Good Ministering
In this article I talk about the showmanship employed by some church leaders today. There is a huge difference between putting on a performance that entrances your audience into accepting what you have to say as truth, and good ministering. I have just come home from a church service where the young man who was ministering to the congregation spoke about how Jesus healed his life of addictions to things that weren’t good for him. He had been a porn addict and was now free of his addiction to porn. Unfortunately, although his intentions were very good, I didn’t hear very good ministering tonight.
Hype
Apart from saying how Jesus had set him free, he used a whole lot of hype during his sermon and didn’t actually talk of anything very practical at all. He failed to speak of how to call in Jesus to help with the healing. All he said was that Jesus would heal. He failed to speak of the importance of asking for help to heal. All that he said was the Jesus would do the healing and make a person an Oak of Righteousness, a term which comes from the first three verses in Isaiah 61.
Righteous
He emphasised righteousness and how once you hand your life over to Jesus, you become righteous. What is the meaning of the word ‘Righteous’? It means “morally right or justifiable, very good or excellent”. Cough, cough…. excuse me, but there’s always a whole heap of work to do to become as righteous as Jesus wants us to become. Immediately forgiven, yes, immediately righteous, no way.
Pure Heart
This young up-and-coming minister had all good intentions, but he has a lot to learn when it comes to teaching what it takes to gain a loving and pure heart. Matthew chapter 23 emphasises the need to purify our hearts. Without that, we cannot enter into the celestial dimensions because we would pollute those dimensions with our own darkness. Luke 16: 26 talks about the pit between this 3D dimension and the celestial realms. One cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless he or she crosses that pit. Even if a person does manage to cross the pit they won’t be allowed access to those dimensions if they have not processed their own darkness and rid themselves of evil. This young man mentioned nothing of that.
Developing
Not once did he mention the importance of dealing with the demons that are in us and around us, which push us to act in ways that are far from loving. Not once did he speak of the importance of becoming emotionally mature. Neither did he emphasise how to allow our heavenly Father’s spirit to live within our hearts and guide and control our behaviour. I don’t think he knows how to explain that, so he wasn’t able to teach it anyway.
A Grand Performance
The thing that I object to about church services like the one that I witnessed tonight is the ‘perfomance’ aspect of it all. These young men get hold of the microphone, then they use loud projection of their voices, melodic entrancing background music, and the constant repetition of a few key phrases or verses to try to imprint what they have to say upon the minds of the people in the congregation. They fail to give instructions on how to achieve what is necessary to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. If they think that we get in just by giving our hearts to God, they are wrong. If you’re attending a sermon such as this and you’re not fully aware of what is going on, you can easily get sucked in by it all. There’s a whole heap of hype that goes on and not a lot of wisdom being imparted from the pulpit.
A Great Teacher
I am forever grateful to have had the teacher whom I had. His writings and lectures were practical, full of wisdom, and easy to understand and put into practice. He gave his students so many tools that could be used to develop spiritually. He taught using stories and examples that we could relate to. There was never any hype, and certainly no BS.
Turning Away
I can totally understand why people turn away from Christianity. Especially when they hear sermons like the one that I heard tonight. I have a relationship with Jesus. If I didn’t I would have been so turned off by the whole thing tonight that I would have just walked out and not gone back. As it was, the sermon annoyed me so much that I had to get up and go to the coffee room before it ended anyway.
Practicing Goodness
So if you have been taught by what I call a “Jesus Salesman” and you’re confused about what you need to do to develop spiritually, try listening to the teachings of my own teacher Stuart Wilde. Stuart was a powerful metaphysician who did most of the things that Jesus did. He turned water into wine at one of his gigs. He showed people how to dematerialise at others. He was often seen at more than one place at once. People who had lunch with him in one town would discover when they talked to friends of theirs that Stuart had also had lunch elsewhere with others. He never ceased to surprise his students. Not to mention how he always taught the practicalities of becoming good.
Stuart didn’t just teach that all we have to do is hand our life up to God or Jesus. He taught that there’s a need to put into practice the actions that will develop goodness. He also taught the art of successful prayer. Successful prayer is not about whining to get the things that we want. It’s about being grateful for what we do have when we supplicate to God. Gratitude for what we do have should always come first before we request anything else. But how many people actually do that when they pray? Do you?
Spiritual and Emotional Maturity
Like a professional tennis player, you don’t become an expert by wishing or hoping it to be so. You become an expert by putting into practice what you are taught. It’s best done on a daily basis. When it comes to our spirituality, sure, faith that both Jesus and our heavenly Father exist and that we need their help is a prerequisite to success. However, we are the ones who have to do the work. We do that through daily practice to extend ourselves to become spiritually and emotionally mature, and by purifying our heart by ridding ourselves of our own darkness.
Spiritual and emotional maturity isn’t just granted to us when we submit to a relationship with Jesus. It’s something that we have to work on. Daily. Forgiveness is granted, but spiritual maturity isn’t. After all, how many of us have been looked down their noses at by Christians who think that they are chosen and we aren’t? How many of us have suffered at the hands of judgemental Christians? How many of those Christians act in un-Christian-like ways when they aren’t at church during the week? How many are jealous, spiteful, and unforgiving? Many. Many. Many. Do you get my point?
Thanks for reading,
Psychic Madeline Rose
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To read the writings of my teacher Stuart Wilde, please click here. You will find many years of articles on his website. However, within my site is a selection of articles that you can benefit from also. Please click here to be taken to one of those, which will be in a folder full of some of Stuart’s other articles.
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