Dead Tradition - Church attendance,hearing messages, giving and not doing bad satisfies God

I want to address a very common misconception we see today in almost all evangelical and pentecostal churches. I cannot speak about Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches in this regard - I imagine it may apply to some of these.

This tradition has it that Church attendance, hearing messages, giving and not doing bad satisfies God.

This is an unspoken tradition. If challenged, many church leaders would deny they believe this. But let us look at it another way. How many church members do you know who do all these four things and yet are rebuked and warned by church leadership for failing to meet the mark that God has for them?

As a pastor I was always thankful for the people who attended meetings regularly, especially Sunday meetings. I liked the people who seemed to hear me gladly. If these people further gave money or even better gave time to the church they rose in my esteem. And finally, as long as they didn't do really bad things - like fornicate, commit adultery, steal, lie, cheat and so on, we would feel like we had a "faithful person" as part of our church.

To tell you the truth we did challenge people beyond this level, but we did not always see people hit the mark we were looking for, so we were pretty happy in some ways if people at least did these four things.

But how does this match up with what God wants?

Is God interested in merely producing self sustaining congregations that can pay their bills and don't bring shame on the church by committing gross sins? Is He happy if in addition to that we know our doctrines well and have a lot of Bible knowledge based on messages we have been hearing for a long time? Does this satisfy the heart of God? Will this take us where God is wanting us to go?

All these things are good and important but they flow FROM something that is EVEN MORE IMPORTANT. And that SOMETHING is a PERSONAL, INTIMATE COMMUNICATION AND FELLOWSHIP WITH ALMIGHTY GOD.

This kind of relationship goes hand in hand with real FAITH. It is faith which pleases God (Hebrews 11:6) and enables us to know Him.

Eternal life according to Jesus is to know God. (John 17:3). To know God as a friend and a Father to us, that is what God wants. It sounds revolutionary, but God actually wants to be our Partner in life! It doesn't mean he wants us to become robots or just puppets in His hands. No, what He wants is us to consult with Him in the midst of all life's important decisions, and learn to follow His promptings.

This is really necessary these days because we have a devil and billions of demons roaming the planet working destruction in the lives of all those who choose to be independent of God.

If we are not in the place where we hear God's voice, and follow His guidance on a regular basis, we are in a bad place spiritually or at least a very incomplete place - though we sing with the best of them of Sunday, hear good messages, understand certain elements of the gospel, faithfully attend church - and YES, even if we give money - pay tithes to the church, or whatever.

Also God is not simply interested in us avoiding certain sins and their associated pleasures and eventual negative consequences. What He wants is for us, like Jesus, to be like His Son Jesus in nature and to be "about our Fa

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