By Mark Molina
I would like to share with you the comments I made at the National Day of Prayer Event in Harlingen last year:
If there was ever a time to pray for the church locally and nationally it is now.
In a recent CNN news clip the following transpired: in the middle of the clip, the man known as Al Qaeda’s crown prince, Nasir Al-Wuhayshi, appears brazenly out in the open, greeting followers in Yemen. Al-Wuhayshi, the number two leader of Al Qaeda globally and the head of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has said he wants to attack the United States. But in the video, he looks unconcerned that he could be hit by an American drone.
“This is quite an extraordinary video,” Paul Cruickshank, CNN terrorism analyst, said. The video shows Al-Wuhayshi addressing more than 100 fighters somewhere within Yemen. Cruickshank said, “The Al Qaeda leader…is taking a big risk in doing this.”
Al-Wuhayshi doesn’t mince words about his mission. Addressing the group, he makes it clear that he’s going after the United States. He says, “We must eliminate the cross. The bearer of the cross is America!”
The bearer of the cross is the Church! It is supposed to be the church!
However, we do not have to worry about Al Qaeda eliminating the cross in America, the church in America has and is doing a good job of that all by itself. We have been and continue to exchange the message of the cross for the message of prosperity. We have been and continue to sacrifice the conviction of the cross for the convenience of cultural Christianity. We have been and continue to refuse to pick up our cross and bear it, choosing instead to carry the socially acceptable gospel of popularity.
It is the church – the church in America – that is eliminating the cross from the message of Christ.
It is the message of the cross that leads to repentance, salvation, redemption and sanctification. It is the message of the cross that leads us to the eternal truth and revelation that we are sinners in need of saving grace. It is the message told on the cross of how Jesus died for the sins of the world that we might have everlasting and eternal life.
“And this is eternal life: [it means] to know (to perceive, recognize, become acquainted with, and understand) You, the only true and real God, and [likewise] to know Him, Jesus [as the] Christ (the Anointed One, the Messiah), Whom You have sent.” (John 17:3 AMP)
When we eliminate the cross we eliminate the power and testimony of Christ.
It is not Al Qaeda we have to fear as the one to eliminate the bearer of the cross. It is the mindset of the church in America that we should be concerned about.
Texas has the largest prison population in the United States. The United States has the largest prison population in the world. Why? Because the church has shirked its responsibility to bear the cross.
If there was ever a time to pray for the church in America, locally and nationally it is now.
Jesus prayed in his priestly prayer in John chapter 17: “I have given to them the glory and honor which You have given Me, that they may be one [even] as We are one: I in them and You in Me, in order that they may become one and perfectly united, that the world may know and [definitely] recognize that You sent Me and that You have loved them [even] as You have loved Me.” (John 17:22, 23 AMP)
Our country is bowing to every form of cultural voice that sounds because the church is bowing to every cultural wind that blows! “But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14 NKJV)
To what are you crucified? Are you bearing your cross?
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