I have observed different things that have been happening around me for years now, even before I took that extra step into Salvation and getting to know Christ at a personal level.

I have noticed that unfortunately, the closer we get to God, the more we seem to think we now know Him perfectly and can therefore treat Him like a buddy, bend His rules the way we want, and put others down. I have seen it not only in Pentecostal churches, but in other churches as well.
There is a zeal we initially possess when we first get to know Him, and then somewhere along the way we not only discard Him by the roadside, but also trample all over Him and take over His place. How else can you explain the increasing judgmental spirit, self-righteousness and compromise with sin in the church today?

My friend – a virgin – was telling me how she has started getting regular attacks of doubt over her chastity and whether it even pleases God. Christians she holds in high esteem, pastors and others are increasingly compromising about sex before marriage that sometimes she feels she is the one on the wrong side of God’s ‘things’. Like, she is the only one who missed a certain verse in the Bible which says, ‘but should God’s promise delay, go ahead and knock yourself out with some sex in the meantime’.
I felt really sad about that.

Last year at a lunch-hour fellowship, one pastor testified that he “thanks God” that his divorce is in final stages and that God has already given him another woman with whom they even have a baby girl! “As soon as the divorce is final, we shall have the wedding too,” he said. From the pulpit! My hair almost flew off my scalp. My friend’s doubts flooded me too: Am I the stupid one here?

But I think it is a case of thinking we know God too well, that we get to a point where we believe we know how He would react to situations, what He can and cannot do, whom He loves and whom He doesn’t love, what is damnable sin and what is acceptable sin.
Pastor Wilson Bugembe sang a song I like, in which he asks God to take him back to that initial place where he experienced the first love. That place where we make huge vows to God and shed tears of pure love for God.

 Then God blesses us, elevates us from the dust and turns us into princes, and then we force Him into the backseat in everything.
We start taking decisions and advising others out of experience and our own strength, because we think that is what God would advise anyway under the circumstances! No wonder we even think we can now manipulate God through evil or witchcraft prayers.

What happened to the Holy Spirit if we really claim to be Christians? When did we become the alpha and omega? When did we become the judges and solvers of mankind’s sinful nature? When did God appoint us to do His work of cleaning up the Church? So where does that leave the Spirit of God and intercession?
I think we need to repent. All of us. We are rapidly skidding off the tracks.

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