CONTROL DE OBLIGACIONES

There is much more of God available than we have ever known or imagined, but we have become so satisfied with where we are and what we have that we don’t press in for God’s best. Yes, God is moving among us and working in our lives, but we have been content to comb the carpet for crumbs as opposed to hav-ing the abundant loaves of hot bread God has prepared for us in the ovens of Heaven! He has prepared a great table of His presence in this day, and He is calling to the Church, “Come and dine.”

We ignore God’s summons while carefully counting our stale crumbs of yesteryear’s bread. Meanwhile millions of peo-ple outside our church walls are starving for life. They are sick

and overstuffed with our man-made programs for self-help and self-advancement. They are starving for Him, not stories about Him. They want the food, but all we have to give them is a tat-tered menu vacuum-sealed in plastic to protect the fading images of what once was from the grasping fingers of the des-perately hungry. This is why we see highly educated men and women wearing crystals around their necks in the hopes of get-ting in touch with something beyond themselves and their sad existence. Wealthy and poor alike flock to flashy seminars about enlightenment and inner peace, gullibly swallowing every bit of the unbelievable junk being passed off as the latest bright revelation from the other world.

How can this be? It should convict and shame the Church to see so many hurting and searching people turn to psychics, astrology, and spiritists for guidance and hope in their lives!

People are so hungry that they are pouring millions of dollars into an overnight industry of the occult manned by fake sooth-sayers (even the genuine “mediums” or “channelers” who tap the dark world of the occult and satanic familiar spirits are rare among this bunch). They are so desperate for hope that they will accept canned script from paid marketers as spiritual insight. Oh, the depth of spiritual hunger in the world! There is only one reason so many people are so willing to attempt to get in touch with something from the other side, even accepting the counterfeit—they don’t know where to find the real thing. The blame for that can only fall in one place. This hour seems to be custom tailored for the Church of His presence to prevail.

Now I must repeat one of the shocking statements that I keep hearing God say in my spirit:

…there is as much of God in most bars as there is in most churches.

It is no wonder that neither sinners nor saints feel the need to bow when they come into a worship service. They don’t sense the presence of anything or anyone worthy of worship among us.

On the other hand, if the Church would become what it should and could become, then we’d have to scramble just to accommodate the demand for “bread” in the house. And when people would enter our houses of bread, no one would have to tell them to “bow their heads in prayer.” They would fall on their faces before our holy God without a single word being spoken. Even the heathen would instinctively know that God Himself had entered the house.⁴

We would ask one another, “Who will man the phones tomorrow?” knowing the lines would be jammed with people calling in to say, “I’ve got to hear from God!” Why do I say this?

Because when people pay the exorbitant price to psychics, they are really trying to touch God and find relief from the pain in their lives. They just don’t know where else to go. King Saul gave us the example of the desperate wanderer cut off from God. When he couldn’t reach or catch God, he said, “Then let me find a witch. Anybody! I’ve got to have a word if I have to disguise myself and sneak in the back door. I must have access to the spirit realm.”⁵

There is another problem God is concerned with, and Jesus revealed it when He rebuked the religious leaders of His day:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!

You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to”

(Mt. 23:13 NIV). It is bad enough when you refuse to go in yourself, but God gets extra agitated when you stand at the door and refuse to let anybody else in either! Through our ignorance of spiritual matters and our lack of hunger, we have figuratively “stood at the door” by the way we have done things, and have barred the lost and hungry from entering in. Our con-stant claims of hot bread backed only by stale crumbs on a frayed carpet of man’s tradition have left countless generations hungry, homeless, and with nowhere else to go but Moab. And so they grow weary with the cruel taskmaster who takes his tax in their marriages, children, and lives.

Now, today, there is a faint rumor that there is bread in God’s house once again. This generation, like Ruth (a picture

of the unchurched unsaved), is about to sidle up to Naomi (a picture of a prodigal) to say, “If you heard there is really bread there, then I’m going with you. Wherever you go, I’ll go. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God” (see Ruth 1:16). If…there’s really bread. So tattered was the reputa-tion of Bethlehem (the house of bread) that Orpah didn’t go.

How many like her “don’t go” because the history of hype from the Church exhausts their energy? They can’t make the trip.

Do you know what will instantly integrate someone directly into the fabric of the local church? It will happen the moment they taste the bread of His presence in that place. When Ruth heard that there was bread back in Bethlehem, she rose from her sorrow to go to the house of bread.