We live in a country that still nominally respects church, and will go on “high holidays” or as a social outlet, when this is not what it was meant to be. You also have Christians that don’t witness, and live out lives that look much like their unsaved peers.

If you look at the Great Commission, we were to Go, Tell, Baptize and then Teach. American Christianity has trouble with getting this order correct. We want to teach, and hope that they “pray a prayer”. If things were in the right order, you wouldn’t find a lot of the problems that plague our church.

One more thought– I think that if you looked at places that Christianity is really growing in persecution, you would see a lot more people witnessing one on one, seeing souls saved, and then they come to the church. It’d be too much to risk it any other way. This is how the church grew and remained pure– every time the church has not had opposition, it decayed.

Just something to think about.

That’s good and bad. Ultimately God is the one that builds His local church– but we as Christians should be aware of who were joining to and what they believe. And if the paperwork and the beliefs don’t match, the paperwork should change.

As far as the modesty issue, I had a friend where I work that was Apostolic and they attended church practically every night. They were “no cut hair” and “must wear skirt” but the skirts that his wife wore had slits up to– we won’t go there.

Modesty is so much more of a heart issue than a clothing issue. As is following God. The heart that seeks God will be like yours, Karen, when you were sick with people trying to fake righteousness. It will be a heart that is compassionate and yet desires to please God above all else.

God is much more concerned about our relationship with Him than anything else. If we’re truly seeking a relationship with Him, then we’ll recognize sin and not want it in our lives.

Thrifty Karens last blog post..Thrifty Links for 7-8-08

The hardest thing that I think, for believers, is the whole comparison with other believers. We’re all at different places in our personal relationship with God, and though you cannot dispute “if you love me, keep my commandments” and “he who keeps not my commandments does not love me”, you cannot make the leap that we should be spending our entire time enforcing his commandments.

That’s the problem the Pharisees had, and I believe those Christians that believe that we need to change America/the World top down have. They believe that we need to constrain the outer man as a way to get to the inner when that’s exactly backwards. We need to pray and watch the Holy Spirit change the inner man and that will change the whole man.

If a woman feels God is calling her to only wear dresses– praise God! If a woman feels that the Lord is glorified with her slacks– praise God! If a woman feels that she’s praising God wearing a bikini– tell her to do it in her own home and only in the presence of God and her husband!

Seriously, God is much more concerned about having a relationship with us that grows than He is about our denomination, and though we may sin– the point is that we’re trying to keep His commandments as we grow to know Him more.

When I got married and moved away, I began to attend a full gospel church and saw speaking in tongues, raising hands, etc. It was the weirdest thing to me since I had never seen it done before. I will say that I believe that speaking in tongues is real. One of my gifts is discernment and I can tell when what someone is doing if from the Lord or of themselves. I’ve seen people get up and do things to give attention to themselves and thought I was going to vomit.

I know that the Pentecostals have a bad rap because of some of their showy ways. Although I do believe in speaking in tongues, I believe that it has hindered the pentecostals because it makes them look crazy and odd to outsiders. I do not attend a Pentecostal church now but I am so thankful that I attended one. It enabled me to get away from the condemnation and truly seek God without feeling judged. I was surrounded by people that loved God and loved people. I told my mom that God didn’t have a special room in heaven just for Baptists and we weren’t going to be segregated when we got there.

We have been attending baptist churches again for several years now and we’re happy there. There are some baptist churches out there that are concerned about people and not about whether a woman wears pants or culottes, which to me is so ridiculous and adds nothing to my salvation.