I read something today and it sparked a thought; a question, really.
I was reading a prophetic word to the Church somewhere, where doesn’t matter because it was a phrase that caught my thoughts. The sentence was ” This year, God is going to promote, increase, and elevate those who have been rejected, despised, and scorned by the religious crowd.”
That phrase, ‘religious crowd’, does that describe you? and since it is obviously in a derogatory sense, what does religious crowd denote? The pat answer is “the Pharisees,etc” , but who are today’s “Pharisees”? Could it be you? What makes the form of godliness without “the power therof” in today’s context? And why do we often assume it to be ‘the other guy’? If you are at all religious, it could be you. That is possible. And the more sure you are of yourself as a “religious person” the more that possibility rises.
I think a question we might ask ourselves, during communion-or just any old time- is whether we find ourselves rejecting, despising, or scorning anyone. If we must separate, are we doing it with sorrow…. or pride? Do we follow Christ from love? Or from the opportunity to scorn? To somehow inflate ourselves?
Are we in a religious crowd? One that promotes and rewards such behavior?
If we are having the uncomfortable feeling that maybe we are….maybe it is time to take heed to our attitudes and where our religion leads us. Maybe we need to make sure our path is in Christ, the path of the cross, which is one that gives little comfort indeed to the pride of life.
If you think about it, nothing interferes more with the true joy of life than trying very hard to maintain the pride of life. Nothing is more burdensome than trying to prove how good you are. And if that prophetic word is at all accurate…then maybe nothing will prove more disappointing than to have put all that work into becoming religiously good when God is intent on raising up those poor souls who find their comfort in His grace.
How odd. And how very like God.