But our greatest crisis goes deeper. It is a spiritual crisis, and because it is a spiritual crisis, it is a moral crisis. The light within us has become dark (see Matt. 6:23) and the salt has lost its saltiness (see Matt. 5:13). The Church of Jesus, which is called to be the spiritual lamp and the moral preservative of society, has fallen asleep. The awakening must begin with us.

This is not to minimize the many acute problems we face in our country today. Abortion on demand still takes more than a million lives a year. The family unit continues to erode. Gay activism continues to challenge our biblical values and freedoms. Human trafficking, gang violence, teen drug use, and a host of other social ills stare us in the face. But our problem is not so much the presence of darkness as it is the absence of light. The finger must first be pointed at us.

You see, it is to be expected that sinful people do sinful things and that worldly people do worldly things. But it is unexpected when those called to be righteous live just like the world, when the sins of the society become the sins of the church, when it is the world that changes the church rather than the church that changes the world. Can anyone really dispute that for the last generation this is exactly what has happened?

It was Dr. Martin Luther King who noted that, "The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool." This certainly cuts to the core of the never-ending debate about the meaning of the separation of church and state. But King also issued this warning: "If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority."

What an indictment of the American church today. Having lost our prophetic zeal--our consciousness of God, our conviction of sin, our brokenness for the lost, our courage to go against the grain and challenge the status quo, our moral imperative--we have become, in all too many cases, an irrelevant social club. In fact, it would not be that far out of line for many of our religious assemblies to change their marquees to read, "Irrelevant Social Club: Meets Sunday Mornings and Wednesday Nights."

Source: Charisma News