Christian - From the Inside Out
Posted: Friday, September 30, 2011
by Mark Parsec
Wordcasters
Recently, I was out in the backyard doing some gardening when I made a strange and frightening discovery. I was cutting down shoots from the base of the orange tree when I found some deformities on the tree trunk. So, I took a screwdriver to it and to my dismay it crumbled and turned to dust before my very eyes! Inch after inch of the powdery stuff just fell out of the tree, clear to the center and out of the other side. By the time I was done there was a hole right through the middle of the tree trunk.
The heart of the tree was infested with ants; thousands of them scurried about to and fro. I could be mistaken, but it looked like an entire colony had set up residence in the very core of the orange tree.
The tree looked like any other orange tree from the outside, but the inside of the tree was disintegrating. I never would have expected it.
I had noticed that there had been an unusually small number of blossoms and fruit on the tree this past year, but I figured it was because of the excessive rain we had experienced in the spring. The leaves too, although they were lush and green, seemed somewhat withered, but I figured that was because of the extreme hot weather we have been experiencing lately. So, had I not taken a screwdriver to the trunk of the tree, there would have been nothing significant to indicate that the tree was dying from the inside out.
Sometimes, the same thing happens with Christians. They might appear pleasing on the outside, but on the inside they are disintegrating. But, how do you know if a Christian is disintegrating from the inside out? You can’t take a screwdriver to them and poke them! There won’t be any dust, or powder, or colonies of ants to reveal the true nature of things. Yet, like the orange tree in my backyard there may be clues that something is wrong.
1. The Fruit
Like the orange tree in my backyard that was producing little fruit, a disintegrating Christian produces little fruit. Galatians 5:22-23 teaches us that that…
22 … the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control;
So, if a Christian is missing these fruits in their lives, chances are something is wrong and that they are spiritually sick. And sometimes, when these fruit are missing the opposite takes their place. Instead of love we see hate. Instead of joy we sorrow. Instead of peace we see conflict. Instead of patience we see impatience. Instead of kindness we see cruelty. Instead of goodness we see badness. Instead of faithfulness we see unfaithfulness. Instead of gentleness we see harshness. Instead of self-control we see self-indulgence.
I want to remind you, however, that my orange tree was not fruitless. It had fruit. It just did not have very much fruit at all. And the same is true with Christians… they may not show bad fruit… but, they just might not have much good fruit at all. If this is the case, then there may be a spiritual malady.
2. Withering
Like the leaves that had withered on my orange tree, the activity and growth of a
disintegrating Christian will wither. In Hebrews 10:25 (CEV) the Apostle Pauls says…
25Some people have gotten out of the habit of meeting for worship, but we must not do that. We should keep on encouraging each other, especially since you know that the day of the Lord's coming is getting closer.
Some Christians start out with a flurry of activity, reading their Bibles, praying, going to church, witnessing… but, then for one reason or another, they slow down, they draw back, they fall back, they
backslide. Their Christian activity and growth withers. Jesus addressed this condition in the Parable of the Sower, in Luke 8:13 (GNT), when he said…
13 The seeds on the rocky soil represent those who hear the message and receive it with joy. But since they don’t have deep roots, they believe for a while, then they fall away when they face temptation.
If the activity and growth in a Christian’s life has stalled or slowed down, it may be an indication of a spiritual malady. They may be falling away. Their faith may be withering. In Hebrews 10:38 (NIV) the Lord tells us…
“But my righteous[a] one will live by faith.
And I take no pleasure
in the one who shrinks back.”[b]
God is not pleased with the Christian who shrinks back or withers in their faith. In Revelation 2:4 the Lord says…
4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.
If our love for the Lord has diminished at all from the time that we first received him into our lives then our love has withered. And if our love has withered then we have a spiritual malady that needs to be addressed.
3. Deformity
Like the deformed tree trunk on my orange tree, there will be deformities of true worship and distortions of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the life of a disintegrating Christian. In John 4:24 Jesus taught us…
24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
We must worship God in Spirit and in Truth. Worshiping God is not about intellectualizing him, or figuring him out with our puny human brains, for God in his infinite glory is incomprehensible to human thought. Nor can we fool God into thinking that we love him or worship him, when our hearts are far from him.
All too often Christians deform worship into something other than that which is pleasing to God. We go to church and if we don’t like the hymns or praise and worship music we walk away and say, “I didn’t get anything out of it.” Well, hymns and praise and worship music is not about what we get out of it… it is about what God gets out of it. It is about glorifying God. It is about what you are bringing to God, not what you are taking out of the church. It is about worshipping and loving God.
Sometimes Christians come up with all kinds of rituals and orders of service that mean absolutely nothing to God at all. God doesn’t care about silver or gold communion plates, he doesn’t care about satin altar cloths or stained glass windows. He cares about us coming into intimate contact with him from the core of our very being. He cares about our honesty and sincerity. He cares about our hearts.
When our form of worship becomes deformed it reflects the condition of our hearts. And when our hearts aren’t right with the Lord we will hold all sorts of distorted ideas about the life, ministry and gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ and how we should worship God.
Disintegrating Christians justify sin. They will neglect the importance of prayer. They will doubt the Bible as the Word of God. They will deny that Jesus Christ is the Son of God or refuse to accept the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave. They will deny the baptism, indwelling, and power of the Holy Spirit. They will entertain other religious ideas, like reincarnation, agnosticism or spiritualism. They will judge and condemn other Christians. But, when their belief system is poked and probed by the Word of God it will absolutely crumble into dust.
Just as the ants had invaded and taken up residency in my orange tree, so also, sin invades our lives. We don’t always notice when the ants of sin come marching into our lives, and take up residency in our hearts, but if we look carefully we can find the symptoms… loss of fruit of the spirit, withering of Christian activities and growth, and deformity of worship and distortions of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
AND... just as any one Christian can deteriorate from the inside out… so also can churches.
A church may look healthy from the outside… the building might appear beautiful, the music might seem fine, the parking lot looks full on Sundays… but there may be disintegration taking place at the core and the church is dying from the inside out. No fruit, withering, deformity!
As Christians we have a sacred duty to preserve the integrity of our faith, both as individuals and as communities of faith which we call… the church. If we succeed in our duty, then the words of Psalm 1:1-3 are most appropriate...
1 Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
2 But his delight is
in the law of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
3 He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper.
But… what about my orange tree? I believe the only option I have left is to cut it down. I am hoping to restore the tree through one of its shoots. The same may apply to some churches that are dying from the inside out. Job 14:7-9 (NKJV) informs us…
7“For there is hope for a tree,
If it is cut down, that it will sprout again,
And that its tender shoots will not cease.
8 Though its root may grow old in the earth,
And its stump may die in the ground,
9 Yet at the scent of water it will bud
And bring forth branches like a plant.
The tree looked like any other orange tree from the outside, but the inside of the tree was disintegrating. I never would have expected it.
I had noticed that there had been an unusually small number of blossoms and fruit on the tree this past year, but I figured it was because of the excessive rain we had experienced in the spring. The leaves too, although they were lush and green, seemed somewhat withered, but I figured that was because of the extreme hot weather we have been experiencing lately. So, had I not taken a screwdriver to the trunk of the tree, there would have been nothing significant to indicate that the tree was dying from the inside out.
Sometimes, the same thing happens with Christians. They might appear pleasing on the outside, but on the inside they are disintegrating. But, how do you know if a Christian is disintegrating from the inside out? You can’t take a screwdriver to them and poke them! There won’t be any dust, or powder, or colonies of ants to reveal the true nature of things. Yet, like the orange tree in my backyard there may be clues that something is wrong.
1. The Fruit
Like the orange tree in my backyard that was producing little fruit, a disintegrating Christian produces little fruit. Galatians 5:22-23 teaches us that that…
22 … the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control;
So, if a Christian is missing these fruits in their lives, chances are something is wrong and that they are spiritually sick. And sometimes, when these fruit are missing the opposite takes their place. Instead of love we see hate. Instead of joy we sorrow. Instead of peace we see conflict. Instead of patience we see impatience. Instead of kindness we see cruelty. Instead of goodness we see badness. Instead of faithfulness we see unfaithfulness. Instead of gentleness we see harshness. Instead of self-control we see self-indulgence.
I want to remind you, however, that my orange tree was not fruitless. It had fruit. It just did not have very much fruit at all. And the same is true with Christians… they may not show bad fruit… but, they just might not have much good fruit at all. If this is the case, then there may be a spiritual malady.
2. Withering
Like the leaves that had withered on my orange tree, the activity and growth of a
disintegrating Christian will wither. In Hebrews 10:25 (CEV) the Apostle Pauls says…
25Some people have gotten out of the habit of meeting for worship, but we must not do that. We should keep on encouraging each other, especially since you know that the day of the Lord's coming is getting closer.
Some Christians start out with a flurry of activity, reading their Bibles, praying, going to church, witnessing… but, then for one reason or another, they slow down, they draw back, they fall back, they
backslide. Their Christian activity and growth withers. Jesus addressed this condition in the Parable of the Sower, in Luke 8:13 (GNT), when he said…
13 The seeds on the rocky soil represent those who hear the message and receive it with joy. But since they don’t have deep roots, they believe for a while, then they fall away when they face temptation.
If the activity and growth in a Christian’s life has stalled or slowed down, it may be an indication of a spiritual malady. They may be falling away. Their faith may be withering. In Hebrews 10:38 (NIV) the Lord tells us…
“But my righteous[a] one will live by faith.
And I take no pleasure
in the one who shrinks back.”[b]
God is not pleased with the Christian who shrinks back or withers in their faith. In Revelation 2:4 the Lord says…
4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.
If our love for the Lord has diminished at all from the time that we first received him into our lives then our love has withered. And if our love has withered then we have a spiritual malady that needs to be addressed.
3. Deformity
Like the deformed tree trunk on my orange tree, there will be deformities of true worship and distortions of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the life of a disintegrating Christian. In John 4:24 Jesus taught us…
24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
We must worship God in Spirit and in Truth. Worshiping God is not about intellectualizing him, or figuring him out with our puny human brains, for God in his infinite glory is incomprehensible to human thought. Nor can we fool God into thinking that we love him or worship him, when our hearts are far from him.
All too often Christians deform worship into something other than that which is pleasing to God. We go to church and if we don’t like the hymns or praise and worship music we walk away and say, “I didn’t get anything out of it.” Well, hymns and praise and worship music is not about what we get out of it… it is about what God gets out of it. It is about glorifying God. It is about what you are bringing to God, not what you are taking out of the church. It is about worshipping and loving God.
Sometimes Christians come up with all kinds of rituals and orders of service that mean absolutely nothing to God at all. God doesn’t care about silver or gold communion plates, he doesn’t care about satin altar cloths or stained glass windows. He cares about us coming into intimate contact with him from the core of our very being. He cares about our honesty and sincerity. He cares about our hearts.
When our form of worship becomes deformed it reflects the condition of our hearts. And when our hearts aren’t right with the Lord we will hold all sorts of distorted ideas about the life, ministry and gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ and how we should worship God.
Disintegrating Christians justify sin. They will neglect the importance of prayer. They will doubt the Bible as the Word of God. They will deny that Jesus Christ is the Son of God or refuse to accept the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave. They will deny the baptism, indwelling, and power of the Holy Spirit. They will entertain other religious ideas, like reincarnation, agnosticism or spiritualism. They will judge and condemn other Christians. But, when their belief system is poked and probed by the Word of God it will absolutely crumble into dust.
Just as the ants had invaded and taken up residency in my orange tree, so also, sin invades our lives. We don’t always notice when the ants of sin come marching into our lives, and take up residency in our hearts, but if we look carefully we can find the symptoms… loss of fruit of the spirit, withering of Christian activities and growth, and deformity of worship and distortions of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
AND... just as any one Christian can deteriorate from the inside out… so also can churches.
A church may look healthy from the outside… the building might appear beautiful, the music might seem fine, the parking lot looks full on Sundays… but there may be disintegration taking place at the core and the church is dying from the inside out. No fruit, withering, deformity!
As Christians we have a sacred duty to preserve the integrity of our faith, both as individuals and as communities of faith which we call… the church. If we succeed in our duty, then the words of Psalm 1:1-3 are most appropriate...
1 Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
2 But his delight is
in the law of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
3 He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper.
But… what about my orange tree? I believe the only option I have left is to cut it down. I am hoping to restore the tree through one of its shoots. The same may apply to some churches that are dying from the inside out. Job 14:7-9 (NKJV) informs us…
7“For there is hope for a tree,
If it is cut down, that it will sprout again,
And that its tender shoots will not cease.
8 Though its root may grow old in the earth,
And its stump may die in the ground,
9 Yet at the scent of water it will bud
And bring forth branches like a plant.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Interesting article.Thanks, Linda. God bless you.
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