Flourishing in the House of the Lord // The Problem with Church Is..., Part 3

<p class="p1">Church has its ups and downs. Sure it does. Anybody who’s ever been part of a church will know that. And so many people are just hanging in there. At best. But would it surprise you to know that God’s plan for your life – is for you to flourish in the house of the Lord?</p> <h4> </h4> <h4 class="p1"><span class="s1" style="color: #ff9900;">Community and Commitment</span></h4> <p class="p2">Have you noticed the more money people earn, the more choices we have – the more choices we have, the busier we are at work and with kids, and we get tired? And so these days, getting a sense of community going is really hard. There are lots of lonely people around the country and around the world and yet God has this plan for His family. God has a plan that His family should get together and be a family and that plan is called ‘church.’ Now, for a lot of people, church is a four–letter word. A lot of people are browned off with church. They’ve tried it, they’ve had enough. People are starting to write textbooks about this huge number of Bible believing Christians, who have decided they are not doing ‘church’ anymore. And for someone who hasn’t come to faith in Jesus Christ yet, the whole notion of church is old fashioned, out of date, and irrelevant. So church gets a lot of bad press. Yet God writes, Himself, in Psalm 68, verse 6, it says that, <em>“God sets the lonely in families.”</em> So God has a plan for His children, for His people to be a part of a family and that family, by and large, is called ‘church.’</p> <p class="p2">Now our society is struggling with having a sense of community. Just out there every day in life, lots of people are struggling to connect with one another and a lot of people never do, a lot of people feel very lonely. And to tell you the truth, in a lot of quarters, the church is struggling as well, to create a sense of community. So often churches come up with programs, you know, they have this program for the youth and they do all these programs. It’s almost like you are going to McC