Glamor Shot or True Snapshot?

All my life I have dealt with this same splinter in my mind. From the days of my youth it seemed there was a real question that possessed me after being raised in Church in the South, the Bible Belt. In my youth and early days of dealing with the nagging agony of this splinter, the question--As the church, can we really be what we read on the pages of the Bible (especially the Church we see in Acts 19 concerning the Ephesian church) or is this just a glamor shot? You know, one of those photographs where someone used to go to one of these mall shops and get all 'glamored' up and get their picture made. I once was in a church member's house who had this done...it was a woman. She was telling me about the experience and I looked at the picture. It looked nothing like her and I blurted out, "That's you!"

You see it was her, but it wasn't the real person that the people around her knew her to be. Too often, I am afraid the world looks at the church matrix today in its made up forms and and it is so pale in comparison to the Church as seen in the Bible and the world concludes that all this life is just a 'glamor shot' and not really a force to know and truly live out.

But I think this is beginning to change and many are being called out by God from the church matrix just like Neo in the movie. People are truly wrestling through a great deal of 'holy discontent' that is really a calling from Father God to step into fresh waters related to His activity in birthing the 'real deal' in our modern society. He is taking back his true Church and as a friend of mine use to say long before Barna's book Revolution...it is going to be a revolution and its going to get ugly and bloody before its over with. But in its climax it will be the picture of Jesus and the Kingdom that will be used to bring so many fatherless hearts home where they belong...to the end of that long road home where the Father is waiting on the front porch just waiting to run and meet each son and daughter who take that journey to his house!