Rise Up, O Church!

Joshua 7:13 - "Rise up! Consecrate the people and say, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, for thus the LORD, the God of Israel, has said, There are things under the ban in your midst, O Israel. You cannot stand before your enemies until you have removed the things under the ban from your midst.'”

The great conundrum in the westernized church is our inability to "rise up." In order to rise up, one must know that they have sunk low into sin. Most churches in America believe they are okay. They state this overtly by continuing to compromise and to sleep with the world. They wink at homosexuality and adultery and say they are not sin. They pride themselves in their progressiveness and their open-mindedness. Yet, they daily give themselves more to humanism than God's holiness. They have exchanged what they believe to be enlightenment for depravity. For the church to understand their enemies are real and unchanged over time, they must recognize them once again. Until that is the case, we will continue to see the moral decay of the church. The only rising up we will do will be to further embrace our idols.

The impotence of the church will continue until we can rise up against our enemies and say "this far and no more!" Until we rise up and destroy the golden calf of indifference and rebellion, we will remain deceived. When we can once again sink low in humility, then we will once again rise up and take our rightful heritage as the church of God.