When you walk into church on a Sunday morning, who do you see around you?  What are those people like?  Are they people who have it all together?  Do they struggle?  Do they doubt?  What do you think and feel?

I know that walking through the front doors of a church can be incredibly overwhelming for some people.  Some people are afraid that if they come to church their skin is going to burn from the holy light that is in that space like some sort of exorcist movie.  They believe that they have done so many horrible things that they won’t ever be accepted in a place like this.  Maybe that is how you feel, or used to feel.  Interestingly enough, the way that we view others affects the way that we engage with others.

It comes down to this?  Do you see church as a collection of saints, or a collection of sinners?

One of the primary reasons that people don’t spend more time engaging in confession and accountability is because they are afraid of being judged by you and me.  Too often we think that the church is a collection of saints and that we are the one sinner that slipped into that community.  That couldn’t be further from the truth.  In fact, we are all sinners, we are all people who at one point in time or another were separated from God.  Too often we believe the lie that I can never measure up, or I’ll never change.  We loose hope and we start to just throw in the towel.

Don’t buy the lie.

That’s the amazing thing about Jesus.  Anyone can come to Him and find that there is still hope no matter how dark their world may seem.  It is because of Jesus’ death on the cross that each one of us with our bruises, scars, and warts can come before God and be seen as beautiful and clean by Him.

The church is not filled with better people, just people who are better off because of it.

So what do you think?  In an honest moment here, do you lean more on the side of seeing people as saints, or sinners?  Let’s take a poll.

~Peter

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