The Church: Staying in the First Grade
...forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.— Philippians 3:13,14
There are Christians who grow up and have no relish for anything spiritually advanced. They're preoccupied with their first lessons. The average church is a school with only one grade and that is the first one. These Christians never expect to get beyond that and they don't want to hear a man very long who wants to take them beyond that. If their pastor insists they do their homework and get ready for the next grade, they begin to pray that the Lord will call "our dear brother" somewhere else. The more they hate him the more they bear down on the words "our dear brother." All he's trying to do is prepare them for another grade, but that church is dedicated to the first grade, and the first grade is where it's going to remain.
Paul said some of them went up into the second grade and gave it up, and said, "it's too hard here," and they went back to the first.
"How long have you been in the first grade, Junior?"
"Twelve years."...
Paul said, "Forgetting what is behind...I press on toward the goal" ( Philippians 3:13b-14a). There was a man not satisfied with the first grade. Success and the Christian, 4,5.
"Father, I do pray that our church might not get stuck in the first grade. Some of the lessons in the upper grades are pretty hard, Lord, but help us not to shrink from the hard lessons that bring us to spiritual maturity. Amen."
|
|
The Church: Commotion, Not Devotion
...and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire a still small voice.—1 Kings 19:12 "The accent in the Church today," says Leonard Ravenhill, the English evangelist, "is not on devotion, but on commotion." Religious extroversion has been carried to such an extreme in evangelical circles that hardly anyone has the desire, to say nothing of the courage, to question the soundness of it. Externalism has taken over. God now speaks by the wind and the earthquake only; the still small voice can be heard no more. The whole religious machine has become a noisemaker. The adolescent taste which loves the loud horn and the thundering exhaust has gotten into the activities of modern Christians. The old question, "What is the chief end of man?" is now answered, "To dash about the world and add to the din thereof."... We must begin the needed reform by challenging the spiritual validity of externalism. What a man is must be shown to be more important than what he does. While the moral quality of any act is imparted by the condition of the heart, there may be a world of religious activity which arises not from within but from without and which would seem to have little or no moral content. Such religious conduct is imitative or reflex. It stems from the current cult of commotion and possesses no sound inner life. The Root of the Righteous, 84,85. "Lord, if this was true in Ravenhill's and Tozer's day, how much more true today! Quiet my heart today, in the midst of the rush and din of church busyness, that I might be able to hear the 'still small voice.' How desperately we need to hear it, but how seldom we're able to listen. Amen." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posts
.jpg?x-oss-process=image/auto-orient,1/quality,q_70/resize,m_mfit,w_350,h_350/format,webp)
No comments:
Post a Comment