A Worthful Church

“Ye sent unto John, and he bore witness unto the truth” (John 5:33).

The duty and delight of every Christian is to bear witness to the truth. Our behavior and our beliefs are to be saturated by the Spirit of God. When we are living by God’s Word in the keeping, drawing power of God, then we are bearing witness to God’s Son who lives! We choose to flesh out what has been worked in by dependence upon God’s Spirit.

John bore witness to Christ. He bore testimony to the Son of God. There can be no shining if there is no burning. John burned for Christ and was passionate about the Spirit’s work in his own life. The flesh was burned away and the Spirit of God burned within.

A.W. Tozer said, “If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.”

Churches are only as powerful as their dependence upon the Holy Spirit. We can say that any man who is bored with church work and worship is not ready for Heaven. People of God are renewed daily by the inward pressure of the Spirit of God who leads. He does not drive. The external situation or climate dictates to the leader of a family, a Sunday School class, a work place, or a church, that God desires to move in! And to take over! And To change it! This is a man/woman who lives in God.

 

 

 

 

 

Similar Posts

  • Standing on the Promises

     

    “And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Why should the work cease, while I leave it, and come down to you?”  —Nehemiah 6:3

         Have you heard the music boxes that plays music after it is wound up? There is one box that plays that old song “Standing on the Promises.” When it is wound up to full strength it chimes with vibrant enthusiasm. The song and sounds are beautiful.

        After a while the music box begins to wind down. It can stop even before the tune is finished. Instead of playing the familiar song all the way through, it no longer is standing on the promises; it is now sitting on the premises! So many christians mistake the one for the other! Standing for sitting

         It is possible to stand on the promises in such a routine manner that we become so orthodox in our teaching, living, and behaving that we really are sitting on the premises. No longer resting in the promises and living day by day in the strength of God’s Word and prayer, we slow down and finally stop. I don’t want to run down in the middle of the song or in the middle of life. I want to stand on the promises of Christ my Lord. What about you?

  • Not I, But Christ

    “…for by works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Galatians 2:16c).

    “…for in thy sight shall no man living be justified” (Psalm 143:2).

    Our Lord suffered in His death for our disobedience. In His life His obedience to the law was perfect. Since the Law was perfect (revealing the heart and mind of God), it says that any who break it is condemned to death. Jesus Christ is and was the only One who ever obeyed all points of the law perfectly and obediently. All that is required of us to be justified, therefore, is to acknowledge our sin and helplessness. We are to repent of our life of self-assertion and self-righteousness, and to put our whole trust and confidence in the finished work of Christ to save us.

    Faith in Jesus Christ is more than intellectual consent only, but personal commitment. We believe “into” Christ Jesus. It is through faith we are justified. The law kills but faith in Christ makes alive. “For it is through the law I die to the law, so that I might live to God” (Gal. 2:19). The law slays but Christ saves. So we have no good works we can do to earn justification. Because the works we do, under the law, only condemn us to death; while faith in Christ bypasses the law of condemnation for us but trusts in Christ who died according to the law for us, who did not bypass the law but died our death’s penalty.

    Salvation is an act of committal, not just assenting to the fact that Jesus Christ lived and died, but running to Him for refuge and calling unto Him for His mercy. Justification is not only a legal fact when we are saved in Christ, whereby we are declared righteous by a holy God; it is also a transforming experience through a living identification with Christ.  By union with Christ we are radically transformed; we can no longer go back to our old life, for in Christ we are “a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). We are saved by the faith of Christ: past, present, and future.

  • When Old Faithful Isn’t

    There was a bothersome headline a while back from the USA Today, “Old Faithful Gets Fickle.” What? The famous geyser in Yellowstone National Park was not as faithful as it once was. The 140 foot tower of steam erupted faithfully about every 66 minutes, but something was not right as the report continued.
    The eruption could be predicted for 12:11 p.m. But it didn’t occur until 12:18 p.m. The one predicted for 2:46 p.m. jumped the gun at 2:38 p.m. The problem was that underground shifts by minor earthquakes occurred, plus vandalism by visitors. The “Tommy Tourists” would come by and throw things into the geyser’s hole, from chicken bones to underwear. What?
    Most of us have had something or someone that was kind of our “Old Faithful”, but they became “Old Unpredictable.” It might have been a job that you used to have and depended upon for a long time. Or it could have been a mate that took off and left you holding air and nothing but hopelessness. Maybe it was your parents’ marriage that hurt you deeply that caused a rift for your growing up days.
    Maybe your church or your spiritual leaders have let you down and they were once your “Old Faithful.” It hurts when an “Old Faithful” isn’t anymore. It leaves us disoriented, and afraid, and even unsure of ourselves or unsure of others. Our future can seem so drear and so uncertain. But don’t let it bring you down. While others let you down, you don’t have to go down.
    Remember this for today. Jeremiah says, “I remember my afflictions and wandering, the bitterness and the gall, I well remember them and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail, they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for Him” (Lam. 3:19).

  • Don’t Falter

    “But we hoped that it had been he who should have redeemed Israel; and, besides all this, today is the third day since these things were done” (Luke 24:21).

    A.B. Bruce said, “If crosses would leave us alone, we would leave them alone, too.” The Lord Jesus took up His cross and followed completely the Father’s will. It was the will of the Father for His Son to die upon the very tree that He had planted years before.

    Why do we find it hard to believe that taking up our cross and following Jesus is not the way for us? Why do we not believe that as we die daily to the world and our desires that it is best? We are men just like the ones on the road to Emmaus who did not believe in the resurrection power of Christ.

    We can be so slow of heart and foolish not to believe all that the Scripture gives to us. When we follow our own desires and refuse the intuitive desire of God in us we refuse His life. Hope in the Redeemer of Israel and believe that the third day is the power of resurrection in you. Don’t disregard your cross for today. Report to God ready for His will as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

  • On the Shoulders of Others

    “And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him [Moses] in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.”  (Exodus 3:2).

    John Newton, Anglican Pastor from the 1700s who gave us “Amazing Grace”, had a favorite image in the Bible. It was the unconsumed burning bush which Moses saw and from the bush heard the voice of God. To Newton, the bush was a metaphor for Christians who undergo severe suffering.

    He wrote, “Some Christians are called to endure a disproportionate amount of suffering. Such Christians are a spectacle of grace to the church, like flaming bushes unconsumed,  and cause us to ask, like Moses, ‘Why is this bush not burned?’ The strength and stability of these believers can be explained only by the miracle of God’s sustaining grace.”

    There are stalwart saints, like John Newton, William Law, Bishop J.C. Ryle, Elisabeth Elliot, Joni Eareckson Tada, Stephen Davey,  and more who have battled but not burned. Their tough take on suffering has helped deepen my walk with Christ and given me something rich to pass on to others. A spectacle of grace for others to see Jesus in us!

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Time to Leave

    “And it was told Laban on the third day that Jacob was fled” (Genesis 31:22).

    Jacob’s father-in-law was a full-length mirrored-image of Jacob himself. Laban was a deceiver, a conniver, a cheat and he worshipped at the image of other gods (Genesis 31:10). Jacob was a deceiver, a conniver, a cheat, and he worshipped the true and living God, but he did not see himself as God saw him. So the Lord gave him a reality check for several years. Sometimes it takes a long time for people to get rid of themselves.

    Do we realize that God places within our person those to whom we work with, talk to, come into contact with, who come alongside of us to make us miserable. Why? It could be to reveal to us what we are really like. When their glaring faults are detestable and obvious to us we can be sure that we have also have a flawed character trait that we are blind to. Our assessment of them is really God’s assessment of us.

    We become our biggest enemies. Even if we did not have the sinister minister of deceit, Satan, in the world, the flesh we have will continue to deceive, corrupt, and judge. So how does God get this out of us? He places a Laban before us to reveal and causes us to feel the burn of what we are like to others.

    After the third day Laban came for Jacob. But God revealed to Jacob it was time to leave and go home to the house of God where he first met the Lord. Laban never learned what it meant to bow before the God of Jacob. Laban never changed.

    Jacob bowed at the feet of the God and he learned to allow God to surgically remove the blemishes, the faults, and the blindness of his own life. His crookedness, maneuvering, judgmental flaws were washed away over time and God removed much of what was holding him back.

    Thank God for the third day. One day God will take away all that holds us back from being what He is like. One day we will awaken into His likeness.