Excuses.

         Excuses, excuses, we’ve heard them all. “I don’t have time for church. Why go to a church that’s full of hypocrites? I don’t have to go to church to be a Christian, I watch on tv.” These barely scratch the surface when it comes to reasons people don’t join a church. People seem to always have an excuse at ready, like they have one waiting in wings until the next person asks them to come to church, then like a token, they spit it out. If someone doesn’t want to go to church, they will always have an excuse, but the words they speak are usually just as empty as their hearts. It can many times be heart wrenching for the brave soul who continues to ask their fellow peers to come to church. We see people all around us, hurting, empty, and broken. Their lives just a shell of the person they could become. We see the potential in them though, not seeing them as they are, but what they could be.

         It’s like a doctor wanting so desperately to give a patient the antidote to their life-threatening illness, but the patient stubbornly refuses. As believers, we have the antidote, the answer to their problems. We all know Him as Jesus, but because of the lies of the enemy, most people are blinded, and can’t accept the help that’s being offered because they don’t like the package it comes in. Jesus is the ultimate gift that we are trying so desperately to deliver to the hurt, the wounded, the broken, but because the Gift is “wrapped” and packaged as the Church, sadly most people refuse. We must as a Church change the way the world views the church. The best advice I can give to the asker, is don’t give up. I know we so many times, feel like a broken record, but I promise the efforts are not in vain.