

Pastors

Wives

Husbands

Or even the erroneous:

Christ

Pastors / Husbands

Wives

The father of a household is not to share his authority with another man.

Understood, people are crying out and begging for leadership. But it is the man of every household who is to provide this leadership.

When one man stands before you, week after week, and speaks with authority into your life, it does something inside you. It affects your heart. Our hearts were made to follow. Our hearts were created to trust. When you spend time listening to one man speak, teach, and instruct, over and over again, he gets in you. You begin to trust him a little, and then a little more. This is another reason why many brothers should be speaking and teaching when we gather together.

I am well aware that many of you have your concepts all straight. “I don’t worship my pastor.” Or, “I would never follow a man.” But I am telling you that the pastors have an unhealthy power over many, many lives.

There is a place we can give others in our hearts that has authority in us and over us. When we give this authority to people, we really listen to what they have to say. This is not ordinary listening. But listening that allows what they say to go deep into our hearts. When we give this place of authority over to people, we listen to them without their words running past our healthy filter of weighing it out to see if it’s truth or not. We must remember that all men are very fallible and weak. Sometimes even quality, faithful, good men are deceitful, manipulative and selfish without them even knowing they are doing so. “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it? (Jer 17:9) We should never give men this place of authority in our hearts.

Only Jesus should have this place in us! Only scripture should have this place in us!

When a man speaks to us, ANY MAN, we must have the attitude of “maybe so.” It must be weighed out with scripture.

If the Lord is using someone to do some shepherding in your life, you should acknowledge the Lord in this and be an imitator of their faith as Paul directed in I Cor. 11, but remember, “The head of every man is Christ.” (This passage is not to be used for a fleshly independence among men in the church; Brothers are not to have it as their practice of just doing their own thing without an attempt to be of one mind and without an attempt to move together in unity, I Cor.1:10).

Again, there is a proper function of someone doing the work of a “pastor,” which the word really means “shepherd.” But if someone is doing this work and speaking into the life of a member of a family, it should be weighed out by the father of that household. The father of the household is always the gatekeeper and shepherd of the family.

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How To Meet

I’ve been reading a great book entitled “The Way Church Was Meant to Be” by Terry Stanley. The book makes me feel like I’m having a conversation with my friend over coffee. I’m posting some paragraphs from the chapter “How to Meet.” You can access the book for free. You can also find more resources here.

Fear is what drives many of those in leadership to not have open, 1 Cor. 14 meetings. They are afraid of giving too much liberty to the people in the meeting. They do not trust the Lord in the body. They do not trust the New Testament pattern and examples. They feel as though people are not spiritually mature enough to handle such a meeting. They are actually the ones who are not being spiritually mature.

Control and legislation are never the answers for fear. We must learn to trust, let go, and follow the Lord and the scriptures. There will be problems! It will be messy at times. People will mess up the meeting. People will speak out of turn. People will share things that are not good, are bad, and things that are not scriptural. This will all happen especially at first when people are learning. These things must be addressed and people must be talked to. You must provide training and teaching (refer to Beach Head and Well Digging chapter).

People need to learn by doing. Provide an atmosphere of safety for people to function, make mistakes, and for it to be OK. This is how we will learn to be a functioning, powerful, active, and participating church. If we are really interested in people growing and learning, then set them free to function and make mistakes. Some of the best and most valuable character building issues of growth come from us relating to one another in our mistakes and in our gifts. Learn how to do it together. Growth does not come by us lecturing people and giving them teachings and seminars year after year after year! We’ve tried that and look where it has gotten us. People learn and grow by having an atmosphere that not only sincerely welcomes and encourages them to participate in their gifts, but an atmosphere and a setting that actually needs and depends on all members to bring what they have and deliver it during every meeting.


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Supporting Scripture

House churches emerge when truly converted people stop living their own lives for their own ends, and begin living in a community life according to the values of the Kingdom of God, sharing their lives and resources with those Christians and not-yet-Christians around them.

This gem is from Wolfgang Simson’s book The House Church Book. I just finished reading it and I would highly recommend it. One chapter in the book is titled, House Church or Cell Church? which answers many questions people have about the difference between the two.

Another chapter in the book contains supporting scripture for House Church. I have included Wolfgang’s Biblical references below, scripture that supports small community gatherings in homes. I thought it might be useful. Blessings.

As you enter the home, give it your greeting. If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town.

Matthew 10:12-14

When you enter a house, first say, “Peace to this house.

Luke 10:5

Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around house to house.

Luke 10:7

The men replied, “We have come from Cornelius the centurion. He is a righteous and God-fearing man, who is respected by all the Jewish people. A holy angel told him to have you come to his house so that he could hear what you have to say.”

Acts 10:22

Cornelius answered: “Four days ago I was in my house praying at this hour, at three in the afternoon. Suddenly a man in shining clothes stood before me.”

Acts 10:30

When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.”

Acts 16:15

Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house.

Acts 16:32

Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.

Acts 2:2

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.

Acts 2:46

Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ.

Acts 5:42

But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.

Acts 8:3

The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying.”

Acts 9:11

When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying,

Acts 12:12

After Paul and Silas came out of the prison, they went to Lydia’s house where they met with the brothers and encouraged them. Then they left.

Acts 16:40

Then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Titius Justus, a worshiper of God.

Acts 18:7

You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house.

Acts 20:20

Leaving the next day, we reached Caesarea and stayed at the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven.

Acts 21:8

Greet also the church that meets at their house. Greet my dear friend Epenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia.

Romans 16:5

The churches in the province of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets in their house.

1 Corinthians 16:19

Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and the Nympha and the church in her house.

Colossians 4:15

Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to.

1 Timothy 5:13

To Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow soldier and to the church that meets in your house.

Philemon 1:2

If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him.

2 John 1:10

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Get Your Hammers Out

Below is an excerpt from Secrets of the Early Church by Andrew Strom, first printed in 2004. You may agree with his thoughts or get deeply offended. I believe both responses are fine if they lead to honest discussions, but maybe it is time to get our hammers out?

Lately I have been taking a long, hard look at the state of the Western church, and how bad things have really become. And I have come to the sad conclusion that today’s religious system really is “killing” people. It is the ‘system’ itself that is doing this. It is set up in such a way that it is actually PREVENTING millions of people from coming into the kingdom. And thus, couldn’t it be said that it is actually sending MILLIONS to hell?

I know that is a radical thing to say. But isn’t it a fair conclusion to come to, at the end of the day? There are well over 100 million people attending ‘church’ every week in America. But how many of them are actually walking in the kingdom? How many are walking in true salvation? Or how many are headed for HELL because they are locked in a system in which they are never taught the BASIC ESSENTIALS of New Testament Christianity?

The religious system is imprisoning and destroying millions of people. It is a conclusion I had to reach. Most of them do not even have the BASIC GOSPEL preached to them anymore. If the original apostles heard what passes for the “gospel” today they would be horrified. I am convinced that there are millions upon millions of totally UNSAVED people sitting in our churches every week. And most of them are beyond our reach. They are locked away in systems in which they will NEVER hear the truth.

I have to admit that even the Pentecostal/Charismatic system (which is my own background) is pretty much as bad as the others. In some areas it is worse. Multitudes of people are being told they are “OK” when clearly they are not. They are being fed candy-coated half-truths. How many are truly right with God or have a deep walk with Him? Isn’t it true that many are not “saved” at all?

It is clear to me that we need to wage a “war” on their behalf. Not a war against people, but a war against the ‘lies’ that imprison them. “We do not war against flesh and blood”. So it is not ‘people’ that we are fighting. It is the lies and deceptions that need to be brought down. The Truth will set them free.

We need to see people repent deeply from sin. We need to see the ‘fear of the Lord’. We need to see good foundations laid in people’s lives. And then we need to see liberty and a deep walk of communion and intimacy with God. We need to see full New Testament Christianity. “Romans 8” Christianity, where people walk before God with “no knowledge of present sin” – a totally clean conscience before Him. And when these people gather and fellowship it is truly the ‘Body of Christ’. The “Religious System” is in the way of all of this – even today’s “Full Gospel” Religion quite often. It is keeping people sated with half-truths and a kind of ‘half-Christianity”. A “go to church on Sunday and you’ll be alright” mentality. It really has to go. And so it is time for war. It is time to contend for these people with every ounce of Truth that we possess. It is time to smash down the lies and bring God’s people out into the light. Religion is killing them. “Let my people go”.

Excerpt form Chapter Eight, Is our “Religious System” Killing People?