ireallyhavenoidea:

I don’t like when people attempt to extract inorganic responses and praise out of people with these “you should’ve been dead” rants. While God has kept some from horrible a demise, we should want to encourage people to worship God simply because they love Him and He loves them, not out of guilt that we hang over their heads.

To some, this is alarming and borderline heretical (smh), but it needs to be understood. It’s a big part of what’s wrong with our churches. We constantly throw “worship Him in spirit and truth” (John 4:24) at people while showing them a hazy definition of what true worship is. You’re having a difficult time getting the people involved because you’re coaxing and manipulating insincere emotion out of them. Ever think about that? If not, you should. We’ve got to check our motives.

Being a leader of any kind is a big responsibility and we squander the platform we’re given by God in order to push our own screwed up agenda. The church is supposed to be like a hospital and a safe haven. There are some extremely broken people who visit churches with hopes of being comforted by a God that they hear can heal all hurt. It sucks to see people prey (knowingly or unknowingly, it’s still wrong) on that emotion and guilt them into “praising” God in ways that they’re unfamiliar or uncomfortable with. As long as sincerity is behind it, there’s no right or wrong way to praise God. He’s all about freedom anyway (Galatians 5), so why are we keeping people in bondage when we’re charged by God to be agents of change and liberty?

There’s so much more that can be said, but I’ll stop here…