who runs your church?
The Devil wants to run your church
Quoting EM Bounds:
Bounds begins by asking this question: What is the truest measure of a church’s strength? His answer is, “True strength lies in the vital godliness of the people. The aggregate personal holiness of the members of each church is the only true measure of strength. Any other test offends God, dishonors Christ, grieves the Holy Spirit, and degrades religion.” To put it another way, the strength of any church is the work of the Spirit in conforming its members to the life of Christ. However, Satan’s strategy is to lure us into thinking that our strength lies elsewhere—not in the inward things of the Spirit, but in things that are external and superficial. “One of the schemes of Satan,” Bounds writes, “is to establish a wrong estimate of church strength.” A church is considered strong, he goes on to say, “when its membership is large, when it has social position, financial resources; when ability, learning, and eloquence fill the pulpit, and when the pews are filled by fashion, intelligence, money and influence.”
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Tags: leadership