That’s what Dr. Tony Evans told me yesterday.

We were talking about the church making an impact in our communities, in our schools and in our nation.  We were talking about such things as the redefinition of marriage.  We were talking about the divorce rate among Christians and that’s when he said it.

“That just shows you how worldly the church is.”

He talked about the crisis in the family and I said, “Is it the same old crisis from the 60’s and 70’s?”  He said no, it’s much worse.

He said that, for example, in the African American community, (Tony Evans is black, by the way, and the pastor of a huge church in Dallas).  He said that in the African American community 70% of the kids are now born to single moms.  He said that when you remove the men, the fathers, from the family, you will have a nation in crisis, and the statistics show it’s getting worse.

So why is the church so worldly?

An answer may be found in John chapter 10.  There we find some lovely words of Jesus about the shepherd and the sheep.

He said, “…the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.  And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.  Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”

In verse 14 Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd.”  He is the shepherd and we are His sheep.  The question is, do we know His voice?

Perhaps the church is so worldly because we do not know His voice.

It says the sheep will “by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”

Perhaps we aren’t so “naïve” as those sheep.  Perhaps we know all too well the voice of strangers.

Perhaps we Christians pump so much of the world into ourselves that the voice of “strangers” is actually the voice we know best.

Worldly voices fill our lives.  We listen to Hollywood more than we listen to the Holy One.

Maybe we don’t run from the voice of a stranger because that voice is actually the one we are most familiar with because we hear it so often.

Who do we listen to?  Who are we most used to listening to?

Is it the voice of God and His Word?  Is it the things of God we tune in to, or is it CNN or Vogue or People or Ryan Seacrest?

As Christians, we have a Good Shepherd.  We have His Word and we can build our lives on that unshakeable foundation…if we know what it is.

We need to be like the sheep Jesus talked about, the kind of sheep that know His voice and are so tuned in and familiar with His voice that when the voice of a stranger comes calling, we flee from it because we “do not know the voice of strangers.”

Comments?

E-mail me:  dougapple@wave94.com.

May God bless you today!  With Apples of Gold…I’m Doug Apple.

Written by :

dougapple

 

Comments (0)

You must be logged in to post a comment.