The cry coming from so many today who are alarmed with the lack of numerical growth in many congregations of the Lord's church is that we have a lack of love. In actuality, those who are crying this are exactly right, and they are wrong also! They are correct in assessing that the greatest problem in the congregations of the Lord's people is a lack of love, but they are wrong in describing the love that is needed. Many describe the love that is missing as an emotional high which people don't receive during the "traditional" worship assemblies. This is not the love that is missing.

The idea of lacking love is exactly what the apostle Paul was trying to get across to the brethren at Corinth when he penned the words of 1 Corinthians 13:3: "And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing." Paul is saying that the brethren at Corinth didn't have all the necessary ingredients to worship and serve God acceptably. They lacked the foundational ingredient of love.

If you talk with an individual who has had open heart surgery and has therefore been placed on a restrictive diet, you quickly learn what being without an important ingredient means. Many have called this new diet a "cardboard" diet because it lacks the spices that make the food so mouth-watering. It's still the same food, yet it lacks some important ingredients. In the same way our service to God is nothing more than "cardboard" or as Paul described it in 1 Corinthians 13:1, a bunch of noise when the acts of our worship and service to God aren't motivated by love.

Year after year congregations lose members to the role of backsliding. Some completely fall away from the Lord's church and some just take up space in the service, not willing to get involved in any work. And then there are always those who fall to the false teaching being spread throughout the brotherhood today. The great concern in many areas is that we are desperately losing our teens, some say this is because of a lack of youth programs, some say because of a lack of good "youth" directors, some say because we have lost touch with the younger generation. Maybe its time we look at the real problem. Could it be a lack of love? Could it be that many have lost their love for God, love for the truth, and love for Christ's church which cost Him His blood (Acts 20:28)?

Of course no-one admits that they are leaving the church because of a lack of love. Everyone justifies this backsliding with excuses such as "the preacher is too boring," "the elders don't understand the needs of the congregation," "so-and- so hurt my feelings," "too many hypocrites," and the list could go on. Be assured that all of these excuses would magically disappear if one truly loved the Lord and His church. Paul tells us: "Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1 Cor. 13:3-7 NKJV).

Let's strive to re-gain that love for Christ and His church before we fall into the trap in which Israel had fallen when Isaiah prophesied to them (Isaiah 1:5-15). When Christian's today gain the love that is so often displayed in scripture by the apostles and first century Christians, we will again experience the growth, both spiritually and numerically as our brethren did in the first century.

Anchor of The Soul

http://www.gate.net/~jtcoc/