Can't Find A Church

"CAN'T FIND a CHURCH!"
-Andrew Strom

If it's one thing I hear over and over from people, it is this. They
literally look everywhere they can think of in their town, and cannot
find a fellowship that seems in any way "right". Many will heap
blame on these people. But I am not one of them. What are you
supposed to do when you go right around a town and cannot find
good, sound, anointed teaching anywhere? What if you are left
with a choice of hyper-grace, prosperity, dead formalism or
anti-Charismatic "King James only"? Which one do you settle for?

For years I have been hearing this cry and it is only getting worse.
There simply seems to be a "famine" of the true word of the Lord
in many places. This is the overwhelming reason behind a lot of
the "Out-of-church" Christian phenomenon - no doubt about it.
We would love to hear your own experiences and comments on
this topic, my friends. Below is a message that somebody sent
me just this week on this very subject-

Tracy wrote:
"Hi Mr. Strom, I live in America.. Our churches (most of them are
in apostasy). My family & I always get hurt, persecuted because
of the calling on our lives and our stand for the truth... Each time
it hurts worse and worse, and we feel like we don't even fit in
anywhere. It has caused our kids, who are now grown, to not
even want to go to church. Where we live now, we are currently
looking for a place to worship and almost all churches here only
have church on Sunday Morning.. No service Sunday Night or
Wednesday night.. We need fellowship with true believers.

We have been in churches that seem like CIRCUSES (apostle
movement) where the Pastor insisted he was my "father" and
I was his "spiritual daughter" - weird.. We left and he threatened
we would not be blessed or doors would not open because we
left "his covering"! We've been at churches where the pastor was
blind and followed the flesh instead of the Spirit.. Putting demon
possessed people over prayer teams, etc.. Etc.. We have had
enough.. Been hurt because of our stand for righteousness...
To the point we are fearful of even connecting with a church ??

I know these are the last days but I am so disheartened. Will you
please pray for us? Offer any advise of wisdom you may have.
America and our churches are backslidden and it is seriously
so sad.. Where are his true people?"

ANDREW AGAIN:  As I said, it would be easy to blame the
people and call them "uncommitted" or 'church hoppers', etc.
But the simple lack of GOD in so many fellowships today seems
to be what is driving a lot of true believers away. How can they
be blamed for leaving? Does anyone have the answer? How many
others have similar tales to tell?

-PLEASE COMMENT on this topic at the website below-

http://www.revivalschool.com/

The Man and His Marriage

By Jerome Gay When we look at the Scriptures, we see five components of a man of God. They are not to be applied legalistically, but they reveal God’s heart. There are four components that precede the first man being blessed with a wife. These are vital because they are the elements of a man of God:
1. A man of God has life. (Gen. 2:7)
2. A man of God has a place/purpose. (Gen. 2:8)
3. A man of God has a job and a godly work ethic. (Gen. 2:15)
4. A man of God has a role. (Gen. 2:16-17)
5. A man of God sacrificially loves his wife. (Gen. 2:18-25)
I think it’s vital to understand that every other title we have springs from being a son of the living God. Understanding our sonship enables us to sacrificially love and lead our wives.

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. - genesis 2:7

A man of God has life, and that life comes from being in a loving and thriving relationship with God. When the text says that God breathed into Adam the breath of life, it means that God gave Adam a soul and air in his lungs. This is why the Lord would say in verse 17 that if you eat from the tree of knowledge you will die. Life isn’t simply breathing, but rather it’s being in a relationship with God. In essence, not being saved is death. Sadly I see a ton of walking dead men, but the gospel promises us hope and life.
If you know Jesus, there should be a joy and a humble swag of dependence because you know that you’re saved by grace through faith and no longer defined by your failures. Life in Christ frees us from being defined by what life throws at us. Adam’s idea of life at this point was defined by God and not his environment. This is what life is like in His presence (Psalm 16:11 says there’s the fullness of joy, not the absence of trial).
Check out what Donald Whitney says about the presence of God:

In effect, living apart from a conscious sense that the Lord is present is to live as though God really is not there. More pleasure is sought in things, dreams, or people than in God. A relationship with God is reduced to mere religion. The spiritual disciplines devolve into mere duty or even legalism. Public worship becomes an obligation, not a privilege. Obviously, this is not the profile of a growing Christian.

Men, because of God we have a life worth living (to live is Christ), a life worth giving (to die is gain), and a life worth leaving as a godly legacy (Gen. 5 and Enoch, he walked with God).
Life in Christ permeates every aspect of our lives, including our marriages.
Jerome Gay serves as the Lead Pastor of Vision Church; he is originally from Washington, DC and he a student of the scriptures. He is married to his wife Crystal who he met attending Saint Augustine’s College and the father of Jamari ChristinaGay and Jerome Jordan Gay III, his family is only second to Christ. Jerome loves reading, writing, all sports and serving people however he can. He is currently working on his Master of Divinity in Pastor Ministry at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Learn more »

Aged to Perfection

Christian spiritual maturity becomes increasingly evident as we grow more intimate with God.

Aged to Perfection

By Christine Cunningham And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. ~ James 1:4 (NASB)
READING: Hebrews 6:1-16
Veteran missionary mentors told us we would need a pressure cooker for cooking meat in Colombia. But frightening memories of those hissing monsters that we saw in the kitchens of our mothers and grandmothers made us think anything would be better and safer than using a pressure cooker for cooking meat.
One week after settling into our new home, we prepared our first piece of beef and placed it in the oven to roast. After two hours and several tests for doneness, the roasting fork bouncing off the unyielding texture of the meat gave us a new appreciation for aged beef!
Aging both physically and spiritually, life’s process of maturing finds our physical bodies visibly deteriorating while being spiritually vibrant. Christian spiritual maturity becomes increasingly evident as we grow more intimate with God. It manifests through a humbleness that exhibits unhesitant responses to God’s direction as it is revealed to us.
Our heart, mind and spirit will remain hard and nonresponsive to the Holy Spirit if we do not let Him bring us through a process of aging that sometimes feels like we are hanging from a hook in what may seem like long periods of dry sub-freezing conditions! Willingness to respond without questioning God’s wisdom shows we have aged to a tenderness of humbly stepping into places where He leads us. The mature Christian find the most joy in cheerfully yielding to the will of God when he calls us into passages of growth.
Father, Help me to yield to your direction for my life. As I present myself to you each day, make me into the person you need so that what you want will be accomplished in a manner pleasing to you. Amen.

February 13 God's Eternal Design "[Abraham] was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.." HEBREWS 11:10 ESV An artist sees a new painting before he picks up the brush to create it. A musician hears a new song in her head before she picks up her instrument to compose it. A writer conceives ideas, concepts, and things to be conveyed to others in his heart long before he sets words to paper. An architect designs the building before construction begins. The creative process is the progressive, orderly arrangement of things until what is seen outwardly lines up with what has already been seen inwardly. God is the Ultimate Creator. We find that He established an order of things before He ever brought them into being – an eternal purpose that He purposed in Christ. The crucifixion of Christ was not God’s startled reaction to the unforeseen and unimaginable fall of Adam. God envisioned things straight through to the end before He set them in motion. Source: The Irresistible Kingdom by Chip Brogden

Overcoming the Fear of Man "The righteous are bold as a lion." PROVERB 28:1 Jesus sought to thin out the crowds with a difficult word, saying, “You must eat My flesh and drink My blood if you wish to be My disciples.” At this saying, the multitude and many of His disciples turned aside and no longer followed Him. Instead of running after them in an effort to make Himself understood and accepted, He watched them go. Then, turning to the Twelve, He said, “Do you also want to go away?” Here is a Man who is not afraid to be misunderstood because He is not afraid of people, what they will think, or what they will say about Him unjustly. To overcome the fear of man, we must not only be willing to be misunderstood and unappreciated, we should expect it. Then we will be free to speak what God has given us and will not be troubled should others fail to grasp the significance of it. Source: Fear No Man by Chip Brogden

Finding open doors comes as a result of knocking and seeking and finding.

Open Doors and God's Will

By Hendrik Vorster So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.  ~ Luke 11:9, 10
READING: Acts 16:6-10
Most of us, in our pursuits of God and His will for our lives and ministry, seek open doors, which God opens. Finding open doors comes as a result of knocking and seeking and finding. The secret is to have a door that God opens, opened to you, and not one forced open by human effort. May God open His doors of opportunity to you that will bring Favor, Grace and Provision.
I trust that the following verse will be a Rhema word of God to you today! Revelation 3:8: “I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.”
The Apostle Paul operated only on the open doors God opened for him. He and his companions tested several possible options before Paul saw in a vision a man from Macedonia. They acted at once, “concluding God had called us to preach the gospel to them” (Acts 16:10).
May God help you and me to do God’s work where He has led the way and where He has opened a door for the preaching of the gospel. Act on the open doors which God opens in your life.
Father, Bless each who read these words today. Encourage our hearts to continue to ask and seek and knock on doors, and by Your power, open the doors that will empower us to do Your will. Amen.

A Letter From Chip Brogden

Hi Dave, The turning point in my life came in 1995. At that time I was a 24 year-old burned out pastor of a church that had just closed. I was a little angry, a little frustrated, and a little depressed. As I was half-reading and half-praying, I came across a passage that I had seen hundreds of times before: "[God] has raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6). That word "together" exploded upon my consciousness - together, together, TOGETHER! I finally grasped the fact that I am in Christ, and Christ is in me. From there, everything else fell into place. If I am seated together with Him, then I ascended together with Him. If I ascended together with Him, then I was resurrected together with Him. If I was resurrected together with Him, then I died with Him. If I died with Him, then "I was crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2:20). I knew all those Scriptures... I had read them hundreds of times... I had taught these things for years... But on that day, the written Word became the Living Word. I saw Him. I saw myself in Him - just one of the crucified, dead, buried, resurrected, ascended, and seated Branches of a crucified, dead, buried, resurrected, ascended, and seated Vine. I saw it backwards and forwards, upside down and rightside up, from every possible angle and from every possible color. I did not realize it at the time, but that day, and the revelation that came to me that day, would mark the beginning of the end of my career as a preacher for Organized Religion. Because once I saw Christ as He truly is, I began to see the Body of Christ as it really is - and as it should be. I began to see what a poor, miserable substitute Churchianity has created. I realized I no longer "fit the suit." But I still tried. My mission from that day forward was to be the Grand Reformer, another Martin Luther who was going to take this revelation into Churchianity and turn the world upside down. It wasn't long before my opportunity came. The next church that extended a ministry position to me probably thought they were getting the typical Assemblies of God pastor. What they got instead was a disaster (at least in their mind). From my perspective, I was just speaking the truth and keeping it real. I couldn't figure out why loving people and pointing them to Christ caused so much hate and anger. Today, of course, I get it. I understand the difference between being Christ-centered and Church-centered. You see, I had always assumed that being Church-centered was pretty much the same thing as being Christ-centered. How naïve and foolish I was in those days. I also assumed that everyone went to church because they wanted to grow spiritually. Another foolish assumption. Christ-centered spiritual maturity is NOT the goal of Churchianity; the goal of Churchianity is to keep people in a perpetual state of spiritual immaturity, forever dependent upon the pastor to feed them and the worship team to entertain them. Scriptural integrity? Only insofar as the Scriptures agree with their way of doing things. As Jesus said, "You nullify the Word of God with your tradition." And as God told Ezekiel, "They come and sit before you as My people, and they listen to what you say, but they won't do anything you tell them. To them you're a lovely song playing on an instrument; they enjoy listening to you, but they won't put anything you say into practice." (That's my paraphrase of Ezekiel 33:31,32.) Being kicked out of church was the best thing that could have happened to us. If I had not been kicked out of church, I would still be there trying to reform it. Trying to fix something that God never intended to be built to begin with. Occasionally someone says, "Hey Brother Chip, not all churches are bad! What about all the good pastors? What about all the precious people who still go to church? Aren't you afraid you're going to offend someone by painting all of them with such a broad brush?" If the price of saving a few is to offend the many, then no, I'm not afraid of offending the many. I am more afraid of not doing all I can to help people get delivered from a religion ABOUT Jesus so they can discover a relationship WITH Him. One time, the disciples of Jesus came to him and said, "Master, don't You know the Pharisees were offended by what You just said?" Jesus replied: "Leave them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind, and if the blind lead the blind, they will both fall into a ditch." But Lord, what about Nicodemus? Nicodemus was a good Pharisee who supported Jesus! See, not all Pharisees are bad! Oh no, Jesus might have offended Nicodemus by lumping them all together into one broad, general statement about the blind leading the blind! Oh, the shock! Here's what Jesus knows: Nicodemus is going to have to decide if he wants to follow Jesus or follow the Pharisees, but there is no way for him to do both at the same time. "To him who has an ear, let him hear." In other words, if the shoe fits, wear it. That goes for Nicodemus and for everyone else trying to have the best of both worlds. The School of Christ follows in the same spirit of Jesus: choose whom you will serve, because you cannot follow Christ and defend Churchianity at the same time. If you are sold out for the Lord's purposes, you are on a head-on collision course with Churchianity. I'm living proof of that. Of course, you can try - as I did. I wish you well, but that's not my battle. My fight is for God's Purposes to be fulfilled in God's People. I want to see God's People delivered from a Church-centered tradition so they can have a Christ-centered Faith. I want to see God's People set free from the shackles of spiritual immaturity so they can grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus - spiritually mature, able to serve God and serve others. I want to see God's People rightly handle the Word of God, able to handle strong meat, able to exercise discernment, able to test all things, and able to speak the truth in love without hitting people over the head with Bible verses taken out of context. And that CANNOT happen within the narrow confines of Churchianity. "Come out of her, My People!" (Rev. 18:4). The opportunity is Outside the Camp, not inside it. The Harvest is "out there" not "in here." Let the dead bury their dead. It's time for us to be about our Father's business. I am your brother, Chip Brogden http://TheSchoolOfChrist.Org P.S. Did you notice that in this letter I alluded to our Three Core Values? Watch these three short videos to learn more: http://theschoolofchrist.org/about/values.html