Congregations can be a false cistern. Also the church event itself. As I travel around and I’m different churches, and sometimes really big churches, and I see the preparation these people make for Sunday. I’m not talking about several hours of prayer. I’m talking about lights, music, greeters, chairs have to be a certain way, screens have to be a certain way, everything is ready, everything is choreographed, everything is done. It is like being in Madison Square Gardens!
And people come in and they get wrapped up in the event. And their strength comes from the event. That is wrong! It must come from Christ. That is why oftentimes you see believers who have so much of God who are rotting away in prison with absolutely nothing but Jesus Christ. One saint who spent many many years in an eastern European prison, they kept him in there winters and summers, no heat, no air conditioning, freezing to death in the snow, burning up in the summers, kept him in there often times without clothes, wouldn’t let him even sleep in a normal bed, they made him sleep on the floor because they said he was a dog. Someone asked him a question: “What was it like to be there for so many years?” He said: “A thirteen-year honeymoon with Jesus Christ.” You see that? Now, we ought to be a congregation that is loving. Biblically loving. We are to adorn the Gospel with our lives. But people should not be coming to this church because of the church. Or the event. But because of Jesus Christ.
