We took a break from our regularly scheduled student ministry programming last Friday to talk about the church in Sardis.

I told you about our Bible study on the church of Sardis a couple weeks ago. It’s still screaming in my spirit, and I try to personalize those nudges as much as possible. Day after day, though, and prayer after prayer, it’s become clear that it’s not just about me right now. So I prayed some more and decided ya, we’re gonna talk about this.

So I sat in my office reading the passage of Revelation in a few different translations, meditating on it, internalizing it, etc. And I started to wonder: How does this happen?

How does a mega-church that is the center of revival for two to three years, become completely spiritually dead in the same generation? In 50 years the church in Sardis went from the place where God was really moving, to complete lifelessness. They were still running. They were still “ministering.” They were still doing outreach, but it was all being done in the strength of their reputation and not by the Spirit of God. There were people in that church at the time that Jesus wrote, “but you are dead” who were probably leading the revival as young, crazy believers. How does that happen?

Not only did it happen in one generation, it happened in John’s generation. John was old, but still kickin’. There were probably old men in the church in Sardis who saw Jesus on the earth with their own eyes. And yet their ministry is doing nothing worthy of Jesus’ affirmation a few decades later. How does that happen?

How does it happen to us individually? We go on missions trips and see God literally restore sight to the blind, and a year later we can’t bring ourselves to invite our neighbors to church. We experience a deep move of God within us at Faith Week (or whatever event your church does), and a couple weeks later we’ve already pared back our giving. We go to an amazing conference, and six months later we’re compromising our holiness and throwing water on our own passion in ways we swore we never would just a season ago.

How does this happen? Continue Reading…