We are afraid to approach God, so we keep our distance when all the power and blessing of God is found in getting close. Jesus Christ is the gate to God’s presence and the sacrifice that gives us the right and gumption to His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. 

We tend to want to find another way to relationship with God besides sacrifice and shedding of blood. We look for a backdoor to heaven by trying to make ourselves good enough for God, hoping to find a way around the bloody, smoky altar of sacrifice. There is no other way for sinners to come into relationship with a holy God without atonement being made for their sins through the shedding of blood. The Altar was the first thing they saw. It stood in between them and the presence of God, reminding them that sin must be paid for with blood. This is the price of sin since the fall. God instituted it by making the first sacrifice in Genesis 3 to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness, and God finished it by sending Jesus to pay for sin once for all on the altar of the cross. Through belief in the gospel, we can now enter into relationship with God forever.

We think experiencing God is something reserved for the elite rather than something attainable by all people through Jesus. The gospel teaches us that because of Jesus breaking the veil of the temple, God is now attainable to all through him.

We live in darkness because we don’t seek or depend on the light that Jesus Christ can bring us. God is our source of true and pure light, and until we learn to trust in His light, we will never experience the knowledge, blessing, and healing His light brings.

We work endlessly trying to provide for our own needs because we fail to recognize God as the provider who has provided everything. God is our provider who loves us and provides for all our needs, the most important being fellowship with himself.

We don’t realize the blessing of God’s presence nor the means of how to secure it, so we live anemic, powerless, sin-filled lives when we should have power, influence, and abundance. Christ’s blood covers over our sin on the mercy seat so God’s holy presence can empower us to live in all the fullness of God’s blessings.

We tend to say “No, Lord” to the things we don’t want to do without realizing that’s it’s impossible to say “No, Lord” without hypocrisy. Either He’s Lord and we say “yes,” or we say “no” proving He’s not our Lord. God is moving and calling us into His mighty work. Christ, through his death, burial and resurrection, earned the right to be called our Lord. We must say “Yes, Lord” to him!

We tend to box in the church in our thinking and thus box in how the Lord intends to save us and those around us. We miss how He is at work. The church comes in all different shapes and sizes to spread the gospel to people of all different shapes and sizes. Christ doesn’t need a building to build his church. He just needs ready people.

We tend towards disunity because of selfishness in our hearts. It is an inevitable reality of the human race. The church itself can be the antidote to such a plague. A gospel-centered church can bring unity within itself and among a whole people.

We have lost our mission and purpose as the people of God and suffer the lack of power and significance that comes with such a failure. The church is a powerhouse built on the gospel and redeemed to make a difference in this world. When we all learn that and live it out, the gates of hell can’t stop her!