Love

I've been struggling for a while now about what the church preaches on and what they are lacking to preach on. Most of the time it comes down to two different options. The first option is the church who preaches almost exclusively from the perspective of God loving us and being for us. The second option is the church who preaches nearly exclusively on God's judgement and wrath. These options are both true and also incomplete and wrong. Any truth that is not presented in fullness is no longer true or biblical. The bible specifically says Jesus Christ will offend and be a stumbling block, yet our concerns in preaching are often based in the fear of offending (Isaiah 8:14; 1Peter 2:8 KJV).
There are many problems and issues with the American church today; I am only focusing on one issue that I believe is the root of the rest. The main problem is that we are not preaching the love of God. We preach love that is simply romantic, fantastical, prosperous, and inoffensive. The other side of that coin is the church that preaches from a place of condemnation that tells God's people that He is a distant and angry God. Neither one of these viewpoints presents the love of God. God's love is perfect beyond what we can imagine or comprehend as human beings. I don't pretend to have it totally figured out, but I do know one thing, I know that the love of God would never omit any portion of the truth.
I realized that we as Christians judge and condemn different preaching for different reasons but ultimately when it comes down to it none of us have it right. It does us absolutely no good to preach about how much God wants to be in relationship with us and be affectionate toward us if we do not receive the conviction of the Holy Spirit. We must know what we are lacking in order to know what we are in need of. We don't know we need heaven if we don't know the reality of hell. The converse of this is true as well. It does us no good to know the sin we are in and the hell we deserve to be condemned to if we don't also couple it with the redeeming revelation of the cross and Jesus' love for us. If we believe that God is distant and angry and lacking desire for relationship with us then we likewise are distant and do not desire relationship with Him. We are not able to love God on our own; we need His help; we can only love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).
Our problem is rooted in our incomplete and inaccurate definition of love. We must begin to define love as God defines love. God's love is perfect and complete, lacking nothing. Love means telling the truth even when it is difficult, even when it is painful, even when it might mean losing something. Love means you are most concerned about giving God the most glory and putting Him above everything else. If we really loved people we wouldn't be so concerned about being their friends as about saving them from eternity in hell. The concern shouldn't be how many people are in the seats Sunday morning. Salvation is much more than raising your hand and repeating a prayer. The reason the majority of Americans claim to be Christian and still live the same life they did prior to their decision to receive Jesus is simple, they never really received Jesus in the first place, there was no heart transformation. At best we hand people a set of rules and regulations, another incomplete religion to waste our lives on.
We must refuse to present anything less than the whole truth. We assume that people won't come, people won't get saved if we say anything too offensive, if we preach the real complete Gospel. In some aspects that is true, some people would leave; the people who would leave don't have transformed Christ serving lives in the first place and we are doing them no favors by allowing them to sit in a state of false security. The overall numbers in our churches will dramatically increase as the Gospel goes forth in its entirety, this is why Christianity is so stagnant in America. America is too comfortable already, we don't even know what we are lacking, we have so much materialistically we don't know what else to seek after anymore. American's are looking for something more, they are looking for God, they are looking for Jesus, they just can't seem to find Him because He is being misrepresented or unrepresented. Without the entire gospel Jesus just becomes a good man and teacher at best; without the full gospel He cannot be God; without the full gospel He loses all of His power to people. We must give God back His gospel, we must cease the corruption of it, we must love people in truth. Let God be God and let man be man. Let God make the decision what people can and can't handle to hear, trust him to open their ears and soften their hearts, trust God to love people better than we could even imagine, just like He has done for each one of us. When we do this we will see growth in the church again, we will see transformation of hearts and minds, cities and states, and entire nations.

So let's do it! Let's really preach the Gospel again!
LOVE GOD LOVE PEOPLE LOVE TRUTH!