Bread in the House

Dear friends,

Do you sometimes wonder why it is so difficult to convince your friends and relatives that they need Jesus in their lives? You may have participated in short term and long term missions, but the success rate was low, or in “baseball term”, the batting average sucked. You tried to get your friends to come to the church but they had all kinds of excuses. Even those who came, they did not stay very long. We planned a “Harvest Event” or “Neighbourhood Outreach”, some people would come, but within a very short time, they left the church. Do people get touched when they attend our worship services? Do they feel the presence of God when we sing worship songs, and make them want to lift their hands or fall on their knees because they thet’s all you can do when you are in the presence of the King of kings?

I believe there are a lot of people who have spiritual hungers in this world, otherwise the yoga classes will not be full, new-age books like “The Secrets” and authors like “Deepak Chopra” will not be bestsellers, and “Christian Science” and other new-age religions will not grow fast. How come these people are so turned-off by what the churches offer? Please read the quotes from the book “The God Chaser” by Tommy Tenney below:

No Bread in the “House of Bread” : From “The God Chaser” by Tommy Tenney

We (the churches) are like bakeries that are open, but have no bread. And furthermore, we are not interested in selling bread. We like the chit-chat that goes around cold oven and empty shelves. People leave the House of Bread for one reason. The reason they left the House of Bread is that there was no bread in the house. It is simple, why people leave the church - there is no bread. They went somewhere else to find bread. For many, they went to bars, internet, TV, etc.

We have falsely adverstised and hyped-up our claims that there is bread in our house. But the hungry come, all they can do is scrounge through the carpet for a few crumbs of yesteryear’s revival. We talked grandly about where He has been and what He has done, but we can say very little about what He is doing among us today. People have come to the House of Bread time and again only to find there was simply too much of man and too litle of God there. If there is no bread in the House then I don’t blame the hungry for not going there.

Like the rumour of bread reached Moab and caused Naomi to decide to come back to the House of Bread (Bethlehem), if just one of the hungry people hears the rumour that there is bread back in the House of Bread, the news will flow like a surge of electricity through a power line at near the speed of light. If God is in the church, we won’t be able to hold them in our buildings, no matter how many services we conduct each day. Why? How? All you must do is get the bread back!

I attach the first six verses of the Book of Ruth. Perhaps you do not see the significance of these 6 verses. There are several things we can learn:

1. Bethlehem means the House of Bread, but during the time of Elimelech and Naomi, there was a famine in the land.

2. Because there was no bread in the House of Bread, Elimelech and his family left the House of Bread to find bread somewhere else.

3. It is also interesting that they went to the land of Moab, who was the enemy of the Israelites for a long time. This family practically broke the command of God who prohibited them to live in the land of foreigners.

4. Their children, Mahlon and Chillion, married Moabite women, which is also a disobedience of God’s commands.

5. Finally, Naomi decided to come back to the House of Bread when she heard that there was “bread” or food again in the House of Bread.

Ruth 1:1 In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. 2 The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. 3 But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4 These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, 5 and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. 6 Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food. The church and the believers must have bread again so that people will come to the House of Bread, which is the church. The bread is the “tangible” presence of God. We have to allow the Holy Spirit who has been living in us to take control so that He becomes visible, because it will attract people to come. We should stop playing “church” and demanding control in our church, but surrender the control back to Him. What happened when Jesus was in town? The Samaritan woman at the well, whose lifestyle was not to be bragged about, became the most effective evangelist in the town. Zaccheus, forgetting his status as one of the richest man in Jericho, climbed a tree to see Jesus passing by and he was transformed, as he would repay everybody he ever cheated and would donate half of what he owned. When Jesus is in town, there is transformation. We need to pray that the tangible presence of God will be visible at our churches and in our lives because people cannot resist but to come when His tanglible presence is there. We need to be a church full of worshippers and intercessors.

We need to teach people to become a radical worshipper of God. We need to put aside man-made agenda, but we need to allow God to have his agenda in our worship services and activities. The kind of worship services that God likes is different from the services that we likes. God wants services where He is “full” at the end of the services, while we (the congregation) becomes hungrier for Him at the end of the services. We must become so desperate in seeking God and expecting that He will “show up” in our services and meetings. Let us pray that there will be “bread” again in the House of Bread. Let us make the people outside the church to envy us because we have “brad” in the House of Bread. I hope you all can catch this spark of fire, and spread this fire to others, perhaps one person at a time, so that the fire will spread in our churches, our cities and everywhere.

God bless.

Dedo Suwanda