Is your love waxing cold?

"And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold." - Matthew 24

It has become all too common nowadays to see professing Christians neglecting fellowship with others for several reasons. They claim the church has been polluted: materialism is on the increase, pastors are obsessed with prosperity, church workers are hypocritical, people put up a facade in church, the list goes on. However, scriptures like the one above serve as a warning to us, that internalizing the offenses we see around us can erode the joy of our own salvation.

There are two points of note about our approach to the current state of the church. First of all, our Lord Jesus Christ has given us advance warning that there will be tares (weeds) growing along with the wheat in his Father's farmland, and for reasons best known to God, those weeds will not be plucked out but will be allowed to grow alongside the wheat till the fullness of time (Matthew 13:29-30). This should give us the confidence that God is in control of the situation. Secondly, there is an extent to which the outward focus on what is going on in the church becomes unhealthy to our own well-being. When all we are concerned about is how sinful others are, we become vulnerable to a prideful spirit that sees ourselves as better than others and forgets that we ourselves are sustained by grace and not by our might. In this state, we start to lose sight of the need to work out our own salvation "with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12), and we are in dangerous territory because God resists the proud person (James 4:6).

There is so much to gain from remaining a part of a body of believers. Let us not deceive ourselves into thinking we can wing it by ourselves: we were saved into a Body, and we exist as body parts all functioning together to make the Body work. 

The "issues" in the Church have been prophesied of long ago, so there is nothing extraordinary about what is going on right now. These observations should only strengthen our resolve to diligently play our own part in making the Body work, by deploying whatever gifts and abilities He has given us for the service of God and His people.

"Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the Day approaching" (Hebrews 10:25)