Tainted Worship??

Do we have tainted worship in our churches? YES. But I fear it comes from an unexpected source. I know sinners come into our churches every weekend and clap, sing, even lift hands and worship God. Of course God's Word says that even the heavens declare His glory and that if we hush then the rocks will cry out in our place. Well, we obviously know that neither the sky nor the rocks can know salvation for they have no soul. So I am not saying it's a BAD thing for sinners to worship God. It most definitely is NOT bad. God desires ALL of His creation to worship Him. And He is absolutely worthy of every last bit of it!

But I am talking about something far more serious. Let's read in Nehemiah 13. Look at these verses (23-31)
²³ In those days I also saw Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. ²⁴ And half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and could not speak the language of Judah, but spoke according to the language of one or the other people.
²⁵ So I contended with them and cursed them, struck some of them and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters as wives to their sons, nor take their daughters for your sons or yourselves. ²⁶ Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? Yet among many nations there was no king like him, who was beloved of his God; and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless pagan women caused even him to sin. ²⁷ Should we then hear of your doing all this great evil, transgressing against our God by marrying pagan women?”
²⁸ And one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was a son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite; therefore I drove him from me.
²⁹ Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites.
³⁰ Thus I cleansed them of everything pagan. I also assigned duties to the priests and the Levites, each to his service, ³¹ and to bringing the wood offering and the firstfruits at appointed times.
Remember me, O my God, for good!



Nehemiah is going about repairing walls and getting rid of the MESS that has slowly crept in on God's people. We need a Nehemiah today because I fear that history is revisiting us this time through God's church....even His leaders. Am I gonna get onto leadership? YES I AM. I can because I AM leadership....and not perfect by ANY stretch of the imagination. So I feel like I can say this and maybe someone will hear. We have a serious problem in our leadership. People want to keep hiding secret sins and sweep them under the rug. We have allowed people on our worship teams who are in illicit affairs or are gay. We have leaders with alcoholic beverages in the fridge in their homes. We have "christian" counselors showing porn to couples they are counseling. We have lying ministers. Lord, we lie about EVERYTHING....from how many people we had in church to what our tithe of tithe is. I know of some who constantly stay out of God's house because they are "sick" or have a "headache". That's a LIE! And cussing!! OH my goodness the cursing and use of our Lord's name in VAIN!!And I am talking about credentialed ministers...people who should be leading but still need a leader!! Our worship is TAINTED. And that's a nice term.

Nehemiah talks about this serious problem in the above passage of scripture. He is talking about Solomon....the King....the leader of God's people. He says God loved him dearly and gave him wisdom and riches and was good to him....upheld his end of his bargain with David. And that even though there was never another king quite like him, he had serious issues. Foreign women. They were his downfall. Nehemiah said, "do you call this obedience? Engaging in this extensive evil, showing yourselves faithless to God by marrying foreign wives?"  He also talks about a guy who was the son of Eliashib the high priest.....said he was driven out of God's presence because he defiled the priesthood.

I fear we have preached radical grace for so long that we (leaders) entertain sin because grace abounds. But didn't Paul say God forbid that we should continue in sin just because grace abounds! I love His grace! I am thankful for His grace because I'd be dead and in hell if not for it!! But should we walk on sin and continue in our selfish ways just because we know we can be forgiven? NO WAY!

So maybe you don't have a problem with any of these sins....maybe it's ok for you to do these things...lie, drink, cheat, steal...I dunno. But I wonder what God Almighty thinks. How does HE feel? This IS His ballgame after all....not mine. Not yours.

We need some Nehemiah's to stand up in the authority of the Holy Ghost and radically change some stuff. We need to rebuild some walls that have crumbled...some holy walls....boundaries. We need to clean out our closets and our refrigerators!  I AM CALLING TO LEADERS! I know we all won't agree on everything and my convictions and your convictions are different. But I think we can ALL agree on this one thing. God said BE HOLY FOR I THE LORD YOUR GOD AM HOLY. We are walking in some unholy ways and we are leading our congregations right down that same road. If we do this, we WILL stand in judgement for it one day. Oh, we may have accolades right now....and we may have the coolest churches where the party seems to be. We may have accumulated all the cool points but when the rubber meets the road and we stand before God and have to give account for every idle word...for our actions....for where we led the people of God....I just really don't think God is gonna care about our cool points.

My heart is heavy. I am hungry for revival. But it's time for judgement to begin at God's house. I want God to move so desperately so I am asking for Him to purge our church leadership. I am asking Him to uncover EVERY unholy thing and bring it to the light. Believe me, Jeff & I have LIVED it.....what things you cover up and hide, God WILL expose to all. But what you cover under the blood and RID yourself of...God will THEN cover it with His radical grace...but only when ur ready to remove it. I want revival in our church....in Georgia...in my Tattnall co.....in Glennville and all around...in Glennville Church of God...in my home....in ME. I want it, but it's only gonna come when we, the leadership, purge our homes and our lives.


I leave you with 2 Chronicles (READ IT---REALLY read it) 7:¹² Then the LORD appeared to Solomon by night, and said to him: “I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. ¹³ When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, ¹⁴ if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. ¹⁵ Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to prayer made in this place. ¹⁶ For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that My name may be there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually. ¹⁷ As for you, if you walk before Me as your father David walked, and do according to all that I have commanded you, and if you keep My statutes and My judgments, ¹⁸ then I will establish the throne of your kingdom, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, ‘You shall not fail to have a man as ruler in Israel.’
¹⁹ “But if you turn away and forsake My statutes and My commandments which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods, and worship them, ²⁰ then I will uproot them from My land which I have given them; and this house which I have sanctified for My name I will cast out of My sight, and will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples.
²¹ “And as for this house, which is exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land and this house?’ ²² Then they will answer, ‘Because they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and embraced other gods, and worshiped them and served them; therefore He has brought all this calamity on them.’”

AWAY WITH THE CRCT

AWAY WITH CRCT!!! Alot of this speech I am about to share  is just how I feel b/c I think CRCT is the stupidest move EVER for education. My oldest son has had 2 years of school (6th & 7th grade) where he had to take TWO math classes and NOT be able to  get into any of the arts at school in which he is quite gifted and talented!!! WHY you may ask did he have to take 2 maths for 2 yrs? Becasue when he took CRCT in the 5th grade, he failed math....by 3 points. It didn't matter that his grades had been all B's all year! It all came down to this stupid test.....and my son experiences anxiety on such things! Anyway, we had to go thru a bunch of junk to get him to able to be able to re-take the test. He passed. But he still had to pay for it for 2 yrs and it makes me mad. It is WRONG. I agree with this speech whole-heartedly. Read it and see what you think, because I am really ready to see teachers be able to TEACH and not worry about this MESS that supposedly says no child is left behind. Well, it HAS caused my child top be left behind on other things and his confidence in himself has been lost in all this mess!

This is  Matt Damon’s speech at the Save Our Schools March. Their mission is to “restore educator, parent, student, and community influence over education policy and practice,” which basically means change the education reform that’s been put in place during the last decade, where standardized testing serves as the measure of success in the classroom, for both teachers and students. The march drew boatloads of teachers, as well big names like Matt Damon and I wanted to share it with you!


“I flew overnight from Vancouver to be with you today. I landed in New York a few hours ago and caught a flight down here because I needed to tell you all in person that I think you’re awesome.

I was raised by a teacher. My mother is a professor of early childhood education. And from the time I went to kindergarten through my senior year in high school, I went to public schools. I wouldn’t trade that education and experience for anything.
I had incredible teachers. As I look at my life today, the things I value most about myself — my imagination, my love of acting, my passion for writing, my love of learning, my curiosity — all come from how I was parented and taught.
And none of these qualities that I’ve just mentioned — none of these qualities that I prize so deeply, that have brought me so much joy, that have brought me so much professional success — none of these qualities that make me who I am … can be tested.
I said before that I had incredible teachers. And that’s true. But it’s more than that. My teachers were EMPOWERED to teach me. Their time wasn’t taken up with a bunch of test prep — this silly drill and kill nonsense that any serious person knows doesn’t promote real learning. No, my teachers were free to approach me and every other kid in that classroom like an individual puzzle. They took so much care in figuring out who we were and how to best make the lessons resonate with each of us. They were empowered to unlock our potential. They were allowed to be teachers.
Now don’t get me wrong. I did have a brush with standardized tests at one point. I remember because my mom went to the principal’s office and said, ‘My kid ain’t taking that. It’s stupid, it won’t tell you anything and it’ll just make him nervous.’ That was in the ’70s when you could talk like that.
I shudder to think that these tests are being used today to control where funding goes.
I don’t know where I would be today if my teachers’ job security was based on how I performed on some standardized test. If their very survival as teachers was based on whether I actually fell in love with the process of learning but rather if I could fill in the right bubble on a test. If they had to spend most of their time desperately drilling us and less time encouraging creativity and original ideas; less time knowing who we were, seeing our strengths and helping us realize our talents.
I honestly don’t know where I’d be today if that was the type of education I had. I sure as heck wouldn’t be here. I do know that.
This has been a horrible decade for teachers. I can’t imagine how demoralized you must feel. But I came here today to deliver an important message to you: As I get older, I appreciate more and more the teachers that I had growing up. And I’m not alone. There are millions of people just like me.
So the next time you’re feeling down, or exhausted, or unappreciated, or at the end of your rope; the next time you turn on the TV and see yourself called “overpaid;” the next time you encounter some simple-minded, punitive policy that’s been driven into your life by some corporate reformer who has literally never taught anyone anything. … Please know that there are millions of us behind you. You have an army of regular people standing right behind you, and our appreciation for what you do is so deeply felt. We love you, we thank you and we will always have your back.”



So, do you agree or disagree? Let me hear from ya!