Will We Be: A Self-Sufficient Church or A Desperate-For-God Church?

Lately I've been thinking and writing on materialism in the church and among Christians today. Materialism, as we have seen, pulls the full allegiance of our heart away from the Lord and attaches it instead to the temporary things of this world. Thus, we become self-centered, self-focused, self-fulfilled rather than centered on God, focused on God, and fulfilled in God. Such a centeredness on self, as I have experienced, reduces or eliminates our feeling hunger for God. We are self-sufficient and we tragically underestimate our desperate need for Him. We get busy - He gets left out. This ailment then translates into our churches. The church is darkly effected when its people are not desperate for the help, the guidance, the power, and the Word of God. We will cling to man-made ideals and man-made strategies rather than discovering the power and purpose that only God can deliver.


I'd like to share one more quote from the book I've mentioned lately - Radical - that touches on this concept: 


"We Christians.....have convinced ourselves that if we can just position our resources and organize our strategies....we can accomplish anything we set our minds to. But what is strangely lacking in the picture of performances, personalities, programs, and professionals is desperation for the power of God. God's power is at best an add-on to our strategies and good deeds.  I am frightened by the reality that the church I lead can carry on most of our activities smoothly, efficiently, even successfully - never realizing that the Holy Spirit of God is virtually absent from the picture. We can so easily deceive ourselves, mistaking the presence of physical bodies in a crowd for the existence of spiritual life in a community.... I long to be part of a scene where we refuse to operate in a mind-set dominated by an American dream that depends on what we can achieve with our own abilities. A scene where we no longer settle for what we can do in our own power. A scene where the church radically trusts in God's great power to provide unlikely people with unlimited, unforeseen, uninhibited resources to make his name known as great. I want to be part of that dream!.... It doesn't matter how many resources the church has. The church I lead could have all the man-made resources that one could imagine,  but apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, such a church will do nothing of significance for the glory of God....His power is so superior to ours. Why do we not desperately seek it?"