If you read about the early church in the Book of Acts, you will see a drastic difference between today’s Christianity and the church described in the Book of Acts. Extraordinary events today were ordinary for first century Christians: healing, dead being raised to life, hundreds coming to Christ every day, miracle after miracle after miracle. So I dug into the Book of Acts to answer this question, “What did the early Church do that Christians today are not doing?” This post is a part of a series of posts that aim to answer this question.
They Respected and Feared the Name of Jesus Christ. Here’s Scripture.
In the book of Acts we can see respect for Jesus formed after a great work. Amazing things were happening and it resulted in a Holy Fear for God. That didn’t surprise me, that just makes sense. But compare that to today’s world.
Today the respect for God has been diminished into the ever popular, “Jesus is my Homeboy” campaign. Thousands of T-Shirts with these designs have swept the country. The “Jesus is my Homeboy” design does a great job demonstrating the caring relationship we can have with Him, but it tosses respect and Godly fear right out the window. Jesus is NOT my Homeboy – HE IS GOD!
The natural result of Godly fear is genuine holiness. Revival starts with holiness.
Church, if we’re expecting God to come and do amazing things among us — if we’re hoping for God’s presence to show up powerfully — if we’re hoping for a revival, we must be holy. We must respect and fear Jesus and his commands. We must be obediant. God will come with great power when we’ve prepared a Church that’s worth it.
Adam,
I absolutely agree with you on all you said, yet we sing songs like “I Am a Friend of God” in our worship services. To me that song is just as useless as the t-shirt.
Just my opinion. Good post.
AMEN!!!
I saw a bumper sticker to day that said, “My boss is a Jewish carpenter” and I wanted to vomit.
I am SO tired of American “candy-coated” Christianity.
Maybe God just wants His people humble hearted…just allowing Him to love on us and we on Him, maybe then all this stuff that we are so quick to point out as wrong will just fade away. We’ll be left standing and showing the Jesus that people want to see…Not the ones who are shaking fingers in people’s faces, telling them what they ought not to do…But what they can do with Jesus. I apologize if this has offended anyone. I, too, am tired of all the lines drawn in the sand of who’s revering and who’s disrespecting God. Kind of seems like we’re being kept busy by stuff that is doctrinal instead of promoting relationship with Jesus. Just my two cents..
I want to make a clarification – I don’t think “Jesus is my Homeboy” is bad – its the attitude that goes along with it.
Just the other day my teenage cousin was telling me that he was worshiping God with all his heart, using his own words to tell God how awesome he is and he was just pouring out his heart in worship when he yelled out, “God, you’re such a stud!”
Was that disrespectful? Was it ungodly? I don’t think so at all – not for my cousin. That’s his vernacular… that was his way of saying, “You are an awesome God!”
Now if someone genuinely uses phrases like, “you’re my homeboy” in their normal language, then saying, “Jesus is my homeboy” isn’t any more disrespectful than saying, “I am a friend of God” (which is biblical, for those who obey Him). My deal with the t-shirts is that the vast majority of people wearing them don’t live like a Christian at all (Ashton Kutcher, Pamela Anderson, and Brad Pitt are among the celebs that wear it). Many flaunt the t-shirt as a funny gag… “Hee hee – Jesus is my homeboy, yo!” They laugh at it and have a disrespectful attitude towards God.
It is to this attitude that I think is wrong. Please don’t get your eyes on the t-shirts and propaganda. This isn’t about that – this post is about THE DISRESPECTFUL ATTITUDE. If we’re going to see God move mightily, we need to have great fear and reverence for our mighty Creator(who also happens to be our Father, and for those who obey – our friend).
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