The problem in today’s churches with dwindling memberships is a spiritual one – a lack of the spiritual food which draws people and sustains them when they come. Let me explain.
A hungry Jesus, being tempted, said “man shall not live by bread alone but by every word out of the mouth of God.”
Just as God is one and manifested in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, He made us as one, manifested as body, soul and spirit.
In some ways, our body, soul and spirit compete against each other for control over what we want and what we do and that’s a problem.
The Apostle Paul recognizes this as he tells the Thessalonians in 5:23 “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.“
Our body is that physical aspect of us that can be seen by others. It feels heat and cold, dry and wet, pain and hunger. Our soul is our personality, thoughts and imaginations but unlike the rest of creation, we alone have a spirit. It’s what God gave our bodies when He breathed into us the breath of life.
It is written that it is The Spirit who knows the mind of God and likewise, in us, our spirit is that which knows our own minds. Perhaps our spirits are what gives us awareness of our body and soul and an awareness of our Creator.
Our spirits are what we use to communicate and have fellowship with God.
Jesus himself said we must worship God in spirit and in truth.
Our spirits are that part of us that will live on after physical death and go back to God from where it came. God’s Word tells us that we were known of God before we were formed in our mother’s womb. He’s appointed the days we shall live here on earth. He knows our thoughts and desires and He longs to have fellowship with us.
Our spirits are that part of us that will be reunited with our physical bodies at the coming of our Lord on the last day. We will become like Jesus at his resurrection: A glorified spiritual body made of flesh and bone with wonderful powers beyond anything we can imagine.
That will only happen if we have received our salvation by belief in him. Otherwise, ours spirits will be judged according to our works and without Jesus, we will be separated from God for eternity. The bible calls this “hell”.
In many people, their spirits are dead, being devoid of any acknowledgement of God and unaware of it and already separated from Him. God’s Spirit is at work in the world today trying to communicate with their spirits to wake them up to the realization of a God that loves them and wants them to receive salvation instead of wrath.
If God can do this, these people will seek out our churches to feed their hungry spirits with the knowledge of Jesus Christ, our Savior and receive God’s saving Grace. That’s why it’s very important to preach the Gospel from the pulpit every Sunday. Not for the saved but for the unsaved who might happen to stop into the church or to listen on the radio or watch on YouTube.
In John 3:16, it’s written that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.”
He sent His Son into the world while we were yet sinners to put sin to death on that cross when His Son died for us in our place so that we might receive eternal life by believing on him. That is the Good News, pure and simple.
All who believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God, that he died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried and rose again on the third day will be saved.
With that belief comes an obligation though: We must repent from our sins, be baptized and born again spiritually. We receive the Holy Spirit to transform us into the very image of Jesus himself and as an earnest payment on our resurrection to come. Being transformed is a life-long process and Jesus said we must continue with it to the end of our lives.
Once we have be born again, we begin the long journey, the rest of our lives, working toward that ideal of being holy like our Lord is. We will never entirely achieve it but we will literally die trying if the Lord does not come back before then.
Yes, we will make mistakes and stumble and sin from time to time but sin won’t dominate our lives and we don’t make a practice of sinning. We don’t live our lives through our flesh, in other words. Jesus is now standing at the right hand of God interceding to forgive our sins, past and future. His shed blood paid for those sins and now to God it’s as though we have never sinned or will ever have a sin recorded against us.
What does a person who is alive to God in spirit do? They proclaim to all who will hear that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God and their Lord and Savior, they spend time each day reading and meditating on God’s Word to feed their spirits and to deepen their faith. They seek to learn how to live a live pleasing to God.
We try to imagine how we might do what Jesus would do in every situation. We help others as best we can, we forgive and forget trespasses, we love even those who do not love us. We speak about what God has done for us and invite others to believe on the name of the Jesus Christ. We encourage and help our fellow believers to overcome the things that happen in life, to grow their faith, serve along with them and much more.