Notes

Lostologist Christine Caine
Introduction. She makes a couple jokes.
A few years ago Nick and I were on holidays in a city in Italy and we went to this humongous Cathedral, large large cathedral which in it's hayday this cathedral would have seated about five thousand people. Massive section The cathedral itself just architecturally was just breathtaking. There were wonderful pieces of art work just stunning pieces of art, literally priceless, the cathedral itself architecturally was just breathtaking.

I remember we had to pay five euros and there were people there because it had become a tourist attraction and people had to pay uh five euros to go up to the top of the steeple and at the top of the roof of the church this was now the number one tourist attraction in the city and this was the best view overlooking the whole city. And it was written down in all the tourist documents that this was the place you could go to, to get the best view of this city in Italy. And i remember walking around and I was quite gobsmacked for lack of a better word and I went up to the top and i started crying and nick said to me what's wrong and I said look at all these people with their cameras on snapping photos of the city just walking around, talking, not even thinking about the fact that somebody built this building, there would have been some sort of building fund I imagine, people would have invested their resources. there were people that invested of their time. And i said to Nick i guarantee you the people who were investing in this building were not sowing into something that would be the city's top tourist attraction a couple of hundred years form then. They were sowing into a place people would be saved, people would be delivered, people would be healed, people would be married, people would be baptized, people would be set free, that's what they were giving. This is very sobering because how do we know that this in it's hayday that seated five thousand people, stunning architecture, stunning artwork/ You know it's not different from our church back in Sydney we have won all the top architecturAL awards for our building, we have beautiful creativity, music that goes all around the world, people who line up to get into our services, this is what it would have been like, how do I know two hundred years from now people won't be lining up for a whole different purpose. They will be coming to Sydney to see this fantastic piece of architecture and look at a tourist attraction. Wow, Isn't that the place that once had music that went all around the world, isn't that the place that once had a revival. Let's pay five dollars to go in and see what God once did. Let's see what once happened because all of those wonderful cathedrals are places where there were once moves of God. We aren't the first to write music hymns have existed throughout the ages, there are buidlings that were full of people praising God
And i felt the Holy Spirit say to me on the top of that building.
Christine this is what happens when my church stops being the church and when my church starts doing church. When we replace being missional people on mission from god and we replace it with doing whatever our liturgical style might be and even our spirited filled worshippers we have our own. I come from a hosue just like this and that is our danger I believe, I travel the world and do so much work in Europe and we see what I would call a passion deficiency that hits the church. When we are no longer passionate about what God is passionate for and just in case you are wondering about what God is passionate for it is not for some self indulgent feeling I would have. God's passion is for people. For God so loved, guess what? THE WORLD That is why he gave Jesus. And Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. That God is obsessed with the lost.
God is passionate for the lost and the reason is that if you and I are not passionate for what God is passionate for then what will happen is we will miss what this whole deal is about. We will actually get caught up in a whole bunch of stuff that iosn't God's primary purpose and His primary passion. We ought to make Jesus' last commandment our first priority. That ought to be what we are obsessed with. When a General gives you an order you don't do anything different but you do the last thing he told you to do. Last time I checked in my Bible He hasn't told me to do anything new. But to go ye into all of the world and to make disciples. That is and ought to be the primary purpose of the church and everything else enables us to do that. Passion is the only thing that will keep the church alive and vibrant and dynamic because you do what you want for passion and you do what you have to when it comes to religious obligation. In so many places things become a boring, religious obligation and you could get caught up in this is my obligatory response, this is my obligatory this is my thing

Do you know when Mel Gibson made the movie the passion of the Christ it messed me up it messed us all up but did you notice he didn't title that movie the boring obligation of the Christ. It was called passion.

I left out the story of her husband swimming to impress her & her meeting Jim Cavezal at a restaurant.

What is my point? You do what you want out of passion. No one has to make you read your Bible. no one has to make you pray, no one has to make you tithe, no one has to make you go to church. No one has to make you stay morally pure, no one has to make you stay integrous, no one has to make you not gossip, no one has to make you not slander, no one has to make you not be indulging in lust or addiction, no one has to make you do it because you're passionate for Jesus. David didn't hide God's word in his heart out of legalism but he said thy word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. There is a passion, and out of passion your Christianity does not become a boring religious obligation it becomes a love affair with Jesus and you are re-fueled by your passion for Christ to sustain your christian life and not just DO christianity
I am not talking about being in some sort of liturgical church or some sort of dead religion but I am talking about being in churches that are alive and full of the spirit of God like yours and mine you can still be going through the motions. You can still just be doing some sort of religious obligation and lose an authentic passion for God and I can tell you when you lose an authentic passion for God it is when you just become self absorbed and self indulgent with the presence of God because it was never meant just for us God put it in us for a lost and broken world so He could move through us. God is obsessed with the world. When His church loses sight of what all this passion is for, when his church loses sight of the mission of God