Cedric Fisher: "earnestly contending for the faith."

Immaculate Barns and Rotting Harvest

I am convinced that exciting church meetings do not make better Christians. It may make church meetings less boring, more populated, and create a greater cash flow, and build immaculate buildings, but Christianity is not made more effective. Haven’t we learned by observing secular music concerts that nothing beyond fleshy satisfaction is accomplished by fleshy excitement? After the concert is finished, much trash is left behind as people head home gratified but empty.

The only time I served on a pastoral staff, the pastor assigned as one of my duties for me to clean the large church building twice each week. He was an exciting preacher and the church services were exciting. I was humbled and humiliated as I cleaned two large restrooms that were very filthy and some smaller ones that were no less filthy. I wonder how people can arrive with seemingly empty hands and pockets and yet leave behind so much debris. Everywhere I cleaned and vacuumed, people had left their trash. However, I seldom picked up Kleenex tissues in the altars.

I am convinced that what churches need they are fearful of. They need to hear preaching and teaching that informs them about genuine Christianity, their fidelity to God’s will and responsibility to reach lost people with truth. Instead, we organize church meetings that placate casual professing Christians and pander to sinners. They come and leave in the exact same condition. There are few tears in the altars and fewer fiery coals in the hearts of millions of Laodicean Christians.

They are happy, excited, warmed by fellowship, and comforted by conviction-less preaching, but the harvest that rots in the fields is also rotting in the pews.

So don’t brag about how big your barn is, and how exciting it is to visit during a church service. I am not impressed. Tell me that you spend more money on boxes of Kleenex than on pastries and coffee for tiki bars in the foyer, and I want to visit your meeting.

Has the night arrived when no one can work (John 9:4)? Has the summer ended, the harvest over, and people are not saved (Jeremiah 8:20)?

It is past time to break up our fallow ground!

“Sow for yourselves righteousness; Reap in mercy; Break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek the Lord, Till He comes and rains righteousness on you.” (Hosea 10:12)

Fallow: “Usually cultivated land that is allowed to lie idle during the growing season.” (Merriam -Webster)

Plow your hearts and the hearts of fellow Believers with truth! Let the plow run deep! Suffer your hearts to become tender with compassion for the lost and impassioned for the reality of God’s Divine Presence! Empty yourselves of the dregs of the world system and be filled with with a Holy hunger and thirst for righteousness—the substance in godliness!

One’s heart will never be filled with more than his or her knees (figuratively speaking) will endure.

I never apologize for conviction, especially when it has convicted me before it convicts others. I am convicted to pray more. I want to be prepared for the plow lest I squirm out of its path.

1 Comment

  1. Linda

    Oh yes, don’t get me started on that!
    D :
    I will share my list but to sum it up, there is no passion for God among His people!
    There is no hunger for God among the lost and contemptuously arrogant masses. They altogether rebel against the Lord and His ways. It’s like a revival in reverse!
    I feel like I’m isolated on Patmos Island right before the events of Revelation hit the ground from the scroll.
    I became aware of the apostasy as the Lord revealed things to me many years ago and that is a long story I will spare you.
    But I tried to do so many things to help the church, the lost sheep, and the lost… and I am still here on this island alone, aside from a few blogs like this one.

    Church after church was like the one described here. I wrote a long comment describing that earlier. The only thing the congregants got excited about was the upcoming sports game on TV. Otherwise I only saw unenthusiastic, lackluster, fattened calves dragging their feet through worship as they remained glued to their ipads. And those were the ‘Biblical’ seeming churches. Usually some element of the apostasy was uncovered and I would move on anyway.
    On discernment sites I would warn but I was either preaching to the choir or it was falling on deaf ears. Some rifts have arisen also due to me knowing the gifts are for today while they don’t, etc.
    I tried to start a home church several times, but no one responded. I live in a very populated area so the fact that no fish were ever biting is significant.
    I have been doing evangelism, but only get snarky retorts from defiantly lost sinners.
    I ran into a group doing the same thing at a local park, ironically many of whom knew of the apostasy and sites like Lighthouse Trails, but some were going to apostate churches and afraid to warn their friends there for fear of ‘losing their friends’. I continued warning as called to do by God, and as a result they cut me off from their ‘fellowship.’ None were interested in a home church there either.
    Then I ran into others in the same way, who also knew of the apostasy, yet some won’t labor in the harvest with me because I’m not a Calvinist, or I don’t believe in eternal security, or something like that. (Ironically, they were the ones who were wrong but I was not dividing over it.) They became so acrimonious over it that I had to cut the ties.
    I also serve the Lord in some charity organizations, but it seems that they don’t really want God, they just want the handouts. It is very discouraging. It makes me think of the place where Jesus says to the crowd that they are only following Him because of the feeding they receive and nothing more. I also have seen the apostasy creeping into these places more over the years to the point that I feel unwelcome because I bring the message of the Gospel of Jesus.
    I have done some discipleship Bible studies with some from churches, only to have them all fall to the wayside because they were not willing to carry their cross, and would not confess that homosexuality and abortion are sins, and loved the ways of the world too much, or the apostasy.
    All the Christians I have met since moving here over the years are in some form of the apostasy, or are backslidden in some other way, or both, only they don’t realize it.
    Like the water rising on the inside of the Titanic, the church is sinking deeper into the apostasy that is creeping in. They don’t notice it as they keep “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” and resist the truth but embrace demonic error.
    Meanwhile… the world grows darker by the day.
    And here I sit, on the Lord’s Day, on this island, just as John did on the island of Patmos, just hearing the waves hitting the shores, being isolated… except for the fact that Jesus is with me and not with them.
    That is all that matters in the end.
    He is with us (me, you, as with John at that time), and not with those who turn their faces away from him.

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