We Are Drawing People Into Church With Pleasure

We live in a culture where we are trying every little thing to get people in the doors of the church, and a lot of time we push pleasure.  'You've gotta come to church with me...it's such an awesome experience.  You'll love it.  If you follow God he'll make you rich, you gotta check out my pastor, he's an amazing communicator.  He's so incredible.  You gotta come to our church...we have such an insane children's or youth program.  You've gotta come to my church, we've got this program or that program.'  While so many of those things are well and good things, many times in our churches we are replacing the power of God's Word with a program or an activity.  That's idolatry.  Look at this.

 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. ² For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³ heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, ⁴ treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, ⁵ having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.  2 Timothy 3:1-5

This verse is talking about people INSIDE THE CHURCH!  So many people who are walking through the doors of the church have a form of God, but they are powerless.  And sadly we don't even know it.  

Several  years ago I was invited to come and lead the music and worship for a 'revival.' The pastor gave cash to people who showed up for the event.  That revival was touted as a success.

HE. PAID. PEOPLE. TO. COME. TO. CHURCH.

We are not appealing to anyone that Jesus is worthy to be worship, rather we are appealing to people that He will do you good.  This is called humanism.  It is wrong.  We come to church, we follow Jesus because HE. IS. WORTHY!  No other reason, and if we are coming for another reason it's a wrong reason.

Listen to this message from Francis Chan.