I’ve struggled with this reality for a while, having grown up in church and all the requirements that go with it, but after a long and difficult season of prayer and deeply seeking His heart about the issue, I think He has finally gotten His truth through to me:
God’s chosen ones are not always found in church. In fact, few are. Before you gasp and judge, think about it.
If you think God’s elect are defined by pews, programs, and potlucks, you’ve already missed the gospel. Are you even sure what “church” you’re talking about when you casually throw the word around?
This is not an attempt to make you feel better about your lukewarm walk. It’s an attempt to inspire self-reflection, uncomfortable though it may be. Here’s the truth:
Some of you are more faithful to your Sunday schedule and “church” devotion than to Christ.
Do you honestly believe that going to church once or twice a week makes you right with God? Hell will be filled with churchgoers who thought attendance was obedience.
Do you really think the Almighty looks down from His throne and is impressed that you put on a suit, walked into a building, sang three songs, and checked your phone during the sermon?
If you do, this might shatter those shallow assumptions you’ve been clinging to:
God is not mocked by your ritual. God is not fooled by your routine. God is not glorified by your Sunday school attendance record.
He demands your obedience, every moment of every day, in every breath you take. This requires a changed heart, note a change of costume.
We are living in an age of religious deception where millions have been inoculated by watered-down sermons, emotional music, and the lie that going to church equals knowing Christ.
You sit in a pew. You nod at the sermon. You close your eyes during the prayer. But you leave unchanged.
Why? Because your heart is still dead in sin. You’re not a follower of Jesus. You’re a fan of religious culture.
The Pharisees went to synagogue. They tithed. They fasted. They knew the Scriptures better than most pastors today. Yet Jesus said to them, “You are of your father the devil.”
Why? Because their hearts were unrepentant. They loved the appearance of holiness, not the reality of it. They clung to the structure but rejected the Spirit.
Sound familiar?
They worshiped God with their lips, but their hearts were far from Him. And it is a terrifying truth but many so-called believers today are not unlike them, having more confidence in their weekly attendance than in the finished work of Christ.
You think showing up on Sunday makes up for the rest of the week spent in compromise. You believe that because your name is on a church roll, it’s written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
You are trusting in your religion, not in the Redeemer. And that trust will damn you.
The true Christian life is not an hour, or even a few hours, on Sunday. It is complete surrender of every part of your being to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It is the daily crucifixion of self.
It is not about what you do in a building. It is holiness in secret, not performance in public. It’s about who you are when no one is watching.
The Twin Tree Project 