You Think You're Rich: Jesus' Message to the Lukewarm American Church

By Adam Habluetzel

You Think You're Rich is an in-depth, unflinching look at today's lukewarm American Church, represented by the Laodicean Church of Revelation 3:14-22, which stands as a type and shadow of the Church we witness today.  Jesus wrote the lukewarm Church out of great love in order to rebuke and discipline her for her good.  He spoke to her of her spiritual condition, called her to repentance and holiness, and offered gracious invitations for her restoration.  In heeding Jesus' words and applying His commands for Laodicea to our current believing Church in America, we can find increasing clarity for understanding our chaotic times and the Church in those times.  Jesus' message will not be palatable for those who wish to remain comfortable in their lukewarmness, but for those who are thirsty for the truth, it can and will provide some much-needed hope and an eye-opening paradigm shift.  The question is: Will we listen to what Jesus says?  And how will we respond?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adam Habluetzel
• Release date: Apr 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215874158

Book preview

Part One

The Condition of Today’s American Church

Revelation 3:14-17, 19

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Imagine with me the following scenario.

You have cancer.  It’s an aggressive cancer, spreading its fingers into organs and bodily systems quickly.  Though you were diagnosed only a short time ago, the physical and emotional toll it has taken has already been tremendous.  Your ability to function even in simple tasks has been severely compromised.

You have been informed that your condition is advanced and the prognosis is dire.  Despite such discouraging news, you schedule consultations with new doctors that friends suggest.  Your hope is that someone somewhere may possess an unknown cure.  Perhaps there’s a doctor who will be able to provide that elusive answer you desperately need.  You haven’t been encouraged by what the doctors so far have told you.

On one particular day you secure an appointment with a physician who has come highly recommended by many.  You heard that he is popular because of his ability to make patients feel better about themselves.  Following a series of tests and questionnaires, this doctor sits down across from you to discuss your case.  He looks into your eyes and takes a breath.  But what he says is unexpected.  You do not have cancer, he tells you.  There is nothing wrong with your body at all.  In fact, he continues, your only problem is that you do not realize how strong and healthy you actually are.  If you feel sick, he says, it’s not because you really are sick, but because you think you are sick.  You only need to exercise more, and willfully do the things you think you cannot do.  It’s mind over matter, he tells you.  Get out there, try harder, and realize your full potential.  And banish all this sick talk from your mind.

The doctor is skilled with his words.  You are enchanted.  What he says sounds like such better news!  You immediately begin to believe he may be right.  You feel motivated and encouraged.  You feel a certain hopeful confidence begin to grow.  You think you might just try what he suggests.

There are, of course, a few nagging problems with the doctor’s diagnosis.  One is how obviously difficult it is for you to perform physical tasks, suggesting that something really is wrong.  The other problem is the medical imaging previous doctors have shown you which is solid evidence that cancer is indeed consuming your body.

What do you do?  What do you decide to believe at this point?  How great is your desperation?  Wanting to be an optimist and to engage the power of positive thinking, you decide to take your new doctor at his word.  You dig deep and willfully determine to live just as though you have no cancer.  You develop and stick with a rigorous daily exercise plan.  You get involved with all sorts of activities and organizations important for making you feel like you are living with meaning.  You actively reject the idea that you are sick.  When your physical symptoms become unbearable, you convince yourself you just need to work harder to overcome them.  Soon you find that you are busier than ever, involved with more good causes than ever before—even before your cancer diagnosis.

At times remaining busy seems to help.  There are stretches when the activities you throw yourself into distract you enough so that you forget the pain.  You manage to accomplish quite a bit with your days, and sometimes it does feel true that perhaps you don’t have cancer.  In those moments you understand why the doctor came so highly praised.  You understand his widespread appeal.  You find yourself recommending him to others as he was recommended to you.  In those periods of reprieve, it seems that you have found your miracle cure, and the great ironic happiness is that you didn’t really need a cure at all.

The only thing is...well, there are also other times that are undeniably the opposite.  Such moments creep in uninvited and unwelcomed.  They speak something else, something you don’t want to hear.  Like the time when you collapsed and passed out for over ten minutes at that fund-raising auction.  Like the extreme headaches that torture you many nights when you’re in bed without a ready distraction on which to focus.  Like the blurred vision that is becoming increasingly more prevalent.  Like the sharp pain in your abdomen that often doubles you over and makes you retch—it happened again the other day at the gym.  These instances force you to recognize that no amount of denying your cancer symptoms really makes them go away, and no amount of denying sickness makes you truly whole.

The effect of such honesty is devastating to your psyche.  It makes you feel extremely guilty to see you are not strong enough to overcome the imagined effects of a sickness that doesn’t exist!  Others seem to be succeeding under the new doctor’s care, so why not you?

Your guilt is compounded by the fact that there are so many things that need to be done, so many of your causes that need your 100% attention and effort.  You don’t have time to be sick.  How can you help others like you know you’re supposed to if you admit that you yourself are in need?  The condition of your body that you cannot seem to escape has become one huge, annoying and inconvenient problem, and all you want to do is make it go away.  You realize you don’t even care about being truly healthy anymore.  All you care about is the ability to keep on doing the things you are convinced you need to be doing.  You find you need them in order to feel like you have an identity.

Thus, subtly, deep inside, despite your best efforts to keep it at bay, despair takes hold in your heart—ugly, dark, hopeless despair.  Even so, you take pains to maintain your outward appearance.  You feel you must in order to hold on to sanity.  You defiantly continue in all the frenetic activity on which you’ve become dependent to give you some semblance of a meaningful life.  And all the while, the cancer grows.

Chapter 1

Lukewarm

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The Church is the body of Christ, and the body has a condition.

Scripture is clear that believers in Jesus collectively form His body, each part doing its work according to its design.  Jesus ascended bodily into heaven and is coming back in the same way (Acts 1:11), and, in the meantime, we the Church represent Him as His physical presence on this earth.  Just as any individual person’s body has a condition or state of wellness, so do we, the body of Christ.

A physical body can be in shape or out of shape, healthy or unhealthy, well or sick, high functioning or shutting down.  So can the body of Christ.  Let me remind you that what is seen here on earth is but a copy or shadow of the reality in the spiritual realm (Colossians 2:17; Hebrews 8:5, 9:24, 10:1), and this is true of our physical bodies as well.  They are but icons of something greater, something that will outlast this world: The Church of Jesus Christ.

Have you ever stopped to wonder why our human bodies are the way they are?  Seriously, if you were God and were going to make human beings from scratch, would you design them the way He did it?  God is Spirit and does not exist in a physical body (John 4:24), so we know that being made in His image (Genesis 1:26-27) does not mean we physically look like Him.  So, why the design He chose?  Weird appendages that protrude and weird glassy orbs in your skull and weird curvy cups on the side of your head?  Have you noticed that, really, all parts of our body, if we get past our everyday familiarity with them, are just....weird?

That is, until we realize that our physical bodies are shadows and icons of the spiritual reality found in Christ, not the other way around.  The Church was ordained from before the beginning of time.  Our physical bodies are intended to reveal to us what that ultimate reality, the Body of Christ, is supposed to be like.

So, why the bizarre design?  Our bodies are meant to profoundly display that the Church has many unique parts, each with special roles that no other part can or will perform.  The profound thing is how all the parts together, each executing their function under the control of the Head (Ephesians 4:15-16), allow the whole body to do extraordinary things!  Our physical bodies, if healthy, can taste, touch, smell, see and hear.  Also, they can talk, walk, run, sprint, jump, crawl, contort, flip, roll, squat, throw, kick, punch, grab, skip, somersault, duck, dive, spin, burst forward, spring backward, and much, much more.  Our bodies are wonderfully designed and put together (Psalm 139:14)!

Of course, the opposite effect is put into play if health is lost.  If one part of the body stops working correctly, the entire body is negatively affected.  To illustrate, a few years ago I suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in my right knee.  Unfortunately, it required two separate surgeries over two years to rectify the problem and restore my knee to functioning health.  During that time, it could be argued that my right knee was broken, but the rest of my body was completely unaffected.  That would be a false statement, to put it mildly.

Never would I have guessed how much the rest of my body would be adversely affected by one small, damaged ligament.  The reality was that my left leg naturally tried to compensate for the weaker, pain-filled right leg and my walking gait was altered.  This led to out-of-joint issues in several places, especially my spine.  Secondly, because my knee was out of commission, I could not engage in full-body exercise to which I was accustomed, so my entire body slowly became lethargic and unfit—probably the most out-of-shape I have ever been in my life.  My lack of physical fitness as a whole then affected my ability to sleep, to think, to focus, to function at an optimal level.  Overall, I lived with a lack of energy and motivation, a down feeling owing to the absence of endorphins and fitness that I had previously enjoyed as normal.  You could say I was depressed.

So the damage done to one tiny body part, in an obscure and hidden place, had huge ramifications for my entire body’s well being.  This is a picture of what can happen spiritually in the Church.  First Corinthians 12:26 tells us about the body, If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

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The Lukewarm Church in America

This book will flesh out my basic assertion that today’s American Church is represented in scripture by the Laodicean Church of Revelation 3.  I believe such a conclusion is sound and makes sense for many reasons, and am basing the book’s arguments on that presupposition.  Starting from that premise, we need to answer the following question: What is the current state or condition of the body of Christ in our country?  Reading through Jesus’ words to Laodicea in Revelation 3:14-22 tells us exactly what we need to know.

First, Jesus introduces Himself, as was customary to begin a letter in that day.  It’s quite a description:

These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation.  (Revelation 3:14)

In keeping with John’s vision of the resurrected Jesus (see Revelation 1:9-20), we are introduced to a powerful and awe-inspiring message bearer, the living Son of God Himself.

Jesus describes Himself in three ways for His audience.  First, He is the Amen—a solemn expression of absolute certainty.  In effect, the Truth.  He declares His very essence to be one with truth, just as He did during His earthly ministry (John 14:6).  Next, Jesus says He is the faithful and true witness.  Not only is He the embodiment of truth, but he always faithfully bears witness to truth.  We can always trust that what He tells His people is reliable, good and unchanging.  He hasn’t just heard about it second-hand, He has been a first-hand witness to everything He proclaims.  Finally, Jesus reminds us that He is the ruler of God’s creation.  This is very important for us to never forget, because it’s His authority as Creator that gives Him the right to judge creation.  Therefore, His words carry the weight of ultimate judgment, not merely the take-it-or-leave-it nature of good advice.

Jesus’ reminder of His preeminence sets the stage for His directed word to the Laodicean believers.  He next addresses them about their wellness level.  The first thing that stands out in the passage is when Jesus describes them as lukewarm.  He is declaring the condition of the Church, how fit it is as His body.

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot.  I wish you were one or the other!  So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:15-16)

By way of illustration, Jesus is referring to a real geographical phenomenon of the ancient city of Laodicea.  The water supply in the city was indeed lukewarm, neither hot nor cold.  Nearby, to the south, was the city of Colossae, from which flowed icy spring water excellent for drinking.  Conversely, to the north, the city of Hierapolis was blessed with healing hot springs, useful for medicinal purposes.  In the middle, downhill from these two cities, sat Laodicea, which received and mixed the two good waters and made them worthless and bland—lukewarm.  The water became compromised of its good qualities when it flowed together and was no longer hot nor cold.  The response of you or I consuming such water would be the same as that of Jesus: I want to spit it out of my mouth!

The implications are clear that this church’s spiritual condition was awful.  Two waters that should not be mixed came together—a picture of impurity, unholiness and worldliness—and the result was a loss of usefulness.  How I wish you were either one or the other! Jesus lamented.  A lukewarm Church is as distasteful as lukewarm water.

In conversations with scores of Christians over the years, I have found that few, if any, would argue against the idea that today’s American Church is lukewarm.  Most readily agree that it is.  No believer I know would say that there is nothing wrong with today’s Church.  In fact, the extreme opposite is usually true.  It is very common and even somewhat trendy today to engage in bashing the Church for its faults, even amongst those who are in the Church.  This lambasting is never helpful and, unfortunately, reveals an immature and lazy approach to Christ’s Bride, whom He loves and for whom He died.  Our purpose should never be to engage in Church-bashing.

However, even if we rightly hold to a healthy love and respect for Jesus’ Church, it is not difficult at all to recognize her problems.  There are many blatant symptoms of our lukewarm state.  Just a few examples: Consider the general lack of reverence for and awe of God witnessed in churches.  Consider the dispassionate or hokey displays we call worship and the lack of commitment to God’s purposes shown by many church attenders.  Consider the prevalence of church hopping—the self-centered, consumerist quest to shop for that perfect club which fits my needs and never offends me.  How about the so-called 80/20 rule, which reflects the fact that eighty percent of the folks in a church body do twenty percent of the work and the other twenty percent do eighty percent of the work?  The 80/20 rule is completely normal and expected in modern congregations, which is why it has been named.  Witness the addictions and slavery to all sorts of sin so prevalent amongst all of us in the Church.  We cannot say no to sin!  Recognize how entertainment-driven and numbers-based our efforts too often are.  We tend to operate under the principle that if you don’t keep upping the ante, making what we offer bigger and better, you’ll end up with a bored church.  You’ll be left with people putting in their time, checking their box, marking going to church off their to-do list, all of which misses the point completely, of course.

Our hearts just aren’t in it.  Our hearts aren’t fully God’s.

Sadly, instead of honestly addressing our hearts, many church shepherds try to slap on band-aids with new initiatives meant to pump some life into their flocks, as though a spiritual condition can be cured with a quick-fix strategy or new program.  We strive to fix the inside by altering the outside.  This brings to mind Jesus’ words to the spiritually dead: You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. (Matthew 23:27)

I have heard several sermons over the years alluding to the lukewarm state of today’s Church, and the message always ends up the same.  The point of the sermon, by the end, reveals itself to be that we need to do something better in order to fix our lukewarmness.  It’s as though we stop reading after verse 16 and assume that Jesus is urging us to get hot for Him.  Try harder.  Pray more.  Give more.  Be more passionate.  Spend more hours volunteering.  Whatever.  Do more for Jesus and you will overcome your lukewarm heart.

Church leadership often buys into this solution more than anyone!  The pressure to perform can be overwhelming in church ministry.  The world’s standard of success is foisted relentlessly upon church shepherds and we are often unaware of how dastardly heart-killing it is to ourselves and our churches when we believe it.

The surprising thing in this passage is that Jesus doesn’t counsel the get hot for Me kind of response at all.  He is not delivering a pep talk to motivate us to strive for greater success.  We get snared in a great catch-twenty-two when we fail to realize the hopeful truth Jesus is communicating to the lukewarm Church.  He is simply laying out for us our true condition, matter-of-factly.  He has not given any command to His Church thus far in the passage.  We are often so eager to find out how we ourselves can solve our problem that we take His rebuke as an entreaty to just try harder, people!  It’s ironic how much our current condition keeps us from accurately understanding our current condition—that’s the catch-twenty-two!

I have yet to witness a preacher of the get hot for Jesus message take the time to continue to verse 17 and meditate on its meaning, which informs us exactly why we are so trapped and blind and unable to fix ourselves.  And so we continue on to the next part of Jesus’ message, which unveils some startling truth.

Chapter 2

Deceived

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What is it that keeps us trapped in our catch-twenty-two, our perpetually lukewarm state?  Jesus declared that the truth will set a person (or a church) free (John 8:32), so it follows that untruths are at the core of anything that enslaves or traps us.  Perhaps this is the reason why the American Church is so unable to grasp the reality of her condition.  Could it be that we are deceived by a well-crafted lie?  Could it be that we remain resistant to believe the truth even if we hear our condition clearly described by Jesus Himself?  Do we instead choose to believe that which tickles our ears?

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We Think We are Rich

Brothers and sisters, Jesus’ aim is to open the eyes of our hearts in order that we may perceive our spiritual condition rightly.  In the Laodicean letter, He exposes a lie which we have come to believe about our accumulated worldly riches.  Jesus tells the lukewarm Church, You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ (Revelation 3:17)  Far from believing we are in a state of trouble, the lukewarm Church is instead convinced that we are...rich.  We don’t really need anything, we think, because we have acquired all sorts of impressive worldly things.  We have been lulled into the comfortable idea that such things somehow make us rich in ways that matter to God.

I readily agree that the American Church is indeed rich...according to the standards of this world.  What does the Church possess about which we can boast?  Much, if we would be so foolishly inclined!  We can be rich in: large budgets, impressive numbers of attendees, buildings and campuses, media exposure, technological savvy, educational credentials and resources, political clout, admiration from our communities, clever marketing strategies, a multitude of programs, flashy conferences, and high-energy entertainment.  Riches, as spoken of in Revelation chapter three, are not just about material things, but are really about anything on which we attempt to build our lives, our identities, our sense of success—our hope of glory.  They are, as Paul put it, whatever [is] to [our] profit (Philippians 3:7).  They are those accumulated worldly treasures in which we trust to give us a sense of security, comfort, achievement and identity in the midst of a world full of uncertainty.

There is a multi-billion dollar Christian empire in our country built on riches such as these.  It includes everything that our culture champions and applauds.  We are, in short, rich toward the unbelieving world and actually very poor spiritually toward our Lord Jesus.

The deception of wealth takes hold in our minds because by such wealth we receive the intoxicating praise of our society—of mere men—as we create bigger and better spectacles in the name of the gospel.  The world says, Good job!  Way to tickle our fancy.  Therefore, we conclude that we are doing very well, and we cease believing that we need anything else.  As Jesus said about the self-righteous religious leaders: Everything they do is done for men to see. (Matthew 23:5) and Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets. (Luke 6:26).  Woe to us when a godless world system speaks well of us, Church!  Can we not see what this reveals about what we have become?

Our tendency is to be fooled into thinking God is up above somewhere beaming with pride over our amazing accomplishments.  If God wants anything, we assume, it is for us to work a little bit (or a lot) harder furthering our achievements in His name.  We can become so enamored with our own works that we ceased looking for God’s, or even expecting them.  We may begin to think we need nothing, but rather it’s very possible that God needs us.

Much wiser would it be to adopt the attitude of the apostle Paul in Philippians 3:4-9.  There he lists off all of the riches he knows he possesses in the eyes of the world (what is to his profit), and then he boldly declares that all such things are worthless.  They are bowel waste, he says, compared to simply knowing Christ Jesus.  Paul, as a young man, was applauded by the elite among the Jews for the things he had accomplished and the path he was pursuing.  But when he met Jesus he threw all of those things away—an act of utter foolishness to most people—in the quest for something much more valuable and lasting (Matthew 13:44-46).  Paul knew there was no substitute for Jesus Himself.

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Walking Away Sad

The American Church today is living out practically verse by verse the story of the rich young ruler’s encounter with Jesus, found in Luke 18:18-30.  The conversation between these two is, in many ways, exactly like interaction between Jesus and the lukewarm Church.  The rich man came asking what he must do to earn lasting life.  He came spouting his achievements—how he had kept all the rules since boyhood.  He came knowing deep inside that, despite all his riches and achievements, he was lacking something.  Jesus, loving him deeply, went straight to his heart condition.  He revealed to the wealthy ruler a truth hard to accept—that his trust in his own riches was keeping him from following Jesus and finding true life.  The young man became sad to hear it, refusing to take it to heart and abandon his riches for something better, something to come—Treasure in heaven, as Jesus put it (Luke 18:22).  Eternal riches instead of temporal wealth.  Finally, the rich man walked away from Jesus.

At that time Jesus made a statement that absolutely shocked his disciples:

How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!  Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. (Luke 18:24-25)

Lest we think this was hyperbole or a mere figure of speech, notice the disciples’ response: Who then can be saved? (Luke 18:26)  They understood that Jesus was declaring rich people entering God’s kingdom to be impossible.  Jesus confirmed their interpretation: What is impossible with men is possible with God. (Luke 18:27)

Just like the rich young man, today’s American Church approaches Jesus—with no doubt sincere intentions—to ask what more we must do.  We come confident in what we have achieved and what we possess, yet unable to dismiss that tiny, nagging feeling that we may have missed something vital.  We expect to receive one more works-based directive from our Lord.  He instead uses Revelation 3:14-22 to get right to our hearts with the precision of a surgeon: Your worldly riches are hindering an abundant life following me.  It’s impossible for you to experience the kingdom of God when deceived by these idols.  But take heart because I love you and what is completely impossible for you is not impossible for me.  I have written you the Laodicean letter precisely for this reason: to call you back to Me, back to the way of the kingdom.  And in so doing you will bear much good fruit.  Will you listen?

A Church that is confident in all she possesses and achieves will not listen.  Instead, she will hold tightly to those riches as proof of her significance, and therefore will begin to believe she needs nothing else.  She will easily sadden at Jesus’ rebuke because she loves her wealth and cannot fathom parting with it.  And she may actually walk away from Jesus’ offer of heavenly riches, trusting instead in all of her worldly treasures and accomplishments.

A Church that believes she needs nothing will not ever really depend on God, who gives all good things.  Why would she?  We’re doing just fine, thank you very much.  What a miserable cycle of deceit in which to be stuck!  Jesus sets a colossal question before us: Will we humble ourselves and take an honest look at the real condition of our hearts?  This remains to be seen.  Thus far it doesn’t appear that the American Church has a clue.  The message to the Laodicean Church is not being taught as a revelation by which to understand our times and our condition.  Part of the reason why might be because of ignorance.  Part might be because it is never easy to acknowledge a difficult truth.  It feels safer to pretend it’s not there staring us in the face.  God’s truth always offends our prideful, independent sensibilities.

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You Do Not Realize

Once again, hear Jesus’ words: You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’  But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. (Revelation 3:17).  You do not realize.  Here is the kicker.  This spiritual ignorance empowers the aforementioned catch-twenty-two.

How can someone do something about a condition they do not realize they have?  They need to first be awakened to the reality of their condition, of course.  The eyes of their heart need to be opened.  Then they must accept what is revealed.  Instead of eating up the opinions of a bunch of charlatan doctors, they must pay attention to the True Physician’s diagnosis of their condition.  Sadly, today’s American Church and her shepherds have not done that—at least not yet.

The reason we do not realize is because we are preemptively convinced that we are rich and do not need a thing!  This is our miserable, cyclical trap!  We are rich and do not need a thing is not usually an explicitly held belief.  It is subtle, masked, deceptive.  But it’s there, friends.  I doubt a church leader would have the gumption to brazenly declare, Our church is self-sufficient and successful!  We are rich and don’t need a thing!  God should be very proud of us!  We have every right to boast about our achievements!  But this very underlying attitude shows itself in how we conduct our affairs, in what we pursue, in our judgment of success, and in the general lukewarmness that pervades America’s Church.  Is there really a sense that we need God most of the time?  Are we dependent on Him for our very life, our very breath?  Is our comfortable, persecution-free existence indicative of God’s blessing, or our conformity to culture?  Do we display humility—true humility—before God?  How much do we actually presume in our self-righteous confidence?

Our exorbitant worldly wealth has a way of deceiving us into believing we are stronger, wiser, and more important than we actually are.  It causes boasting, in our hearts if not with our mouths.  In stark contrast to the sense of success we claim, Jesus declares that the Laodicean Church is wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.  Wow.  Really?  Let’s look closer at the adjectives Jesus uses to describe the lukewarm Church.

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Wretched

We live in a day and age where the word encouragement has been redefined.  In our feelings-driven society, it has come to mean telling people really positive-sounding things that will make them feel better about themselves.  Compare that definition to its true biblical meaning, which is literally to engender courage or build someone up in courage.  Such building up is much stronger and more substantive than merely elevating a person’s mood.  It has underneath it the idea of developing true strength, true bravery, true faith, true endurance, and true character in the one being built up.  Something rock solid and persevering is being forged when biblical encouragement is practiced.

Today’s false definition of encouragement has led to a lot of shallow rhetoric, echoing that of the self-centered pop psychology movement.  This is why the words awesome and amazing are way over-used in describing your average 12-year-old, or a video game, or even a hamburger, and have lost their power to incite anything even close to awe and amazement.  In reality, such words should be reserved for the only One who truly is worthy of them.  However, we are so busy looking at what man can do that we rarely look at God and what He has done long enough to be captured by the awe that inspires on-your-face worship.

All of what has just been said is meant to lead up to this: the last thing we want to hear about ourselves and our churches today is that we are wretched.  Wretched?  Really?  Isn’t that overstating things a bit?  Sorry, it just doesn’t make us feel good to think about being wretched, therefore we reject it.  It doesn’t encourage us!  Well, I hate to break it to you, Self-esteem Generation, but Jesus is the One who said it.  Does what He says matter anymore?  I have had young people in my years of ministry blatantly inform me that they reject the word of God because what it says does not make them feel good!  I wish I was joking!  Adults mask this attitude better than teens, but can still practically operate in the same unbelief.

We don’t like being called wretched.  At all.  But that is what we are!  Wretched, which means painfully devoid of redeeming qualities.  Pathetic, un-useful, vacuous, without substance, sad.  Admitting the truth of our wretched state does not devalue our worth to God at all, but rather frees us to plainly see the nature of our spiritual condition.  Heading toward truth and turning away from lies is always a good move.  It is a huge step on the road to repentance and the resulting healing that Jesus graciously offers us.

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Pitiful

We don’t like this word either.

Oh, how we hate to be pitied!  Only the weak are pitied!  Not the strong!  Not the rich!  Pitiful brings to mind images of vulnerable, injured animals, unable to help themselves.  Our current Church culture is built on the very premise that we have to help ourselves.  Or, more accurately, that we accomplish things on our own and occasionally God helps us!  How backwards we think sometimes!  That’s the effect of believing foundational lies.

We don’t want to believe we are like helpless, weak animals.  We would like to think we are lions, charging forward and taking ground, unafraid, conquering like kings of the jungle.  Scripture, on the other hand, calls us sheep—probably the most fearful and incapable