Real Valor

Authenticity is a product of integrity. Integrity is defined as “wholeness, completeness, soundness.” A person with integrity is not divided (that’s duplicity) or devious (that’s deception) or merely pretending (that’s hypocrisy). People with integrity have nothing to hide nor anything to fear. Their lives are transparent. Though, and it is very unfortunate, they are also somewhat rare.

There is a shortage and a crisis of integrity today. The church has blemished itself with integrity issues. The church is more like a defeated army, naked before our enemies, and unable to fight back because they have made a frightening discovery: the church is lacking in integrity.

Warren Wiersbe said, “For nineteen centuries, the church has been telling the world to admit its sins, repent, and believe the gospel. Today, in the twilight of the twentieth century, the world is telling the church to face up to her sins, repent, and start being the true church of that gospel.”  Wiersbe said this back in the early 1990s.

We boast that we are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, but perhaps the gospel of Christ is ashamed of us. It seems as if ministry and life does not match our message and lips. The salt has lost is potency. It has become good for nothing. The world has influenced and contaminated the message of the messenger. And now the world walks upon the church.

The integrity crisis has infiltrated the church and it involves the whole church. In the body of Christ, we belong with one another, we affect one another, and we can’t escape one another. When one member suffers, all the other members suffer with them (I Cor. 12:26). What the church needs today is not a quick fix that touches only the surface, which is only cosmetic; what we truly need is a surgeon who cuts deep and removes the cancer.

Remember this: God is wanting to make integers and Satan is wanting to make fractions. God’s purpose is to “gather together in one all things in Christ” (Ephesians 1:10). God does not accept neutrality. Let us look up, look around us, and look within.  The Christian whom God wants to bless and use must have the courage to be different and the conviction to keep going in the right direction, come what may.

There is a great problem today as it was in the days of Noah and Lot. Many do not believe in the existence of God, or the biblical God that we serve. Also, there is not a  respect for Scripture as authoritative and lawful. There is another quandary as well, it is the problem of a guilty conscience over personal sin.

Throughout the history of the church, there have been episodes of revival and reformation within and through the church. But upon closer observation, the people revived and the sinners converted, already had, for the most part, a belief in the evidence of God, which is described in Scripture as a respect for the authenticity and authority of Holy Scripture, as well as the presence of a guilty conscience over one’s own personal sin.

We must turn back to the doctrines of Scripture found in the only Book that shows us who God is and what we are. We are totally depraved–mankind is not lightly sinful-we are totally, entirely sinful. We sin because we are sinners. And because of this fact every unbeliever is headed for a future damnation. Society is ignoring this truth, but more than they, the church is ignoring the warning of the Bible.

Pleasing God is better than feeling good. Truth hurts before it heals. There is coming judgment wherein a judgment day appointed by God. The payment for sin is death–an eternity in hell, instead of heaven. May we tell and may we tell someone soon.

There’s a trend today that isn’t new. It has been going on for thousands of years. It is the way of people, prophets, and priests and their delivery of the Word of God. In Jeremiah’s day the prophets were lying to the people. They said they heard from God but it wasn’t true. And because of their false information to the people there was a great void that was filled by other gods.
When God’s Word is not lived out by His people we can be assured that something else will flow in. When we forsake our God for the activities of the world then we can be sure we are sending a message to our children that God is not that important to us. When God’s Word makes an impact upon His people you will see people bowing down and humbling themselves before this great and awesome God. You will see people forsake their lives and attend the house of God. Prayer will increase. The fire of people’s hearts will be sustained by more prayer and preaching of God’s Word. Fellowship will increase and love will be deeper.
God’s Word is like a fire and it is like a hammer. As a fire it will consume all selfishness and sin. And as a hammer it will break the heart’s hardness into little bits of pebble. When God is near lives are changed. In the days of Jeremiah there was not much true God. In America’s church there is not much changing taking place, except more self-seeking and self-serving.  We are in great need of revival. Great needs will be fulfilled when God’s people need Him. Souls will be saved when God’s people forsake the gods that are afar off and return to the God at hand.

King Hezekiah began to reign at the age of twenty-five years of age as King of Judah. His predecessors failed to follow the Lord. The condition at the temple was so much like many churches today–closed. Closed doors speak of no access to God and no service for God. While God has set before us an open door (Rev. 3:8), yet we close it by the way we live.

How do we close the doors of the church? We don’t witness. We don’t pray. The altar of prayer is cold. We don’t sacrifice. We think more of our lives then following the life God intends for each of us. When God looks around He sees plenty of rubbish in the church. No wonder the church of the Living God is so powerless.

What must be done? There must be a way given–for God wants to prosper His work. God’s heart is to get us to the point of total sanctification-set apart for God. Sacrifice of one’s person to the Lord’s service and a song in the heart leads to the reopening of the doors. God must start with you and me-the preacher and the people. For if God’s servants are not clean, God cannot bless His work.

“Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead”          (Matthew 17:9).

There were times when the Lord Jesus told his disciples not to speak to anyone about what they saw or heard.  Why? They did not know enough to talk sense about what was before them.

Unless we know Jesus as the risen, living, and indwelling Savior, as a present-tense reality in our hearts and life, then the Lord Jesus wants our mouth to be kept closed. Why?  Because we will not know enough about Him worth saying.

God wants us to know Him through His Son by an ever-present reality.   When life becomes an adventure in dependence upon His life in us, dead to yourself and alive to God, you and I will share the Life of Jesus Christ and we will share His victory, though a thousand or more temptations assail us.  Then we will have something to tell.  And something to see.  And someone to love.

It is not a matter of our doing our best for Him, but of Christ being His best in us.  This is the Good News that is ours to tell!