Exhortation.....

I came home from church today really hurt -- I know it might have looked like anger to those who heard the ranting -- but it really was deep hurt for the church and a desire for her to be who the Lord created her to be!
Here is the scenario... I have some friends I have met at school who are not believers, one of them is an exchange student from another country where there are very few Christians at all and the other is a freshman who looks and acts very different from my 'normal' group of friends -- her heritage is also from another country. Well, they wanted to go to church with me -- so we all went together this morning to the big college group... and we got ignored. No one, not one single person came up and introduced themselves to my friends -- they were completely ignored. The few people that I knew there came up and talked to me and I introduced them to my friends but very few people actually tried to be interested in their lives or know them at all. As a matter of fact, the only two people who had any kind of sustained conversation with my friends for more than 1 minute were 2 guys! No girls, no one on leadership -- no one. So we sang songs and listened to a sermon about Isaiah6:8 'Here am I, send me!"... and we missed it. The nations came to church this morning and no one cared! Afterwards they had a free lunch thing and my friends didn't even want to stay -- they felt so unwanted and out of place. On the way home, I felt like I had to appologize to them for our behavior and try to explain who the church is supposed to be. After I dropped them off, I just cried.
So, this is an exhortation to myself as part of the church as much as it is to the rest of the church to wake up and take a good look around us! If we are only saying good words about reaching out to others and not taking every opportunity to do so -- then we are missing it. It should NOT be possible for 2 obviously 'different' people to walk into a church willingly and be run out unloved and unnoticed. We didn't just fail these 2 girls today, we failed each other. They knew that I had been at that place for 4 years and yet they watched me get ignored just like they did and they didn't understand it and I couldn't explain it. I don't have this all figured out either and I have missed plenty of opportunities to love when I could have... so really am saying "let us".. let us to this together, let us be instruments of change, let us be humbled and give up our lives.
Praise God for his patience and his kindness that we will get other chances, that these girls are still around to be known and loved -- but we missed it and we failed today and our failure didn't just hurt them and me ... it hurt the Lord and His heart for His church. Let's rise up against this selfishness and inward focus and intellectual chatter to be the church that nurtures and gives herself up for the world! Let us love one another in a way that declares loudly to the on-lookers that our love comes from Jesus Christ -- Savior of the World. Let us live differently, so that there can be no other explanation for where our treasure is and who our Master is. Jesus is worth so much more than this and the church and be so much more than she settled for today. Lord Jesus, come -- replace our ideas, feelings, pursuits, with passion for your Name. Let our lives not be wasted, spent on the world that has nothing eternal to offer back to us. Let us redeem the time we have lost by choosing to enlist in the battle going on all around us Lord. Forgive us Father for our apathy and lack of desire -- fill us with your Love that transforms and sustains, Jesus. We must decrease, but You must increase ... we're asking You God -- come and heal our land, restore our churches, remake us at your cross that we might reflect You to the world you came to save. We love you God -- Amen