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It is a very sad thing to enter into a beautiful cathedral and see just a few nuns and pensioners in the pews during a service. Throughout Europe churches are drawing such small congregations that one could easily start to believe that Christianity is dying out. In America, the congregations of many of our mainstream churches are graying and dying. Clergy in Australia are bemoaning that the national religion is sports, not Christianity. So, it would be easy to look at that and suppose that Christianity is dying out, aging and falling apart.

Nothing could be further from the reality. Missions in Africa and China, under the most intense persecution, are flourishing. Hostile Muslims threaten the disenfranchised Christian minorities of Indonesia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Egypt. And the church is thriving. More Christians have been martyred in the 20th century than in all the previous centuries combined. And the church grows.

You see, Christianity thrives under persecution. Christ told his disciples to be prepared for persecution and to welcome it because it was a sign of their being salt in the earth. The fact that Christianity in Europe, North America and Australia are no longer under intense persecution means that the church here, the body of believers, has mostly grown spiritually fat, lazy and complacent. And that is a recipe for spiritual malaise.

Examine the book of Revelation. In it, Jesus warns the church of Laodicea that they have become complacent and are close to disappearing from the face of the earth. The Laodiceans thought that everything was okay because they had wealth and felt secure, but that just meant that they weren't watching out for their spiritual health. He warns the church of Sardis that they have gotten sleepy and forgotten what they are about, and that means that they will not be prepared.

When Jesus warns these churches, it sure sounds like he is warning Christians today of the dangers of complacency. Where the church meets resistance in society, it grows. Where the church feels secure in society, where it is not challenging the status quo, where it is not engaging people in evangelism, where it is not awake and alive and vital, it will shrivel.

Christianity is growing faster and more fiercely than ever before. It is the dominant force in the spiritual world. What we must see is that we are engaged in a spiritual war with the forces of evil. In that battle, we cannot rest and say, we're doing just fine, thank you very much. Instead, we need to fight for our spiritual health as if it really mattered because, for God's sake, it truly does.

Pray as if your life depended on it. Seek the truth of Scripture as if there were hidden treasures in it that would make you incredibly wealthy. Study God's word as if you were going to be tested on it tomorrow, and your salvation depended on it. Worship God as if He were in front of you, waiting.

In Psalm 2 says "Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice with trembling," don't fool yourself into thinking everything is just fine. When that Christian in Sudan takes a bullet to the head rather than deny Jesus, he's doing exactly what God said to do. He is serving the Lord in fear, and he is rejoicing with trembling. To serve God is to acquire great joy as well as to commit to a frightening challenge.

It's hard for a church to grow when it is not trying to be salt in the earth. Christians are meant to be different, to be a light on the hill. Jesus tells us that we are to be known by our love. Too often, Christians in comfortable surroundings can lull themselves to sleep. Wake up! Be salty! Read, study, worship, evangelize. Get excited about what moved you spiritually in the first place!

Learn more about this author, John Devera.
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