Ron Hutchcraft Ministries - Where's the Beef? (Part 1 of 3)

One of my favorite commercials of all time is the old Wendy's restaurant commercial. As an elderly lady receives her order in the drive-through at a competing restaurant, she looks at the burger and asks with disgust and sarcasm, "Where's the beef?" In today's world, many people are still asking "Where's the beef?" Except they're asking it in a little different way. They are asking "Where's the evidence?" And they aren't referring to a burger. They're referring to the Church.

If God is real and Christ is who He claimed to be, then why is there seemingly no difference between the Church and the world today? While the Church claims to have religious "beliefs," the world sees what the Church truly believes when they look at our lives. And over all, the results have not been impressive.

Today's lost people are not the only ones who are asking the question "Where's the evidence?" regarding the Church. Many believers are asking the same thing about other "professing believers" who have displayed no apparent fruit of God living in them. Can a person truly have a personal relationship with Jesus yet have no life change? And what are we to do about it if this describes those we love and care about? Does God have a role for us to play as true Christ-followers in the lives of people who think they belong to Jesus but show no fruit?

Before we go further let me clearly state that we are ultimately not the ones to determine whether someone is saved or lost. That's God's job. But the Scripture is also clear that we will know people by their fruit (Matthew 7:16 ). So we can loosely categorize the people I am referring to as the "religious lost." It's the people who have been exposed to the Gospel countless times but never changed by it. They know all the right words to use at church, all the right clothing to wear to a church service, and they are hoping that "going to church" can help them "do better."

It's the people in our churches who honestly believe they are going to heaven, not based on what Jesus did for them, but based on how much better they can be as a person, and how much better they think they are than the person across the aisle from them. While many of these are genuinely good people, the Gospel has been around them but never in them.

The religious lost also have a tendency to make the church building or their church traditions the priority in worship. But God never intended for the local church building or denominational traditions to be worshipped in the place of His Son. The sad thing is that you'd never know it by watching what people will fight over. In our next blog we will discuss ways to reach the religious lost and you might be surprised by what you find. In the meantime, here are a few questions for consideration:

Where is the real focus of your worship? Is it primarily on your personal walk with Jesus or on your church, denomination, or religious traditions? Is religion about Jesus and activity for Jesus taking the place of Jesus in your heart?