Wednesday, September 3, 2025
“But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15 KJV).
Is our local church building the meeting-place of people filled with God’s life, or just “a social club with a steeple?”
A dear Christian woman described to me how her local church was anything but a Spirit-filled assembly. There were several unaddressed problems. It is only as a mature Bible student (grace dispensationalist) many, many years later that she now fully understands the difference between empty religion and grace living.
For instance, the children of a certain poverty-stricken family were given preeminence over her children in Sunday School. Her kids were pushed aside, made outcasts, so the poor kids could have most of the attention. Another example of the spiritual disarray was when the pastor told her it was better for her to come to church and teach children’s Sunday School than accompany her husband to care for her ill, hospitalized father-in-law! Moreover, when she spoke out against false teaching in the assembly, she was reprimanded by a “Bible college graduate” serving as the head of the church’s Sunday School department.
A former deacon of that church told me how a great many people in the assembly were lazy regarding the maintenance of the property and facilities. Out of a congregation of about 100 people, only he and a handful of others tended to most of the chores. Knowing the little I do about that local church, I can say unashamedly that that church was dead spiritually. There was no life of God. Just about everyone there was living in the energy of the flesh. The amount of sound Bible doctrine was extremely limited. Most members were running a social club, not a place of Christian living. The pastor should not have been favoring anyone. He should have not allowed spiritual confusion to go on unaddressed in his church. His strict rules and regulations made void or cancelled God’s grace. This is just one of tens of millions of useless “places of worship” not worth attending at all….
333 Words of Grace 