Fruit Testers and Pew Pastors

Praise the Lord! I pray everyone is experiencing the blessings of God. I feel truly blessed today because Sunday I was able to go to church for the first time in three months. It was my pastors fourth anniversary as pastor of our church.(First church of Christ holiness USA) It was wonderful to fellowship again with my brothers and sisters in Christ. At one point I did experience some discomfort in my hips due to those old wooden church pews but I prayed and God gave me some relief.
The church was packed and the outpouring of love I received really blessed me. I was finally back home, fellowshipping with the saints of God. The word of God says in Hebrews 10:24+25 
²⁴And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works:

²⁵Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

You see that is our Job, to exhort each other to higher heights in the Lord. Our Job is to edify and build one another up, not tear down what God is trying to build up in each of us. In these last and evil days the enemy is pulling out all stops when it comes to attacking the Saints of God. When we come to church we need to be recharged, re motivated and reconditioned to face the world and the prince of this world for another week. The church is a type of filling station, we empty our tanks pouring out during the week and then we go to church on Sundays to refill our spiritual tanks for the next weeks battles.

Unfortunately there are those in the body of Christ who are not there to build you up but seek to tear you down, to hinder God's work and God's people. They have appointed themselves the churches official fruit testers. They come in many ways some smiling in your face bringing you gossip and backbiting stories to see if you will fall in with them and their crowd. Others test you by spreading falsehoods about you and your character trying to provoke you into retaliating and sinning against God. They have little cliques and their petty jealousies and lack of true concern spread like poison quenching the spirit of God.

Then there are the pew pastors who try to run the church and challenge the Pastors authority from their seats in the pews, Gods word says in Romans 13:1+2

¹Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.

²Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.

Every time we challenge the man of God and try to undermine him we are undermining Gods plan. If God is a sovereign God meaning He is in control of everything then it is He who ordained your pastor to be there according to His purpose not ours. A lot of Churches today are run by trustee boards and panels and not God or the man of God whom God sent. These pew pastors want to control even the appointments made by the man of God, they would give out positions in the church based on popularity and not by the calling on their lives. I thank God for my pastor who is led by the spirit of God and not some trustee board, It is our jobs to make new comers feel loved not isolated and not caught up in a power struggle between the Pastor and the "pew pastors"who usually end up splitting the church.  Brothers and sisters let's not forget why we go to church in the first place and let God handle His buisiness.                   God bless you all.

                                     Brother Darrell, A watchman