Heartbroken

Things at church are kinda depressing right now. A leader had to step down because of lifestyle issues, and several families have left for other various reasons. I have just been really heart broken by how the church has no idea how to deal with sin. So people hide it and fall into bigger pits. I am just overwhelming heartbroken by the lack of closeness and truly seeing the church as family today in the American church (well most of them). We dont know how to communicate when we are hurt or upset, so we just dont communicate at all. We run when we sin because we dont want to be found out. We are terrified to let people know the "real" us. We refuse to call out a sister or brother who is sinning, because we don't want to upset them, or worse yet, we don't want them to throw our sin back in our face.

I believe the Lord can change us. I believe He can "fix" these issues in the church today, but only if we are praying for it. Recently I have realized how little I pray for my church family as a whole. I may pray for specific requests they have, but I have not been praying for their everyday lives, their thoughts and motives.

As I mentioned here, our pastor preached a three week series on "Kingdom Prayer" based on Luke 11 recently. A big thing he stressed was praying not only for yourself, but for your church family also. Everything I pray for me should be a relevant need and prayer for my brothers and sisters in Christ. They need relief from temptation, power to live from the Spirit and not our flesh, to share the gospel boldly, etc. So this is a habit I want to develop, that this would be second nature for me.

No real point with this post, just thinking "out loud" (or "out type" I guess?). Pray for my church and me today if you get a chance. We need love and grace and communication skills and a deep deep love for Christ.