Transcription
There's a moment that happens in almost every church service. A quiet, almost sacred pause. Heads are bowed, eyes are closed. Someone stands and says, "I have an unspoken prayer request." And the room leans in because we care. We genuinely do. We are family, and families carry each other's burdens.
But, if we're honest, sometimes what follows that request isn't intercession, it's information dressed up as concern. And maybe that's exactly where we need to begin. Not because we want to tear anything down, but because we love the church too much to let her drift unnoticed from the God she sings to.
This is not about denomination. It is not about worship style, political affiliation, or which side of the aisle you sit on. This is about something far more unsettling and far more urgent. The very real possibility that some of what we have normalized inside our churches doesn't just fall short of God's best, it actually grieves the heart of the God we are trying to honor.
And when lifelong committed believers, people who have been in the pews for decades, who love the body of Christ deeply, who would never dream of walking away, when those believers unknowingly defend things that scripture repeatedly warns against, the most loving thing anyone can do is open the book together and let God hold up the mirror.
So, we're going to walk through seven practices, not to shame anyone, not to score points, but to let the weight of God's word do what only God's word can do, expose, convict, and ultimately restore.
The first practice is the one we just brushed against. It's what happens when we wrap gossip in the language of prayer. We tell ourselves we're just sharing a need, being transparent, showing deep concern for a brother or sister. "I probably shouldn't say this, but you need to know so you can pray." The defense sounds noble, but there is a line the Bible draws with fire. Proverbs 11:13 says, "A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret." And Leviticus 19, right in the middle of a passage about holiness commands, "Do not go about spreading slander among your people."
When we pass along someone's struggle under the banner of concern, but we haven't been invited into it, we aren't part of the solution, and the information doesn't belong to us, we are not engaging in spiritual warfare. We are engaging in a practice God says he hates. And the question that should stop us cold is this: How many of our prayer chains would fall completely silent if we only spoke what we had permission to share directly to the throne of grace?
The second practice is even more uncomfortable because it touches how we treat people when they walk through the door. Imagine a Sunday morning. Two visitors arrive at the same time. One is well-dressed, confident, clearly successful. The other looks like life has been hard. Worn clothes, tired eyes, maybe the smell of last night's shelter still clinging. We tell ourselves we would welcome both with equal warmth, but the book of James holds up a mirror that exposes what often happens under the surface. James chapter 2, "My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, 'You sit here in a good place,' while you say to the poor man, 'You stand over there, or sit down at my feet.' Have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?"
We defend this by calling it honor, respect, being grateful for generous donors, building relationships that help the church thrive. God calls it evil partiality. And then James adds a sentence that should break us. "Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom?" When we strategically seat the wealthy while the struggling remain invisible, we are not building the kingdom. We are building something that looks a lot more like a social club, and God is not impressed.
Now, the third practice is where we begin to touch the very heart of why we gather. We have become masters at crafting worship experiences that move our emotions while our hearts remain unmoved towards obedience. The lights, the swell of the bridge, the perfectly timed key change, none of that is wrong in itself, but I want you to think about the last time you walked out of a service and said, "I really felt God's presence today." What were you measuring? Was it a shiver down the spine or a life bending towards holiness?
The prophet Isaiah spoke a word that Jesus himself quoted, and it lands like a thunderclap in a room full of lifted hands. "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship me." In vain. That word should terrify us because here's the uncomfortable truth. God is not scrolling through our set list. He is looking for worshipers who will worship him in spirit and in truth. And truth means a life that bends towards obedience Monday through Saturday.
If you can sing "I surrender all" on Sunday while stubbornly refusing to forgive, while nursing that secret sin, while ignoring the spirit's prompting to reconcile with someone, you have not worshipped. You have performed. And a performance, no matter how beautiful, never made it past the ceiling.
This leads directly into a fourth practice that I want to frame with a question. When was the last time your church had a passionate, drawn-out conversation about mercy compared to the last passionate, drawn-out conversation about the style of music? We can be absolutely meticulous about the temperature of the sanctuary, the length of the sermon, the precise wording of a doctrinal statement, the way communion is served. We defend this as reverence, order, guarding the truth. And some of that does matter.
But Jesus rebuked the most religious people of his day with words that cut straight through that defense. Matthew 23: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness." When our passion for precision dwarfs our passion for justice, for mercy, for the single mother trying to hold her world together, Jesus says we have missed the entire point. We are straining gnats and swallowing camels while the weight of what God actually requires lies in the street.
And the most sobering part is this: You can be perfectly correct about everything secondary and still stand before God with nothing that matters. Precision without compassion is not holiness. According to Deissmann, it is just a cleaner version of being lost.
Then there is a fifth practice, and it might be the hardest to name because it wears a mask of biblical obedience. We have taken a good and true verse, "Let all things be done decently and in order," and we have quietly weaponized it against the moving of the Holy Spirit. In many of our gatherings, the service runs with such airtight precision that there is literally no room for God to interrupt. If someone stood to share a prophetic word, if a prayer of healing dared to go 5 minutes past the dismissal time, if a spontaneous song rose from the congregation, it would be seen as a disruption, not a move of God.
We defend this as protecting the dignity of worship, avoiding chaos, being respectful of people's time. But, 1 Thessalonians 5 gives us a command that is just as inspired as the one about order. "Do not quench the spirit." Do not put out the spirit's fire. And I need you to sit with this question honestly. If the Holy Spirit were to leave the building completely this Sunday, if he withdrew his presence entirely, would your service still run on time without anyone noticing?
Because the early church gathered and each one had a hymn, a teaching, a revelation. It was alive. Somewhere along the way, we traded that living, breathing organism for a well-oiled machine. And while the machine runs smoothly, it rarely produces the kind of holy disruption that leaves people broken on their faces crying out for more of God.
The sixth practice digs even deeper into the soil where many of us have sunk our deepest roots. It is the practice of elevating human traditions until they carry the same weight or more weight than the commands of God. Jesus leveled this charge in Mark chapter 7. "You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition."
We defend tradition by calling it wisdom passed down, our rich heritage, the way we've always done it. And there can be real beauty in tradition. But, when our traditions become walls that keep people out, when we fight harder for a style of music, a way of dressing, a format of meeting, or a cultural preference than we do for the clear commands to love our neighbor, to make disciples, to care for the orphan and the widow, we have become exactly what Jesus warned against. We have made the word of God void for the sake of our tradition. And the scariest part is that we are often the last ones to see it because tradition feels like faithfulness when you've been inside it long enough.
And that brings us to the seventh practice. This is the one that lands closest to home for the mature, devoted, biblically sound believer. It is the quiet, almost imperceptible drift from loving the Lord himself to simply doing the right things on his behalf. Jesus addresses it directly in Revelation chapter 2 in his letter to the church of Ephesus. And I want you to listen closely because this is not a backslidden, immoral, doctrinally compromised church. Jesus commends them. He says, "I know your works, your toil, your patient endurance. You cannot bear those who are evil. You have tested those who claim to be apostles and are not and have found them false. You are bearing up for my name's sake and you have not grown weary."
That sounds like the church many of us have given our lives to. Sound doctrine, tireless service, moral clarity, endurance. And yet, "But I have this against you. You have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen. Repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place."
We defend this by pointing to our orthodoxy, our faithfulness, our track record of not caving to cultural pressure. We wear our endurance like a badge of honor, but Jesus says that without love, the raw, personal, all-consuming love for him that overflows into love for others, all of it is in danger of being removed. Not corrected, removed. This is the practice of a heart that has become professional in its religion, but distant in its affection. And of all the things we have talked about, this one may be the most difficult to see in ourselves because it feels so much like fidelity.
If you have felt the sting of recognition in any of these, and I suspect if you've walked with Jesus long enough, you have, please hear this next part very carefully. The purpose of God's word cutting us open is never destruction. It is surgery. The writer of Hebrews says, "The Lord disciplines the one he loves." His confrontation is proof of his commitment. He does not waste his voice on people he has given up on. The very fact that you feel convicted right now, that something inside of you is unsettled, is evidence not that you are far from God, but that his spirit is still actively, tenderly, relentlessly drawing you back. God only confronts what he fully intends to restore.
Every single church practice that grieves him can be laid down at the cross today. Not with despair, but with relief, because repentance is a gift. It is not a walk of shame. It is a turning home.
So, I want to leave you with an invitation, not a scolding. Wherever you are right now, in your car, in your living room, maybe with headphones in while the rest of the house is quiet, would you pause this for just a minute? Not to hear my voice, but to let the spirit do what only he can do. Ask him the hard question. Father, which of these practices has taken root in my own heart? Show me. I'm not going to defend. I'm not going to explain. I just want to see. And then wait. You might need to sit with that for a while.
The God who sees everything you've ever defended, every blind spot you didn't know you had, every way you've substituted religious motion for real love, that same God is looking at you with nothing but love in his eyes. He is not tapping his foot in frustration. He is standing with open arms, ready to restore the joy of your salvation, ready to rekindle the flame that has grown dim. Let his kindness lead you today. Not into guilt that crushes, but into the holy kind of conviction that breathes life back into dry bones.
That church that Jesus said he'd remove the lamp stand from, he also said to the one who conquers, "I will grant to eat of the tree of life." There is still time. There is always still time because mercy is new this very morning. So, don't let another day go by holding on to a practice God is asking you to release. He's not trying to take something from you. He's trying to give you back your first love, and that is a gift worth everything.