What if...?

What if people loved God as much as they love their significant other? Recently I've been looking at lot of people's myspaces. I've been overwhelmed with the number of people's names or motto's or whatever that say something about their girlfriend or boyfriend. They're so open about how much they love these people but if you see them ask them they may have only been with that person for a very short time. I usually leave amazed with these people with how much they will talk about those people, and how important they are to their lives. Normally this would be OK, except when you talk to them about God. They'll go on about how God's first in their lives, but they're lying. They're lying because God can't be first and anything else be first.
So the original question begins again: What what if people loved God as much as they do their significant others? Would we link up myspace and see people's names talking about God? Would we go to their sites and it be a monument to the living God? Would we have churches, communities, countries, and governments that see through the lens of Christ?
The problem is that this will never happen. Most people will never be so devoted to Christ that God's will is more important than anything that happens around them. Jesus said that people will hate us because they hated Him first. Makes you wonder why they don't hate us. Maybe it's because we don't love God enough for others to know it. But...what if...? Jtw

What is a Church?

I've recently been plagued with the thought "what is a church?" I know from the Bible that God's people are in fact the church. This is awesome and I wish more people knew that. As I sit here reading through the book of Acts I see how the early church and it's people did things. I see how they showed people love, this is how people knew they were believers. I see how they worshipped God without regard for what people thought of them, an element lost in most churches I've been to. I also see people who are servants, who see each of the spiritual gifts as equal and each person having their own part in the church community. This leaves me disillusioned. The churches that I've been in recently have a whole different philosophy. It seems as if they only care for those that care for them, they never truly worship because of their neighbor, and the pastor is put up so high on a pedestal that his word is god to those around him. How did we take the wonderful, loving, caring thing that God created called church and make it into this inwardly focused deity. I pray that God sends me a church where they people work as a team to worship God regardless of where they are, a place where the pastor is just a servant using his gifts to God's glory, and a place that is so outwardly and upwardly focused that everyone will know them by their love. That's what God called us to! How have we come so far? What is a church? I pray each day to learn what that is. Jtw