I have been studying this week for the 5th of the Seven Churches of Revelation; Sardis. We will come to the realization as we look at the text Sunday, that the Church has a choice; to die as a result of its resistance to change or to die in order to live. Author and Pastor Skip Heitzig has a humorous take on things:
"A few years ago, a movie came out, it's sort of become a classic of modern times. It's a fairy tale made into a modern movie. It's called The Princess Bride. It's about a hero, the good guy against the bad guys, and the girl that he gets at the end. But there's a place in the movie where the hero is captured and is tortured and is presumed dead. And so his two friends take him to Miracle Max and they bring his body and they lay it on the table and say, you've got to help our friend, he's dead! And Max looks at him and says, he's not dead, he's mostly dead. And they said, what do you mean? He said, there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. And he gets revived. The church at Sardis, was a church that on one hand was dead, and the divine coroner Jesus Christ pronounces it so. But there were still some among that group that were not all dead, they were mostly dead. They have a chance for revival. A miracle could happen."
In any church you're going to have onlookers, complainers who do nothing at all but just look and complain. They're bystanders; they're pew-potatoes. But you will always find some people in every church that have an intense, burning heart after the things of God. I pray that Sunday's message will challenge you to be one of the few. To be the few who passionately pray that God would ReAwaken LOVE in their hearts for every man, woman, and child that they may experience the Gospel. The Good News that God has given the way to finding meaning and purpose for our lives, a sense of belonging, true freedom and peace.
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