My younger brother has been in town this week, so I’ve spent a lot of time with him whenever I was not at work. Family is like that. You may not have seen them for a number of years but you just pick back up where you left off when you last saw them.

The family of God is hopefully the same. Hopefully you attend a church where everyone is welcoming and friendly and it feels like coming home. Because that’s what it is supposed to be like. As Jesus said: people will know that we are his followers if we have love for one another.

However, this is sadly, too often, not the case. I recall one time, many years ago when I struck up a conversation with a woman on a train. We soon got onto the topic of Christianity (I think it was in my days of evangelistic zeal) and she shared that she attended church. I can recall her telling me how she found her weeks very chaotic and stressful. She said that everything was tumultuous, but then she went to church and it was like walking into a haven.

How wonderful. That’s exactly what it’s supposed to be like.

Yet, for me at the time, this was not my experience. So when the woman said that everything in her life was terrible until she stepped into church, I sat there and thought “OK, I’m the complete reverse of that.”

Because sometimes that’s the way things are at church.

Whilst Jesus painted a beautiful picture of what His people should be like, the book of James gives a reality check on what can happen instead – fights, quarrels, killing, coveting and selfish, hedonistic motivation.

And this is God’s church! This is not how it should be. For, this is practical atheism. Anyone can claim to know God but all trees are judged by their fruit.

Words are cheap. Obedience is priceless.

And obedience is what God seeks. Not lip service.

As the apostle, Peter wrote:

Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God…Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation,now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.

This is what church should look like. Lives changed when people are purified by Christ and begin to obey Him.

Hypocrisy and lies have no place in God’s house. As it says in 1 John:

Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sisteris still in the darkness… anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. 

What then do we say in all this?

We remember who God is and how much He loves His church – even more than us! And we remember that he can turn things around in an instant. And we remain attentive to what he is already doing…

…because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.

Yours watching the sunrise,

Alison