THE NARROW GATE

DO YOU RELY ON DREAMS OF HAY AND STRAW OR THE HAMMER AND FIRE OF GOD'S WORD?

2012-01-15T14:59:00.000-07:00

I DID NOT SEND THESE PROPHETS

A. Brother

“I did not send these prophets,

yet they have run with their message.”

Jer. 23:21

“…if they had stood in My council,

they would have proclaimed My Words to My people

and would have turned them from their evil ways

and from their evil deeds.”

Jer. 23:22

“Let the prophet who has a dream tell his dream,

but let the one who has My Word speak it faithfully.

For what has straw to do with grain?” declares the Lord.

Is not My Word like fire,” declares the Lord,

“and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?”

Jer. 23:28,29

We have a critical situation in the affluent western churches today. Many occupy pulpit and podium who are not called and chosen by God to prophecy to His people. These men and women hold positions of authority, influence and power among God’s people, yet they have not been sent by the Lord. Therefore, we are listening to people and their dreams, instead of hearing and being broken before the Lord about our sins and our evil ways.

Many men declare their dreams, which is straw, instead of faithfully speaking the Word of God that is like a hammer that breaks rock. Straw is made for small-minded creatures, like horses and cows. It is food only for the witless--those who need to be led about by bit and bridle. The dreams spoken of here are brought forward by the false prophets, who cry “Peace! Peace!” to the sheep, and they follow without thought. Like dumb animals, these people who are occupying the pews listen to these false prophets, and are herded this way and that by these men who dream their dreams for them, and announce things God has not spoken.

Unlike straw, grain is the sustaining life-giving Word of God that feeds those “who hunger and thirst after righteousness”. Matt. 5:6 So, as sheep, our responsibility is to hunger and thirst after God and His Word.

God’s Word is like fire, that burns up “wood, hay or straw…because the Day…will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work”. 1 Cor. 3:12,13 So those who claim to speak the Word of God must undergo God’s quality tests, to make certain they are speaking truth.

Men who are called by God, and speak God’s Word, in contrast to the false prophets whom God does not call, do it boldly, being willing to risk everything every day to deliver God’s true message of repentance and correction and instruction in righteousness to His people.

They speak the Truth, bringing real nutrition to the ekklesia of God, and their messages are like fire, burning up the false and fake, allowing God to replace it with the gems of the Spirit. These men speak the Word of the Lord, wielding God’s hammer, which breaks the rock of prison walls into pieces, so that God can deliver His people from their sin.

When the Word of God is truly spoken, it brings pain and true godly sorrow, which in turn brings repentance and salvation. The healing it brings is true healing, deep healing, with the peace of God that comes from righteous living. The true Word of God counsels obedience to God, and never deceives.

Today we hear much peace and comfort spoken from our pulpits. We hear lengthy discourses on how God loves us, and God’s grace is all we need, and how we need not fear anything because God is with us. Yet we are blind and poor and naked…“worldly—mere infants in Christ.” 1 Cor. 3:1

The men who speak peace to those who should be repenting of their sins, and their lukewarmness, do not have the good of the people of God in mind. Their interests are not those of Christ Jesus. No matter how popular and influential they are, these men face the judgment of God for speaking on His behalf without His permission. They are speaking falsely, and are to their sheep as shepherds who lead them astray.

These men who jealously guard their positions and lifestyles speak on their own behalf. They “fill you with false hopes…visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord…to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts they say, ‘No harm will come to you.’ “ Jer. 23:16,17

These men “are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves.” Jude 12

These men who speak peace to troubled souls do not call the sinners to repentance as Jesus did, nor do they bring men into obedience to the Lord’s Word. They don’t follow the Way of Christ, which is the Narrow Way of the Cross, but instead take Broadway, that wide, brightly-lit street of dreams and lead thousands to their destruction.

Their teachings may be presented in small sanctuaries, with only a handful of sheep present, or they may be dynamically presented to large audiences, and go out with the latest technology. Yet they lack any substance, or means of saving anyone. The people of God perish in their comfort, while God is ignored.

“These are the men who divide you,

who follow mere natural instincts

and do not have the Spirit…

they boast about themselves

and flatter others for their own advantage.”

Jude 19,16

Don’t trust their flattering words, or their easy, comfortable gospel, which is no gospel at all.

The true Word of God calls us to repent and follow Jesus. Jesus says:

“If anyone would come after Me,

he must deny Himself and take up his cross and follow Me.

For whoever wants to save his own life will lose it,

but whoever loses his life for Me and for the gospel will save it….

If anyone is ashamed of Me and My Words

in this adulterous and sinful generation,

the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes

in His Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

Mark 8:34-38

When Christ comes in glory to receive His own, He will say to many who’ve attended church and sat under these false prophets “…I tell you the truth, I don’t know you.” Matt. 25:12

And to these who prophesy smoothly as if God is speaking through them when He is not He says: “The master of the servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites…” Matt. 24:50,51

This message is for those who claim to speak the Word of God. You must examine yourselves and truly put yourselves to the test. If you are called, you will know this. Your anointing will be from Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit will rest upon you with power and authority. Your teachings will be full of the Truth, and you will call God’s people to Him without flattery, and with conviction. You will adhere to the Word, and sit in God’s council, listening and heeding His voice only. You will not twist and distort the Word of God for your own ends, nor for the purposes of other men or institutions set up by men, no matter if they pay your salaries. You will declare the simple Truth, and call men to repentance and obedience to Christ as citizens of His Kingdom. You will preach the Word, sharing it morning, noon and night with those whom God has put in your care. You will love the brethren above all, and give God’s love to them at all times, making the most of every opportunity in these evil days.

You will call the Body of Christ to live like His Body, set apart, holy, and infused with the Holy Spirit’s power for righteous living. You will teach the flock how to live with one another in love, and how to take care of one another in practical ways.

“For the time will come when men

will not put up with sound doctrine.

Instead, to suit their own desires,

they will gather around them a great number of teachers

to say what their itching ears want to hear.

They will turn their ears away from the truth

and turn aside to myths.”

2 Tim. 4:3,4

This message is also for those who sit like dumb animals under the teaching of those who claim to represent the Lord. You are responsible for your own lives, minds, and actions. You can think, study and pray for yourself. God will teach you His Ways if you truly want anything more than easy deception and comfortable living. Would it not be tragic if you were to lose your own soul because you were too lazy or fearful to follow the Truth instead of smooth, flattering men who make you feel good?

Don’t you want the Lord Himself, and His love, and His companionship, instead of false hopes?

“This is what the Lord Almighty says,

‘Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you;

they fill you with false hopes.

They speak visions from their own minds,

not from the mouth of the Lord…

In days to come you will understand it clearly.”

Jer. 23:16,20

Escape the trap Satan has devised for you. Don’t follow anyone who preaches a gospel other than the one which was given you in Scripture. Be willing to follow Jesus Christ, even if it means going upstream to the religious river that flows around you. Better yet, get out of that river altogether, leaving the false prophets, and find those who truly teach and preach the Good News of God’s Word.

I pray that we will come to understand this clearly, not when Christ comes back, and we realize in a rush of regret and fear that we have listened to the wrong gospel, but now, in grateful repentance and the experience of the grace of God in our changed lives, through His Son Jesus Christ.

THE MYSTERY DISCLOSED. YOU IN CHRIST AND CHRIST IN YOU.

2012-01-09T13:37:00.000-07:00

CHRIST IN YOU. YOU IN CHRIST.

A. Brother

"To the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colosse..." (Col. 1:2)

"I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness--the mystery...that is now disclosed to the saints...which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." (Col. 1:25-27)

In Christ. This phrase is the key to all knowledge, wisdom and life.

Christ in you. This phrase sums up the whole message of the gospel.

These are the truths upon which the entire span of eternity, and the entire universe hinge. The door of truth swings on these massive, smooth, beautifully and perfectly forged hinges, and can be swung open by a single touch of the weakest, tiniest hand.

And this is a great mystery. One that we can not hope to comprehend without the Holy Spirit’s illumination in our hearts and minds.

If we come as children to Christ, as He commands we do (Matt. 19:14 et.al.), then we can, with the feeblest of cries, call the entire power of God to our disposal in Christ. He is ready and willing to uphold us in danger, to strengthen us in turmoil, to fill us with His peace in the worst of circumstances if we come like this. If we come as able adults, sure in our religious place, content in our righteousness, holding up hands of complacency and self-worth, then God is bored with us, and cannot invest in us this life of Christ Jesus.

If you have not died with Christ (Col. 2:20), then you cannot be raised with Christ (Col. 3:1). If you are not raised with Christ, you are not alive in Christ and dead to the world. If you are not dead to the world, then you are living in your own power, not in Christ's.

In Christ. Christ in you. These sum up all mysteries that have been solved by His coming. Today, we must dwell here, in the childlike realm of this Truth, and stay every day until He reveals the fullness of His own character in us. Once we know this, we can never leave this place without damaging what God is doing in us.

SHOULD WE SEEK THE SPIRITUAL GIFTS?

2012-01-08T13:54:00.003-07:00

LIVING THE MOST EXCELLENT WAY

A. Brother

What is the most excellent Way? And should you and I be seeking the gifts of the Spirit without first learning to walk in it?

Remember that Paul addressed the most detail on this subject to his most troubled church body--the Corinthians. I Corinthians 12 and 13 address the issue of the most important spiritual gifts, and what is most important of all.

It was precisely because this undisciplined, motley crew of believers was struggling with pride, selfishness (even when observing the Lord's Table together), divisions (over who was following which teacher/leader), lawsuits among believers, terrible sexual sin, and a lot of other immature behavior, that they had trouble discerning and appropriating the gifts from the Spirit in the proper ways. It was their spiritual immaturity which limited their understanding.

So, what did Paul say? He clarified that there are many gifts, and that it was the Holy Spirit that gave those gifts to people in the Body of Christ for the purpose of building up others in their faith. It was not man's decision, it was not man's work. It was the work of God.

He did indicate that if someone desired spiritual gifts, that he should seek the highest gifts--the highest one being Prophecy--which means giving out the Word of God to others. He even put tongues in perspective, stating that tongues is for private prayer unless someone with the gift of interpretation is available to edify the Body.

BUT WHAT WAS PAUL'S GREAT REMINDER ABOUT GIFTS?

"But eagerly desire the greater gifts.

And now I will show you

THE MOST EXCELLENT WAY."

1 Cor. 12:31

The most excellent way, brothers, is LOVE. It is the greatest FRUIT of the Spirit, which is often ignored completely. LOVE should be pursued before and during our pursuit of any other gifts from God.

It is the highest and best, the Way of Christ, and "covers a multitude of sins".

The Corinthians, like many of us, had not yet learned how to fly, and were wanting a Lear Jet. They were always concerned about getting the best spiritual gifts. God's best is that we learn how to walk in love as Jesus did, and then He'll bestow on us spiritual gifts we can handle.

Lear Jets are for the best pilots, not novices who are undisciplined and haven't paid the price. The best commercial pilots come out of being combat pilots. Same for us in the Body. The highest gifts are reserved for those who've trained to discern good from evil by constant use--who've been through the fires and the waters and learned to rely on God and His Spirit to get them through.

We must learn to "follow the way of love" while we "eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy." (1 Cor. 14:1)

I was raised in a church that emphasized the highly visible gifts of tongues and preaching and teaching, but without the greatest gift of love it was a "resounding gong...a clanging cymbal" and I was left with the conclusion that it was gaining nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1-3)

In fact, as it is today in many churches, it was very discouraging to see Christians involved in promoting themselves and their own “spirituality” or their own “giftedness”. In fact, many Christians confuse talent with gift, and so we have the ungifted, immature believer with talent being pushed into leadership. This means, like the Corinthians, we are seeking the wrong things, and need to grow up in Christ.

I pray that we would discern our spiritual condition in the churches. That each of us would call for the gift of love to be lived out, and that all other gifting would be prayerfully left to the Holy Spirit's direction as we draw closer to Jesus Christ.

HOW WE MAKE HEAVENLY THINGS INTO EARTHLY THINGS

2012-01-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

HOW WE MAKE HEAVENLY THINGS INTO EARTHLY THINGS

T. Austin-Sparks

“The heavens do rule.”

Daniel 4:26

There is a great need today that there should be the rule of the Heavens.

But the Holy Spirit has got to do it, and we have got to come to recognize the fact that what we see in organized Christianity is not it.

The spiritual people of God are more and more feeling separated from the old system of Christianity and churches and ecclesiastical systems. People are recognizing a deep dissatisfaction with what has held the ground so long, and there is a cry for spiritual reality.

Many sermons are clever and full of mental ability, but they are starvation to the spirit. There is all the activity, but it is not spiritual life, and I believe the Lord is going to show us the nature of the thing that is in the heavens. The thing that man has brought down on to the earth and taken up and perpetuated is only at best a poor imitation of things in the heavens, but in a very large realm it is a caricature of heavenly things.

Man has taken hold of heavenly things and brought them down to earth and made them earthly things. That is where things all went wrong at the beginning.

At the first, things were of the Spirit. The people gathered in their homes or anywhere. It was not the place. It was not the ministry. It was the Lord, and they were circled around Him.

But then the day came when they said, "We must have public buildings," and then the architecture became a factor, and so things developed, and they became something on the earth for men to take note of.

They wanted man to be attracted, and that was the first step in one of the greatest perils that has overtaken the church. For prestige, recognition, the world to be attracted, there is the result that you get the mixed multitudes in the Church.

If you can attach some big names to it, you can attract the people, and one of the devil's greatest measures has been popularising the church. The pre-eminent thing is lost, that the church and Christ is a mystery to the natural man and that it is no use to expect the natural man to appreciate it.

The church is essentially a spiritual thing according to the mind of God. What really governs everything is God's conception of things, not ours, and if we are going on with the Lord there is going to be a whole system of change and we are going more and more to view things from the heavenly standpoint.

You have got to get into the heavenly system to get heavenly results.

By T. Austin-Sparks from: The Heavens Do Rule - Chapter 2

RULES AND REGULATIONS KILL. ONLY CHRIST'S SPIRIT BRINGS LIFE AND RIGHTEOUSNESS.

2012-01-02T09:46:00.000-07:00

THE NEW WAY OF THE SPIRIT

A. Brother

“He has made us competent ministers of a New Covenant—

not of the letter but of the Spirit;

for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

2 Cor. 3:6

As modern American believers in Christ, many of us have been raised with a sort of ‘hybrid gospel’ that tries very hard to combine some elements of the letter and some elements of the Spirit. As evangelicals, we must go back to basics, and see that there is no compromise possible.

The Bible teaches us clearly and simply that Christ is the New Covenant, and supplants the Old Covenant of the letter of the law.

The letter kills. This is the declaration. Any attempt to codify and write down on tablets of stone the ‘principles and precepts of the Christian life’ will kill that life, just as surely as the Mosaic Law brought death, and sin, to light. This was Paul’s whole declaration in Romans.

“For when we were controlled by the sinful nature,

the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work

in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now,

by dying to what bound us, we have been released from the law

so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not

in the old way of the written code.”

Romans 7:5,6

Again, brothers, there can be no compromise with law. There has crept into the churches over the past several centuries much compromise on this issue.

But Scripture is clear. Any attempts to live by a code, or a set of rules, is futile, and a disobedience to Christ. Not only in long passages in Romans, but also in long passages in his Corinthian letters, as well as in Galations, and other letters, Paul spends an enormous amount of time declaring this new life in Christ as being completely dependent on the Spirit of God for its power within us to change us. Death comes from trying to live by the basic principles of any kind, including religious basic principles.

This was the very thing Christ died to save us from. Do we now, as the Galations did, think we will be carried through to completion in Christ by our own efforts? Sadly, brothers, many of us do.

“Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit,

are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?”

The real tragedy today is that many who are attending our churches, and claiming the name “Christian” have never even begun “with the Spirit”. We have begun by the church creeds, lived by the church’s edicts, and tried our hardest to adhere to the levels of righteous living we think we must attain in order to make it to heaven. Many of us who are in so-called “Spirit-filled” churches fit this description also. We are loud in our worship, and try our best to summon up the Spirit in our meetings, yet we live the rest of the time in our own efforts, trying desperately to understand and live by the ‘basic Christian principles’ we think God calls us to live by.

Oh, my brothers and sisters who strive and work to be ‘good Christians’, we can never reach our goals.

Power and life are not in the letter, whether the letter of the churches, or the letter of the law, or the letter of the world. Death comes through the letter.

Life comes through Christ, BUT only if we submit ourselves to death. The death of self, and the new life of the Spirit that does it all in us. All Christ’s work in us. It is no longer our work, but Christ’s. Not just to believe in His work on the cross, but to believe in His daily work in us, transforming us, creating us into His image by the power of His Spirit.

There is no self-effort that can do that. In fact, our attempts to live up to some standard of behavior or another will always end in frustration and death.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;

the old has gone, the new has come.”

2 Cor. 5:17

This is why Paul declared, over and over, that Christ set us free from the law of sin and death. Watch out for those who want you to follow this or that set of rules, or this or that set of principles. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing, perhaps not intentionally, as they may be ignorant of the true life available to us in Christ, yet are all the more dangerous in that ignorance.

There are many pastors and teachers today who will solidly and confidently declare things that are not true under the New Covenant. They will do so, as they have to me, with great volumes of rhetoric, and in fact will produce long lists of Old Testament Scripture to back up their arguments that we should be keeping this or that basic precept of the law of Moses. Yet their arguments are in vain with Paul and the other apostles, and with the New Covenant Scripture. You must not be swayed by these men and women. We must adhere only to Christ, and His Spirit, as the power in us to live righteously. Our righteousness is worked within us only by the power of His Spirit.

“You who are trying to be justified by law

have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen

away from grace. But by faith we eagerly await

through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.”

Gal. 5:4,5

I read and hear many things from “Christians” who declare that we must be adhering to this or that principle, or this or that law, while we live the Christian life. That is why there is tremendous confusion among believers.

Brothers, there is only the simple, straightforward message of life in Christ, and the power of His Spirit to work it in us. This is the “full message of this new life” (Acts 5:20) that was declared from the beginning by the apostles, and brought to us in the New Covenant Scriptures.

We must not stray from this declaration, though it makes us a stench in the nostrils of certain religious people, who love their principles and their precepts, and who love the trappings of religion.

“So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not

gratify the desires of the sinful nature…

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,

patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

gentleness, and self control.

Against such things there is no law.”

Gal. 5:16,22,23

THE POWER OF CHRIST IN US IN 2012.

2011-12-31T14:34:00.000-07:00

A BOLD, STRONG, POWERFUL, COURAGEOUS 2012.

THIS IS WHO WE ARE IN CHRIST.

A. Brother

Who are we, brothers and sisters?

We are the bold!

“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity,

but a Spirit of power, love, and self-discipline.”

2 Tim. 1:7

We are the strong!

“It is God who arms me with strength

and makes my way perfect…

He trains my hands for battle;

my arms can bend a bow of bronze.”

2 Samuel 22:33-35

We are the powerful!

“…who through faith…shut the mouths of lions,

quenched the fury of the flames…

escaped the edge of the sword;

weakness was turned to strength…

who became powerful in battle

and routed foreign armies.”

Heb. 11:33,34

We are the courageous!

“Have I not commanded you?

Be strong and courageous.

Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged,

for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Joshua 1:9

Brothers and sisters who truly seek Christ, it is time.

Time for the redeemed of the Lord to say so, and come out of hiding. To gather together and seek Christ Jesus, and His face continually. To forsake the world and hold only to the Lord our God.

“Strengthen the feeble hands,

steady the knees that give way;

say to those with fearful hearts,

‘Be strong, do not fear; your God will come’…”

Isaiah 35:3,4

Who are we?

We are the remnant. We are the remainder who will not bow the knee to Baal. We are those who love and seek the Lord alone, and do not love the world, or worship its false gods. We take root by the Holy Spirit and bear the Spirit’s fruit in our lives. We live the life of Jesus on earth. We are His Body, His Temple, His Flock. We are those who live by faith and not by sight. Faith in the Son of God, who died and rose and lives eternally for us.

We are those who do not by our own efforts or our own righteousness try to rescue or redeem ourselves. We wait upon the Lord to do that. We wait on Him to renew our strength. We are the descendants by faith of Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Joseph, David, the prophets, the apostles, and all our brothers and sisters through the centuries who’ve followed in Jesus footsteps.

Who are we?

We are fellow citizens with God’s people and members of the household of God. (Eph. 2:19)

We are not American or British or Mexican or French or Japanese or Gambian or Pakistani or Brazilian. We are not slave or free. We are not male or female. We are not rich or poor. We are not black or brown or white. We are not educated or uneducated. We are not farmers or politicians or doctors or laborers.

We are all one in Christ Jesus, a great fellowship of those who love Him first, and give living proof of His existence over the entire face of the earth. (Gal. 3:29)

We are the justified!

We are the free!

We are the loved!

We are the conquerors!

“…in all these things we are more than conquerors

through Him who loved us.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life,

neither angels nor demons,

neither the present nor the future,

nor any powers, neither height nor depth,

nor anything else in all creation,

will be able to separate us from the love of God

that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Rom.

8:37-39

Brethren, let us stop hiding, cowering, whimpering. Today we must pray and seek the face of the Lord and not stop until He fills us with His Holy Spirit and gives us the powerful gifts He has promised.

“But you will receive power

when the Holy Spirit comes upon you;

and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem,

and in all Judea and Samaria,

and to the ends of the earth.”

Acts 1:8

Like the small remnant of people who were left after Jesus ascended to His Father, we must pray and wait upon God until He answers us. We cannot become powerful and courageous ourselves, because as Jesus said, we can’t do anything apart from Him. We must let the Lord change us and work in us and empower us with His own Spirit within us.

Brothers and sisters, let us band together and be who God made us to be!

IN YOUR UNENDURABLE PAIN, DON'T GIVE UP NOW, BROTHER OR SISTER..

2011-12-30T16:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Brother or Sister:

You are in the middle of a terrible circumstance. It looks, smells, feels, and acts like a tragedy being played out in your life. It is is horrible, and your pain is unendurable. You are close to the edge, wishing you were dead, wishing you'd never been born. How incurable your situation is. How despairing your heart is. Who will deliver you from this? When there is no hope, how can you have hope? When we see nothing but blackness, where can light be found?

Christ knows this exact pain. He is there with you, though you can't see Him. You have believed, but now, in your extreme pain, you find yourself alone, or seemingly alone. That's ok. That's normal. Christ went through the agony you are, only ten thousand times worse. He had known perfection, and a life of fullness and bliss with His Father. Yet here He was, among mean, ugly, nasty humans, whose best actions were rags in comparison to Gods' holiness. Here He was, among them but not of them, eating with them, drinking with them, walking among them, and experiencing their ridicule, their disbelief, their petty objections, their blindness, their hatred and their weak-love that He knew He couldn't really trust. He was betrayed and left alone by everyone, and felt complete abandonment even by His Father. "Father, Father, why have you forsaken Me?" He cried in His extreme pain and loss, naked and ridiculed by all, bleeding and dying in agony, while the Heavens were shut to Him. In this far country, this strange world ruled by evil, He was alone.

And yet, He says to you now, He calls you to take the same road. The narrow road of pain and suffering. So that you will know the blinding Light of His Truth, His joy, His love, which will come to you after Gethsemane, after Golgotha, after your death on that daily cross. He calls to you now to submit to this dying, with tears, as you cry out "Father, Father, Why have you forsaken me?" For He knows your resurrection is right around the corner. Your stone will be rolled away, and you will see the Light again. And your future will be lived more and more, as you go through these dying times, in His Life. He will become your all, your Lord, and your Life. His Way will become your Way. His Truth will shine more and more out of your eyes and your heart.

Don't give up now. You are almost there. And He will carry your body, and dress it, and lay it in the tomb, and He will call you out from that grave as He called Lazarus out. "________, (insert your own name) come out." Those will be His Words to you soon.

The narrow road is full of difficulty and hardship. Yet it's rewards are beyond explanation. Continue on this road with many of us. Christ will hold you, and Christ will redeem you from the hand of the ruthless and the evil, even when all seems dark and lost.

Blessings on you today in Christ.
A. Brother

LIVING WITHOUT FEAR: FOLLOW CHRIST, NOT THOSE WHO ARE TRYING TO LEAD YOU ASTRAY

2011-12-26T16:16:00.000-07:00

GOD IS NOT FRUSTRATED OR CONFUSED

A. Brother

“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit,

but test the spirits to see whether they are from God,

for many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

1 John 4:1

“I am writing these things to you about those

who are trying to lead you astray. As for you,

the anointing you received remains in you,

and you do not need anyone to teach you….

just as it has taught you, remain in Him.”

1 John 2:26,27

There are many so-called ‘Christian’ movements out there today. There are many ministries, and many voices, claiming many things. There are large organizations building their own life, recruiting people, taking in money, and claiming to be doing God’s work. It is a confusing and frustrating world, a subculture of noise and clamor.

But it’s always been this way.

We must not think God is frustrated or confused. Our Father is absolutely Sovereign, and those of us who will be standing at the end of all things will stand on the absolute Twin Pillars of God’s Truth.

First, we stand on God’s Word. Scripture is our written Truth. We measure all things by its clarity, by its light. “In God’s Word it says…” should be one of our most used phrases. This is essential today, when the winds of apostasy blow through the churches, and men throw out their own words like confetti on the ‘christian’ parade. (I de-capitalized the word on purpose to emphasize that Christ is not in most of this charade.)

Many of the ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’ men and women who preach and teach let go of the Word in favor of their own words. They think up bright and shining phrases that hit the market well. We must not just shake our heads in disbelief at their tactics, but brothers and sisters, we must speak out and say, “This does not measure up to the Word of God. I don’t care who says it, or who writes it, or who thought it up, but Scripture says…”

God’s Word is true, and those who seek Christ must find Him in it.

Second, we stand on the witness of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that the Spirit would remind us of what He taught, and be our confidante and comfort, our guide and help in knowing the Way. We hold to the Word, and we listen to the Spirit to confirm it in our hearts and minds, so that we can stand in the day of testing and evil.

The Scriptures quoted above stand in testimony to this Truth. If we remain in Christ, and He remains in us, we will bear much fruit. His fruit means the fruit of the Spirit, including love, faith, hope, and all the others. If we don’t remain in Christ (and it is impossible to remain in Christ without clinging to His Word), then we don’t have Christ. John’s first letter to the churches confirms God’s Truth to us in this matter.

Each of us who is in Christ has the Spirit’s anointing to understand and know the things of Christ. He will teach us, and we must not just rest on the words of men, or follow men. This is where all apostasy and turning away starts. By listening to and following men instead of being anchored in the Word and in the Spirit of God.

Brothers, today we must fight, but forget all the political and cultural and social fights out there. The battle for the Kingdom of God is a spiritual battle, and must be fought with spiritual weapons. The Word and the Spirit! God is Sovereign, never fear.

WHAT I TELL YOU IN THE DARK, SPEAK IN THE DAYLIGHT.

2011-12-24T15:02:00.000-07:00

PROCLAIM FROM THE ROOFS

A. Brother

“What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight. What is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” --Matt 10: 27,28

“’You are Israel’s teacher,’ said Jesus, ‘and do you not understand these things? --Matt 3:10

“The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue…He…wakens my ear as one being taught. The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears, and I have not been rebellious; I have not drawn back. I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting. Because the Sovereign Lord helps me I will not be disgraced. Therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I will not be put to shame.” --Isa 50: 4-7

There is no ecclesiastical, institutional call for those who speak the Truth of God from His Word. The call that comes to them comes in the darkness, not in the glaring lights of worldly publicity.

God’s spokesmen and watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem are not picked for their advanced degrees, and their detailed knowledge of the intricacies of biblical scholarship. In fact, there is no earthly reason for their being chosen for such a difficult, lonely, arduous task. Only God knows the reason for His choices. And His Chosen are given their call by Jesus Himself, not by men or man-made organizations.

We are confronted daily with the blatant apostasy of the people of God. As Jesus was maligned and hated by the religiously motivated men around Him, so we will be maligned and hated by those who stand for religion today.

As in Jesus’ time, the teachers of Israel will often not understand God’s true purposes as shown in His Word, and will often stand in opposition to them.

That is all the more reason we cannot fight this fight with the weapons in our hands. We cannot stand if we don’t put on the full armor of God, because we are set among the tares, and they will be constantly working to choke out the Word of God and make it ineffectual.

But God is the God of the impossible, and He will do it for us.

Right now, brother or sister, you may love the Word of God because you are called to be a watchman on the walls, a prophet among the people of God. God’s Word may be your life’s blood, and your constant companion day and night. You may pray without stopping, keeping your ears open to the Spirit, trying hard to understand everything Jesus gives you. You may hear His voice speaking in the wee hours, in the morning hours, even when you go about your work or spend time with others.

You have waves churning in your heart and mind at the wrong around you, especially the wrong in the churches. You look at the Truth given us in Scripture, and you wonder where it went. You look at the behavior of so-called believers in Christ, who gather together and worship Him in comfort, yet who don’t carry out even the most basic of Christ’s commands, and you are in pain at this state of affairs.

Your soul, like Lot’s, is vexed at the sin around you. And you are not primarily upset at the world, which careens toward self-destruction because the lost don’t know any better. You are primarily angry and frustrated at the gap between how you see the Church shown us in Scripture and the life of the churches today.

You pray daily for God to raise up men and women who will speak these things boldly.

What I am going to say is from the Spirit, and from the Son’s heart, and is the Father’s will for this time, though it is hard for me to say because it puts me on the line as well as each man who listens and hears and is willing to obey.

We are those who must obey Jesus and speak in the light, shout from the rooftops what He tells us in the dark and whispers to us in our ears. We are those who must obey His call to tell others what He is saying. He is demanding of us what Jesus talked about in the Parable of the Minas. That each of us has just one mina, one life, and that must be given wholly to advancing the Kingdom of God, regardless of our personal business, regardless of any worldly agendas we may want to pursue.

Some of us, the spokesmen and watchmen He has called, are busy with our nets, trying to catch fish. Some of us are collecting taxes or busy with our corporate jobs. Some of us are raising families, and have our own businesses. Some of us are in “fulltime Christian work”, and are busy doing things for the churches, or other organizations. Some of us are laboring as carpenters, as Jesus did.

But each of us is required to build the Kingdom of God first, and to put aside our own agendas and plans. Jobs and earthly pursuits come last. Your search, men and women, for career fulfillment comes last.

Many of us are like the man who told Jesus he couldn’t come with Him because he had personal obligations that prevented it. Jesus said, “Let the dead bury their own dead.” --Matt 8:22

Do we think that Jesus can’t take care of us and ours if we follow Him?

Today, even if you’ve spent time away from the Lord, and have sinned greatly, you are called to obey. As Paul, the murderous, violent man whom God used so mightily, we who have sinned and been away are now called to tell the truth where we have promoted lies.

Today, if you know this call of God in your heart, you are to obey, just as God is taking all other crutches and excuses away from me, and telling me to obey.

What do we do?

Speak out today to others around us about what God is saying. We are to obey Jesus, and be His true disciples, and that means we stand with Him, not with religious men.

We must forsake our nets, and follow Jesus.

We are to be willing to suffer with Jesus outside the gates of the city, setting our faces like flint as He did, and be willing to endure the mocking hatred of the religious crowd if we are to fulfill His calling.

Remember Jeremiah in the cistern, up to his neck in mud, starving, and yet unyielding in His commitment to God’s Word.

When the disciples saw Jesus cleansing the temple in Jerusalem of the money changers and the merchants who had taken over Israel’s central place of worship, they were reminded of Psalm 69, the prophetic Word that David spoke about the coming Messiah.

May it also be true of us as we awake each day and listen to Jesus speak to us, and as we are faithful to follow in His footsteps.

“I am a stranger to my brothers,

an alien to my own mother’s sons;

for zeal for your house consumes me,

and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.” --Ps 69: 8,9

As our Lord Jesus promised to His disciples, we won’t lose anything in this life that won’t be given back to us a hundredfold, both now and in eternity.

We will be given brothers and mothers and sisters and fathers and children and the warmth of family now, in the form of the Body of Christ. We will have greater riches than any we could have from the world.

That’s why our Savior says to us:

“And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” --Matt 19: 29

So, if you are in the muddy depths, look up for God’s deliverance, brother. If you are on the lofty heights of success, look down and rescue your brother who is alone in his struggles. Get together and be the Body of Christ, proclaim what God reveals in His Word from the rooftops. Do not hold back. Let’s present the Lord Jesus with ten minas for every one He’s given us when we stand before Him.

REAL OR FAKE? YOU BE THE JUDGE.

2011-12-23T16:18:00.000-07:00

ARE THESE FLOWERS REAL?

A. Brother

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,

patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness

and self control.”

Gal. 5:22

Early in the morning, as He was on His way

back to the city, He was hungry.

Seeing a fig tree by the road,

He went up to it but found nothing

on it except leaves. Then He said to it,

“May you never bear fruit again!”

Immediately the tree withered.

Matt. 21:18,19

In our kitchen my wife has several beautiful vases of flowers. In the interest of upkeep, these flowers are fake. They never wither, never need watering, and never fade. The colors are bold and vibrant, and the leaves look real. Though they are man-made, they mimic flowers in the wild, and can fool almost anyone from a short distance. Fake flowers of silk or other fabric, skillfully crafted to imitate the real thing, serve many purposes in our lives these days, don’t they?

Think about Christ’s attitude toward the fig tree in Matthew. What did He do when He found out, that though real, the fig tree was not producing anything of value? When Jesus came to that fig tree, He demanded only what is natural for fig trees to produce. The fruit was missing. He rightly decided that the fig tree was worthless, as its only purpose in life was fig production, and it was not doing what it was designed to do. It looked good, it gave shade, it was a beautiful addition to the landscape, it gave every indication of being the real thing. However, it wasn’t. It was just “taking up space”.

So today there are many who claim Christ, who say they believe, who say they are “Christians”, who are just “taking up space”. They look good, perhaps even beautiful. They dress right, and say the right things, and attend all the right functions. They are active, and smile, and have color, and sit in the right spots. Like the fake flowers we have in our kitchen, and the fig tree that was real yet didn’t fulfill its function, so these people aren’t real. The Christ-life is only faked, and the religious life bears no fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Today, we must test ourselves. Are we real in Christ? Are we not only hearers of the Word, but doers? Are we bearing the fruit of the Spirit of God in our lives on a daily basis, so that when Christ stops by and is hungry, He can partake of the natural result of our obedience?

Or are we religious Christians, sitting in church, walking around, bearing leaves and having trunks, throwing shade, looking to all the world like a fig tree, but inside, we are barren and without the rich, nourishing fruit that comes from a life in Christ?

Brothers and sisters, many of us need to stop. We need to stop! Did you hear me? We must consciously stop what we are busy doing—the urgent things—and begin the important things God requires.

We must repent of our religious fakery, and become true and vital growing, fruit-producing Christ-followers. We must decide we want Christ, not Christianity. We must decide we’re tired of looking good, and desire to be good. We must want to fulfill that natural function for which Jesus called us to Himself. We must want to bear fruit that lasts. Fruit of our natural union with Jesus Christ, which is the fruit of His Spirit.

Are you living in love? Are you filled with hope, and joy, and kindness? Are you patient, and gentle, and focused on others rather than yourself? Are you strong and firm in your faith in Christ? Do you know His suffering, and the power of His resurrection? Are you putting off the old woman or man, and putting on the New Creation, this New Man or New Woman God has designed you to be?

If not, then stop and get out the Word of God, and let Jesus Christ go to work in you. He is faithful, and He will act on your behalf.

THE NEW CROSS IS NO CROSS AT ALL.

2011-12-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

Brothers and Sisters in Christ: This is the best analysis of what has happened to the truth of the gospel in our times that I’ve ever read. It is straight from Scripture, and straight from the heart of God. We would do well to take this to our hearts, give this to others whom we care about deeply, and spread this powerful word to all who claim Christ today.

A. Brother

THE OLD CROSS & the NEW

A.W. Tozer.

ALL UNANNOUNCED AND MOSTLY UNDETECTED there has

come in modern times a new cross into popular evangelical circles.

It is like the old cross, but different: the likenesses are superficial;

the differences, fundamental. From this new cross has sprung a

new philosophy of the Christian life, and from that new philosophy

has come a new evangelical technique-a new type of meeting and

a new kind of preaching. This new evangelism employs the same

language as the old, but its content is not the same and its

emphasis not as before.

The old cross would have no truck with the world. For Adam's

proud flesh it meant the end of the journey. It carried into effect

the sentence imposed by the law of Sinai. The new cross is not

opposed to the human race; rather, it is a friendly pal and, if

understood aright, it is the source of oceans of good clean fun and

innocent enjoyment. It lets Adam live without interference. His life

motivation is unchanged; he still lives for his own pleasure, only

now he takes delight in singing choruses and watching religious

movies instead of singing bawdy songs and drinking hard liquor.

The accent is still on enjoyment, though the fun is now on a higher

plane morally if not intellectually.

The new cross encourages a new and entirely different evangelistic

approach. The evangelist does not demand abnegation of the old

life before a new life can be received. He preaches not contrasts

but similarities. He seeks to key into public interest by showing

that Christianity makes no unpleasant demands; rather, it offers

the same thing the world does, only on a higher level. Whatever

the sin-mad world happens to be clamoring after at the moment

is cleverly shown to be the very thing the gospel offers, only the

religious product is better.

The new cross does not slay the sinner, it redirects him. It gears

him into a cleaner and a jollier way of living and saves his self-

respect. To the self-assertive it says, "Come and assert yourself

for Christ." To the egotist it says, "Come and do your boasting

in the Lord." To the thrill-seeker it says, "Come and enjoy the

thrill of Christian fellowship."

The Christian message is slanted in the direction of the current

vogue in order to make it acceptable to the public. The philosophy

back of this kind of thing may be sincere but its sincerity does not

save it from being false. It is false because it is blind. It misses

completely the whole meaning of the cross. The old cross is a

symbol of death. It stands for the abrupt, violent end of a human

being. The man in Roman times who took up his cross and started

down the road had already said good-by to his friends. He was

not coming back. He was going out to have it ended.

The cross made no compromise, modified nothing, spared nothing;

it slew all of the man, completely and for good. It did not try to keep

on good terms with its victim. It struck cruel and hard, and when it

had finished its work, the man was no more. The race of Adam is

under death sentence. There is no commutation and no escape.

God cannot approve any of the fruits of sin, however innocent they

may appear or beautiful to the eyes of men. God salvages the

individual by liquidating him and then raising him again to newness

of life. That evangelism which draws friendly parallels between the

ways of God and the ways of men is false to the Bible and cruel to

the souls of its hearers.

The faith of Christ does not parallel the world, it intersects it. In

coming to Christ we do not bring our old life up onto a higher plane;

we leave it at the cross. The corn of wheat must fall into the ground

and die. We who preach the gospel must not think of ourselves as

public relations agents sent to establish good will between Christ

and the world. We must not imagine ourselves commissioned to

make Christ acceptable to big business, the press, the world of

sports or modern education. We are not diplomats but prophets,

and our message is not a compromise but an ultimatum.

God offers life, but not an improved old life. The life He offers is life

out of death. It stands always on the far side of the cross. Whoever

would possess it must pass under the rod. He must repudiate

himself and concur in God's just sentence against him. What does

this mean to the individual, the condemned man who would find life

in Christ Jesus? How can this theology be translated into life?

Simply, he must repent and believe. He must forsake his sins and

then go on to forsake himself. Let him cover nothing, defend nothing,

excuse nothing. Let him not seek to make terms with God, but let

him bow his head before the stroke of God's stern displeasure and

acknowledge himself worthy to die. Having done this let him gaze

with simple trust upon the risen Saviour, and from Him will come

life and rebirth and cleansing and power.

The cross that ended the earthly life of Jesus now puts an end to

the sinner; and the power that raised Christ from the dead now

raises him to a new life along with Christ. To any who may object

to this or count it merely a narrow and private view of truth, let me

say God has set His hallmark of approval upon this message from

Paul's day to the present. Whether stated in these exact words

or not, this has been the content of all preaching that has brought

life and power to the world through the centuries. The mystics,

the reformers, the revivalists have put their emphasis here, and

signs and wonders and mighty operations of the Holy Ghost gave

witness to God's approval. Dare we, the heirs of such a legacy of

power, tamper with the truth? Dare we with our stubby pencils erase

the lines of the blueprint or alter the pattern shown us in the Mount?

May God forbid. Let us preach the old cross and we will know the

old power. (-A. W. Tozer, Man, the Dwelling Place of God, 1966).

NATION BUILDING VS. KINGDOM LEADERSHIP

2011-12-18T14:40:00.000-07:00

FROM TIME TO TIME I COMMENT ON A BLOG WRITTEN BY A FRIEND OF MINE. IT IS A DISCUSSION AMONG SINCERE MEN WHO WANT TO SERVE CHRIST. HERE IS A DISCUSSION POSTING I MADE TODAY, AND SINCE IT IS RELEVANT TO MANY "MOVEMENTS" AROUND THE WORLD AMONG CHRISTIANS, I WANTED TO REPOST IT HERE.

A. Brother

I hope I’m not too late to make a comment, guys.

You had me view a video of a speaker from JESUS CULTURE: A New Breed of Emerging Revivalists. This movement seeks to train a new generation of Christian leaders who want to evangelize the world. There is a heart for God there, though I would never seek to judge individuals. The very idea of another self-proclaimed "movement" within Christianity curdles my blood. It is just this mass thinking, these large-scale attempts to change the churches, that speaks so loudly of our disconnect from Christ. He was never looking for mass movements. He was always choosing and calling one man at a time, and looking for the few who would actually follow Him and obey Him. Another movement like this just adds to the seriously flawed thinking the churches have: that it is in "packaging" some sort of driven, self-purposed, highly-marketed movement that the proper sort of change occurs to the Body of Christ.

One area of serious disagreement I have with this speaker: He is equating leading with nation building. We are a “holy nation” set apart from the nations of this world. Any leading we do will be for the Kingdom of God, which is not of this world. Therefore, to call as he does to the Body of Christ to seek to lead the nations of the earth is a false call. God is not seeking leaders of the nations, He is seeking men who will lead His Kingdom.

Remember the qualifications of a leader in the Kingdom. “Many of those who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” Christ calls His leaders to be servants, and be willing to be like Paul, who was “last in the parade.” We are to die, and show in our dying to self, and our willingness to take the lowest place at the table, that we are Christ’s. That is leadership in the Kingdom of God.

This young man is part of a movement that has been around forever in the churches. When I was young, forty years ago, there were preachers and teachers proclaiming in mass meetings that Christians were to lead this country into righteousness, and be leaders in politics, business, education, and all other areas of life so that we could remain a Christian nation. Unfortunately, as history shows us, God the Father is not interested in nation building in this world. And because the churches are so far from His calling, His Son’s clear call to show ourselves chosen by our willingness to die, to be last in this world, to carry that rough old cross with joy in our hearts, then the churches and the churchianity they have spawned have lost their influence. This country has more mega-churches than ever before, and more Christian music, and more Christian radio, etc, yet is further into darkness than ever before. Could it be we have missed the call? We have refused what David Gale says, and I agree with, that call to be nothing for Christ? To give up everything to follow Jesus?

My thoughts on this are based on recent encounters in my life with Christ, and His clear Word. We must “de-culturize” and drop our modern filters. No amount of rousing preaching from a stage, with hands in the air all over, and shouts of “amen!” will change things. Only the “on the knees” time in quiet with our God and our Lord Jesus will change us. And only those few banding together who know this will experience the true life of fellowship in the Body of Christ that the Lord of the Church intends. No mass movements allowed. Christ is Lord, and He will achieve the Kingdom's goals in His Way.

God’s blessing on you all. Thanks for letting me comment.

BLIND ADDICTION TO TECHNOLOGY PROMOTES SEPARATION.

2011-12-18T13:09:00.000-07:00

A NOTE ON HOW BLIND OBEDIENCE TO TECHNOLOGY SEPARATES PEOPLE.
A. Brother

I've been wanting to post in my blog something on this vital subject. We have lost our family and community culture in the west due to our love and passion for all things convenient. Yesterday I had a discussion in our office with a woman who brought up her resistance to having an iphone because she feels so crazy as it is in her life.

I commented that it was really the invention of the telephone that was the most massive and sudden shift in society, and that ever since then, we have been working on more technology to separate ourselves from one another while appearing to be more connected. It is a deception that has taken hold at all levels.

Nobody is ever "in the moment" anymore. We are never with whom we're with. We're always connecting somewhere else while we ignore the ones we are standing or sitting with. When we're doing something, we're trying to figure out what we'll do next. When we're at one party, we're making sure there are more parties coming up. When we walk down the mall with two friends, and all three of us are on our cell phones talking with other friends, we are conveniently avoiding depth of relationship, and any commitment to it.

Time has come to resist, and back out of this race for separation. Christ-followers should thoughtfully begin this process, rejecting the knee-jerk options that are coming at us fast and furiously. We have mistaken, even in the churches, connectivity for communication, and clicking for closeness.

Watch the new Sprint commercial, with the dark-haired girl going through the endless cycles of her days, new phone in hand and in her face every moment, no matter what she's doing, and unable to concentrate on where she is, unable to notice anyone or anything that isn't on that little screen. "Unlimited data" is the pitch, and ironically, to me, this commercial makes that life of chasing little characters on a screen seem ridiculous and small, and totally undesirable.

However, the blindness is upon us. God help us, in Christ, to live in this moment, in this day, and to put down the instruments of separation. Use technology, don't let it use you, brethren in Christ.

BACK TO THE FULL MESSAGE OF CHRIST AND THIS NEW LIFE

2011-12-17T13:03:00.000-07:00

CHRISTLESS CHRISTIANITY

A. Brother

“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus…

to…the faithful in Christ Jesus…

from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Eph. 1:1,2

“In love He predestined us to be adopted

as His sons through Jesus Christ…

And He made known to us the mystery of His will…

which He purposed in Christ…

to bring all things in heaven and on earth

together under one Head, even Christ.”

Eph. 1:4-10

The Father’s focus on Christ means our focus is to be on Christ. Christ is the beginning and end of all creation. He is God’s purpose, and should be our purpose.

If we have truly been “born again” by the Spirit of God, it is because of Christ, and we no longer live, but Christ lives in us. We are to changing daily into the image of Christ, having the mind of Christ, exhibiting the fruit of Christ’s life in our character, and following in His footsteps to Gethsemane on to Golgotha each day carrying our crosses, dying to self, being transformed by the power of God into New Men and New Women.

This was the “full message of this new life” (Acts 5:20) carried into homes, businesses, synagogues, temples, public venues, and by all means possible by the apostles and other disciples. Their message was all about Christ. His preeminence, His supremacy.

Today, we suffer the neglect of Christ within our churches, and among our most prominent teachers and preachers. These men and women talk about so many things. They give us words and words, by the millions, and lots of “talk time”, and lots of “face time” with them.

We see them in bookstores, their faces large and smiling on the covers of their newest books. We see them on television, pacing and gesturing, giving out their newest and greatest thoughts.

They talk about…God. They talk about the “Christian life”. They talk about being positive, and getting hold of God’s promises. They quote all our favorite positive Scriptures. They have a new thought, a new angle, an interesting story, a powerful anecdote. They give us their newest approach to living the Christian life in a more effective way.

Yet, how does this resemble, even in the least, the “full message of this new life” we have been given in Scripture?

We have a watered down, baby version of this message, with lots of human psychology and the best marketing thrown in. They bring us a “Christless Christianity”. It has the appearance of wisdom, the appearance and sound of Christianity, but it is just form without substance, without power. We have known so many of these ‘prophets of profits’ over the last 100 years in America. Just go to your local Walmart book section and see their faces dominate the “Inspirational Book” section. They are where they are because they preach a gospel of compromise. Popularity among the masses is strong assurance that they have left the Christ who was rejected by the masses. They have focused on the wrong things.

“But even if we or an angel from heaven

should preach a gospel other than

the one we preached to you,

let him be eternally condemned!...

Am I now trying to win the approval of men,

or of God? Or am I trying to please men?

If I were still trying to please men,

I would not be a servant of Christ.”

Gal. 1:9,10

These people, and there are dozens and hundreds of others who could be put on the list, may have the best intentions in the world. But their intentions are meaningless according to Scripture, because they all share one thing in common. They have preached either just a part of the “full message”, thereby crippling and keeping in immaturity many Christians, or they have preached a Christless Christianity, which focuses on using human psychology coupled with Christian principles from the Bible to give us new ways of living.

Some have preached a Christ who is undemanding, one who never threw the moneychangers out of the temple, and who never talked about giving up one’s own life to gain Christ. Many have never talked about the Narrow Gate, or the hard road of life with Christ, or the dying to self, or the suffering we must go through to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Others have focused on what they call the “promises of God”, and His obligation to keep us safe, shelter us from the storms of life, and bring us prosperity for our faithfulness.

God’s message has never changed. Look at Paul writing to the Ephesians. The entire letter is about Christ. God’s purposes in Christ, our calling in Christ, the Church’s purpose in Christ, and how Christ is the focus of all creation. How Christ’s coming again will fulfill all the Father’s work with us. Not a hint of human psychology. Not a hint of personal marketing or glorification of Paul’s ministry or life. He was all about Christ, and Christ’s all-sufficient power within to heal us, to help us, to empower us to live godly lives in this present evil age. Paul taught Christ to us, and we must listen. All the New Testament is the Christ message, and has no resemblance to much of our modern babbling.

Brothers and sisters: Christ is to become our focus again! We must stand for Christ, not for Christianity. We must be willing to leave our comfortable teachers, our soft pews, and our positions of prominence among the so-called churches, and teach and preach and bring the Word of God any way we can to God’s people. We must stand up where we are and demand that those who claim to speak for Christ speak about Christ!

Seek Christ today, and His Word. Find those who are preaching and teaching the uncompromised, Christ-focused Way, which the original apostles and disciples died for. Jesus Christ will help you Himself, and give you all you need as you learn with Him.

PUTTING ALL "AT-RISK" FOR CHRIST.

2011-12-14T07:35:00.000-07:00

FEARLESSLY

A. Brother

“Pray also for me,

that whenever I open my mouth,

words my be given me

so that I will fearlessly make known

the mystery of the gospel,

for which I am an ambassador in chains.

Pray that I may declare it fearlessly,

as I should.”

Eph. 6:19,20

Fearlessly. How I would like to reach that point with Jesus. Paul experienced fear, it is obvious, because otherwise he would not be asking others to pray for him, that he would “fearlessly” proclaim and declare the truth.

We all struggle with this. Those of us who love Christ and are walking in the light, who want only to live for the Kingdom of God. We know fear. We know the fears of losing the friendship or outward respect of those we care about. We know the fears of being ostracized by co-workers. We know the fears of being thought of as weird or strange, branded as overzealous or fanatical by those who call themselves Christians.

We may have family that opposes us. We may have people in positions of authority over us in life who could do us harm if they wished.

Whatever our position, we always think we have much to lose. Paul did. Whenever he spoke fearlessly, he ended up being flogged or stoned. And eventually, he knew he’d be killed for fearlessly proclaiming the gospel of Christ. Both pagan and religious hate the true gospel, because it pierces to the heart of their sin, and exposes with light the darkness they live in and are comfortable with.

Jesus was our example.

He was fearless when it counted, in the face of deadly opposition. Hundreds of thousands of our brethren through the centuries have faced deadly opposition, fearless when it counted, and stood the test, giving their lives when called upon.

Yet today, in America, and other affluent nations, we are afraid to say anything, and it is not for fear of losing our lives. It is for fear of losing our comfortable positions. We have compromised with the world to the extent that we count on all our “Christian comforts”. We are as affluent as the world. We love our nice homes, our status, our toys. We love our outwardly fine family relationships. The inside may be rotting, and our children and other loved ones may be going to hell on an express train, but we will not risk rejection by sharing the gospel with them. We won’t risk our important business connections. We won’t risk our money. We won’t risk anything really. Our fears are winning.

We will express our outrage all day about political matters. We will declare our indignation at the economic situation. We will proclaim our opinions without a care.

But the gospel, well, that is another matter. Sharing our experiences with Christ to another person would jeopardize everything. Caring about Jesus, and His agenda today, now that’s a different thing.

We must measure the depth of our Christ-life by measuring the depth of our willingness to risk for His sake. Unwillingness to risk for Christ means we care more about what we are risking than what we might gain for His sake, and for the Kingdom of God. Let’s all take a hard look at what we’re not willing to lose today, and pray that God will raise us up like Paul to declare the mystery of the gospel, ambassadors even in chains, if need be.

OUR "LITTLE BY LITTLE" JOURNEY INTO HOLINESS.

2011-12-10T12:36:00.000-07:00

INSTANT HOLINESS OR LITTLE BY LITTLE?

A. Brother

“The Lord your God will drive out those nations

before you, little by little.

You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once,

or the wild animals will multiply around you.”

Deut. 7:22

Do we understand that the 40-year Promised Land trek was designed by the Lord God to test His people? And that He does the same for each believer in Christ who truly wants to follow Jesus on the narrow Way?

Do we understand that this is a journey, full of danger and difficulty? That God leads us, but it is our feet that hit the ground, and it’s our backs that lift the burdens? That Christ will give us strength, and courage, and determination, and power, but that He actually has a purpose in testing us and disciplining us?

God took His people into the desert for forty years. Yes, they kept themselves there longer than necessary, because they didn’t exercise faith, but these things happened so that we can learn from them today. So with us, God works in the same way.

We have been taught that Christ brings peace, and a good life, and days full of hope and joy and love. We have been taught that He brings us prosperity. That when we leave Egypt (that former life of sin and rebellion against God) we will suddenly be transported into the Promised Land! Rich with plenty, pleasure and the good things of life. At ease on our couches, we will enjoy the plump fruits of righteousness that will bud from the tree, and grow quickly, and our lives will instantly reflect the glory of Christ.

Unfortunately, like Moses, we come down off the mountain after seeing the glory of God Himself, and in the melee of worldly attitudes and sins that dance around us, the glory that was in our faces begins to fade. We sometimes put on the veil, as Moses did, to pretend we’re still radiant with God’s presence, yet we are just masking its fading. Brothers and sisters, I believe that much of our “church activity” is designed to mask the fact that we aren’t really experiencing the glory and holiness of Christ. We are afraid to admit that if we didn’t have the noise and the crowds, and the loud music, and the media frenzy, then we would have nothing but the faded glory on our tired faces.

We must read and listen to Moses in Chapters 7 and 8 of Deuteronomy. It was never intended that the people of God meet Him on the mountain and be instantly transformed into a glorified, perfected nation. NO. They were to walk the desert, on foot, carrying all the gold and silver and precious gifts they had been given by the Egyptians. They were to make a journey, and it was not to be easy or fast.

Not only would they walk for forty years, learning the hard Way that God does not tolerate sin and double-mindedness in His true People. But when they came to the edge of the Promised Land, they would be told they were entering another phase of the journey. Now they would be forced to apply all they had learned with real people, in the real world, and face down the evil that lay in that Promised Land they were to inherit.

We face our own evil every day. I mean not only the world’s evil, but what lies within us. God intends this picture of Israel entering the Promised Land to show us also what it means to let Christ cleanse us of sin. He will do it, but He will do it step by step, “little by little”. He knows that if at salvation we were instantly cleansed of everything in us that is not of Christ, we would soon be overwhelmed by evil that would come in and fill the emptiness that was there. Here we see evil thoughts and intentions, wrong attitudes, sinful desire, all represented as “wild animals”. These wild things spawned by Satan would take over where the evil human attitudes and actions that were there have been eradicated. Like the nations before them, Israel would fall prey to these wild animals and, as Jesus said about the one emptied of evil spirits, “his last state would be worse than the first.” When Christ drives out one bad habit, or one bad attitude, He replaces it with another, and mortars it firmly into place in the New Man, before He moves to the next. If we are obedient, then in our lives, one after another of these evil, idolatrous nations falls to the Sword of Christ in us, and we drive them out gradually.

This is how we attain holiness in Christ, brothers and sisters.

Quit looking for an instant cure. The disease is in the hands of the Great Physician, and He will prompt us to move against each cancerous cell until the whole mind and body are cleansed. And that means our discipline is required, our holy patience is required, in order for Him to do His work in us.

We must stop sinning, but it is Christ in us who will destroy these things as we move through the desert, and on into the Promised Land. Think of the times in the Sinai when Israel sinned, and God then took action, swallowing up that sin with a huge opening in the earth, or sending a plague that took out the disease. Israel bowed again before Him, and He led them on, closer and closer to the physical Land of Promise, which is a picture for us of our spiritual journey to holiness in Christ.

YOU HAVE A REPUTATION OF BEING ALIVE, BUT YOU ARE DEAD.

2011-12-08T07:34:00.000-07:00

WAKE UP. STRENGTHEN WHAT REMAINS

AND IS ABOUT TO DIE.

A. Brother

“I remember the devotion of your youth,

how as a bride you loved Me,

and followed Me through the desert…

My people have committed two sins:

They have forsaken Me,

the spring of living water,

and have dug their own cisterns,

broken cisterns that can hold no water.”

--Jer. 2:2,13

These words Jeremiah spoke to the people of God are alive today. The same Spirit who came upon the prophet those years ago is speaking them, and they are coming straight from the heart of God, who never changes.

Do we pretend, as Israel and Judah did then, to follow the Lord and seek His counsel, yet go our own ways?

Have we forsaken the only Spring of Living Water, the Lord Jesus, and dug ourselves cisterns (water tanks in the ground) that we hope will hold the runoff from the world to sustain us, yet are full of holes that always leave us dry?

Oh, people called by God, where are you?

“You have defiled the land with your prostitution and wickedness,

Therefore the showers have been withheld,

and no spring rains have fallen.”

--Jer. 3:2,3

You are caught up in the world, and its ways. You have given out your favors to those who worship other gods, who are not gods at all, but idols of wood and stone. You are drinking from other rivers and other streams, spreading your legs to be taken by anyone who desires you. You are giving yourselves to adulterous affairs with the world, chasing after what they chase after, hungering and thirsting after what they hunger and thirst for.

“How gladly would I treat you like sons and give you a desirable land,

the most beautiful inheritance of any nation.”

--Jer. 3:19

Your Father has not forgotten you. He has always wanted to treat you as His own sons and daughters, giving you a far greater inheritance than what you think He wants for you. He is rich, with storehouses of inexhaustible treasures available for you. Yet you scavenge in the garbage, trying desperately to build a life in the slums.

Your Father has an inheritance waiting, yet you have left Him to seek after crumbs from the world’s table.

You have forsaken your Family, your Holy Nation, and instead of being set apart for your Father’s purposes, you have run and hidden yourself among a people who don’t care about you, and will abandon you when you most need them.

Come back today. Your Father will never forget you. At this moment, He is looking upon you with love, hoping you will come home.

“I thought you would call Me ‘Father’ and not turn away from following Me…

Return, faithless people; I will cure you of your backsliding.”

--Jer. 3:19,22

Your Father is holding out His arms to you. You are a man or woman who has the form of religion, doing all the right things, being decent, going to church, filling all the obligations of a worldly life, yet having no power, no love, and you are running dry.

You are in pain, and you suffer every day from the loneliness of being separated from your Father, and long somewhere down inside for the power of the Spirit to break the bonds that hold you to these empty pursuits.

You long for the true people of God, for true Family with those who are “called out and set apart to be together”. You long to love and cherish your Lord and King, but have given yourself to others, and feel bound by those loves.

God will break your bonds today if you choose.

“’Return, faithless Israel,’ declares the Lord,

‘I will frown on you no longer,

for I am merciful,’ declares the Lord,

‘I will not be angry forever.

Only acknowledge your guilt—

you have rebelled against the Lord your God,

you have scattered your favors

to foreign gods under every spreading tree,

and have not obeyed Me.’ “

--Jer. 3:12,13

The Lord Himself remembers you. He formed you and made you to be His own, and will never forget you, though your own parents forget you. He is not like men, and will not be faithless. He holds you in high esteem, and His love will never dim for you. He will not wait forever, but seeks you out to discipline you and challenge you today, so listen and hear.

You must forsake your life the way you live it.

You must leave your worldly agendas, and the empty forms of religion you are relying upon, and quit trying to find your protection and peace aside from your Father. He will never tolerate double-mindedness, and you will not wear Him down with your stubbornness.

God is not a man that you can deceive, or twist, or confuse. He is not a man that you can work to your own desires. He is God, the eternal, unchanging--the God who Is. He is the Rock, and you must build upon Him or perish.

“Yes, we will come to You, for You are the Lord our God.

Surely the idolatrous commotion

on the hills and mountains is a deception;

surely in the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel.

From our youth shameful gods

have consumed the fruits of our fathers’ labor—

their flocks and herds, their sons and daughters.

We have sinned against the Lord our God,

both we and our fathers;

from our youth until this day

we have not obeyed the Lord our God.”

--Jer. 3:22-25

Brothers and sisters who claim to be God’s people, this must be our prayer. We are His people, but we have forsaken Him for other gods. We have followed the gods of comfort, money and lust. We have listened to the world and its ideas until we are so caught up in the deceptions and lies we cannot distinguish between them and God’s truth. We are lost, though we sing, and praise, and do church, and live busy lives.

It is we who are faithless, like faithless Israel. It is our backsliding that must be cured.

“Break up your unplowed ground

and do not sow among thorns.

Circumcise yourselves to the Lord,

circumcise your hearts, you men of Judah

and people of Jerusalem, or my wrath

will break out and burn like fire

because of the evil you have done—

burn with no one to quench it.”

--Jer. 4:3,4

Will you continue in your worldly ways today?

Will you resist the Holy Spirit when He talks to you?

Don’t do that. God will never force His way upon you. He is not a man that needs to beg and plead, to cleverly convince, to ‘wheel and deal’ with you. He is not in business. He is God, and His Word to you stands forever. He does not change, but demands that you change, so you can receive what He has for you.

Circumcise your hearts. That means be marked with His mark of ownership, forsaking all others and being set apart from the world. You must not do things the way you’ve done them before. You must not think you can say a prayer of contrition and then continue on your way.

Today is the day you are being called to do something entirely new.

To follow Jesus, no matter the cost.

God is doing what He’s doing, and you must join Him in it, or be left behind.

God remembers you.

Will you be like those who look in the mirror and then walk away forgetting?

Will you be assigned a place with the hypocrites on that Day?

“I know your deeds, you have a reputation

of being alive, but you are dead.

Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die,

for I have not found your deeds complete

in the sight of My God.

Remember therefore,

what you have received and heard;

obey it, and repent.

But if you do not wake up,

I will come like a thief,

and you will not know

at what time I will come to you.”

--Rev. 3:1-3

BELIEF+OBEDIENCE = SALVATION. The Only Salvation Formula.

2011-12-03T14:03:00.000-07:00

A. Brother

Many of us have been taught that belief alone is salvation. Wrong, wrong and wrong again. It is belief coupled with obedience that matters.

Jesus said it continually, over and over, and the apostles and early disciples trumpeted it loudly throughout the New Testament. The Old Testament, just as surely the Word of God, declares faith accompanied by works. It is not just James, but John, Paul, Peter, and the writer of Hebrews who declare that faith without works is dead. And dead faith is no faith at all.

So why are we asking for assurance of salvation, when true faith, “saving faith”, as James says, has eluded us?

For fifty years I was a ‘Christian’. And I mean a sincere, Bible-believing, church-going “Christian’ as I thought it was defined. Yet I know now that had Christ come back, I would not have been recognized. Though I had prayed often, and considered myself to have a ‘personal relationship with Jesus Christ’, and had been ‘born again’, yet I was not obedient to the Lord, and lived my life more for my own interests than for the interests of the Lord Jesus. The fruits of the Spirit were few in my life. The fruits of self-will and self-interest were evident, except to my blinded eyes. I had not left all behind to follow Jesus. I was traveling heavy, doing my own thing, but still hoping Christ was there close by.

Many who claim Christ today have the same terrible life, doubled over with hidden doubts and sins, torn by insecurity. That’s because we can’t have assurance of salvation without proof in our own life, which comes in the form of obedience to His commands.

“What good is it, my brethren, if a man claims to have faith, but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” --James 2:14,15

Don’t we hear this?

God is saying to us that we are not saved if we don’t obey the Lord.

Want assurance of salvation? Then obey Jesus in His most basic commands.

That’s what the Apostle John reminds us continually. In his first letter he reminds us over and over that LOVE is the first obedience. And that a man cannot say he loves God without proving it by loving his brothers in practical ways.

Our love for God is proven by our love for the brethren. If you don’t love the brethren, you don’t love God. How else can it be said??? What spirit of disobedience possesses us that we do not hear this?

Our disobedience is the same disobedience Jesus hated in the religious Jews of his time. They figured every way they could around the simple commands of Scripture, in order to do all the little things they wanted to do. They created traditions that countered the very Word of God, and then expected God’s blessings!

The churches today tell us that to be a disciple of Jesus means “accepting Christ as your personal Savior”, and then living a life that consists of church attendance at least once a week, tithing 10% of your income to the church, and perhaps some daily Bible study and prayer.

And with this weak, sickly, powerless religion we are supposed to have assurance of God’s salvation.

Brethren, I declare again the ageless Word that was given us from the beginning, as the prophets gave it, and Jesus fulfilled in His life on earth, and the early Church learned it and lived it.

The man who comes to Christ must “walk as Jesus did.” --1 John 2:6

How did Jesus walk? I would say that is the most important question we’ll ever ask. It should be our constant study, our prayer, our devotion every moment of every day. To learn to walk as Jesus did. To follow His commands, which are simple, and not burdensome.

The reason some don’t have assurance of salvation is this: Many of us who claim to be Christians are not.

We are not obeying the Lord Jesus, and we have settled for some traditional form of “Christianity” that denies the very essence of sacrifice, love, and the power of God in which Jesus walked. We do not have saving faith. We have a “belief system” plus a man-made system of religious rituals that we follow, thinking that through them we will be saved.

Jesus calls us to obedience, which means death to ourselves, and His life lived through us. Paul talks about it constantly in his letters. We cannot serve both God and ourselves. If we do, we are not being saved.

This is the Narrow Gate: Christ. He is the Way. His life becomes ours. Our life becomes His.

There is no such thing as “the Christian life” or a life lived by “Christian principles”. These are phrases that deny the truth, and allow us to live lives of unbelief, patterned after the world.

True discipleship to Jesus is complete self-denial and requires living a life of love and self-sacrifice as He did.

Do you and I have the love of God within us? If we do, we will live a life that is right-side up--meaning a radical, completely committed life that reflects the Lord Jesus and His interests, and we will be a beacon of love and light in the darkness. We will stand against the forces of religion every day, to walk as Jesus walked.

CHRIST'S "TRIPLE-T" BRAND: Trouble, Trial and Tribulation

2011-11-27T15:38:00.000-07:00

TROUBLE IS OUR FRIEND

A. Brother

“Is any one of you in trouble?

He should pray.”

James 5:13

“Therefore confess your sins to each other

and pray for each other

so that you may be healed.”

James 5:16

Many of those who claim to be Christians today refuse to acknowledge trouble. Many refuse to acknowledge that trial and hardship come into our lives for a purpose. Many believe that it is important to cover up trouble, and to pretend that it doesn’t exist, and so we ignore our own trouble, smooth it over, and we do the same with the trials and troubles that come into our brother’s lives.

In particular, we have many today in the Body of Christ, those who sincerely want to know the Lord, and to serve Him, who are in trouble. They are experiencing terrible crises, of finance, of marriage, of family, of work, or of health. Hundreds of thousands of sincere, “Bible-believing” Christians today suffer from all these hard things, and many are on the edge of despair daily.

We’re suffering in our hearts because we don’t get why these things are happening. We don’t understand the purpose of trouble in our lives. Modern Christianity teaches a false version of discipleship, and many of us feel down deep that these troubles all come as God’s judgment on people who are living in some way out of God’s will.

What a foolish sentiment. Don’t we understand Christ at all? Don’t we hear the Scriptures, which abound with God’s truth about trouble?

Trouble and trial and tribulation, the “Triple-T Brand” on God’s flock of sheep, means He loves us so much He wants the depth and genuineness of our faith to be tested, and He wants to be our salvation in the midst of it. This does not mean God will miraculously lift us out of it. Many times in the Word of God we are shown that we must go through the fire, and go through the deep waters of suffering, not around them. Yet He will deliver us.

But trouble is in many ways the wonderful mercy of God in action. He must have our full attention, and He will not allow us to be distracted by complacency or lukewarmness. He will not allow us to bask in the glory of our own strength, which we often do.

James knew trouble well. And the believers in Christ he was writing to knew trouble and trial, and James wrote to that situation.

For my brothers this morning who face deep trouble, as I do, let’s take heart in the truths of James’ Word from the Lord. What are we to do if we are in trouble?

PRAY. Pray and pray and pray. Seek the Lord at every moment you can. He is the One who wants to guide you and keep you through this trouble. Not for the purpose of getting you out of it, but to teach you His power in your life. You must learn from it. You and I must learn the Presence of God, as Israel learned the Presence of God when He delivered them from the clutches of Pharoah, and brought them out of Egypt. How else would we learn God’s power and love but through great trouble and trial—so great that we cannot deliver ourselves!

Listen to what James says. He says that we are to pray, but he also says we are to confess our sins to one another, and pray for one another, and seek God’s healing. This is completely abandoned in our day. Who can we trust? Does brother trust brother to love, and not to condemn? So we hide ourselves and our troubles, and go to church and pretend, and so the Body is sickly and full of hidden pain and sorrow.

But for my brother and sister who grieve, who sorrow, who are so afraid that you will not make it through whatever trial faces you, James has another simple instruction for us.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers,

whenever you face trials of many kinds,

because you know that the testing of your faith

develops perseverance.

Perseverance must finish its work

so that you may be mature and complete,

not lacking anything.

If any of you lacks wisdom,

he should ask God, who gives generously

without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”

James 1:2-5

You see trouble is not about blame. God looks at you “without finding fault” and comes to you in your trouble to teach you His love and grace and mercy, and His power. This isn’t about you. It’s about Christ in you, and learning the Presence of God, even in your worst circumstances.

This is our simple haven. We are to lean on the Lord, talk with Him continually about our troubles, share our troubles with brothers and sisters we can trust, pray together, confess our sins to one another if we’ve sinned, and pray for healing. We must turn to the Lord only, not the world. He must answer us with His wisdom, as He has promised.

These are our instructions in times of trouble and trial.

And woe to those among us who condemn and look down their noses at the Lord’s own who are experiencing terrible afflictions. Woe to those who look at others and see their many sins, yet who don’t see their own. We know what Jesus said to the Pharisees, and the religious people who believed that holy people didn’t see trouble. We know how He feels about judgmental people.

God’s best is for those who seek Him in these terrible times. Trouble is our friend. God will give us wisdom, and we will learn perseverance and faith, and become mighty in the Spirit of God if we do these things and don’t give up.

A GIANT BUFFET OF CHRISTIAN SELF-FOCUS

2011-11-25T14:11:00.000-07:00

DISTORTION:

The Smorgasbord of Self-Focus

A. Brother

"Even from your own number men will arise

and distort the truth..."

Acts 20:30

I'm writing with a heavy heart today, as I'm overwhelmed by the massive distortions of truth perpetuated by men who call themselves believers in Christ. Just visiting the blog world--the writings of the people central to all the so-called "Christian industries" such as publishing, and music, and the arts, education, and ministry--is a journey into the chaos of self-promotion.

This is not Christ. This smorgasbord of self-focus is not Christ. The name of Christ is not mentioned, except in passing, like a reference on a resume.

Of course I serve Christ, so I do this, or that, and look at me, and at my fine, wonderful life of achievements. Of course I serve Christ, but look at me and my family, and my latest book, or CD, or degree, or conference speaking schedule. Of course I serve Jesus, that's why I'm so successful, and have a big following on all the social media sites, and why my book is being published, and I have a speaking tour set up. Of course I am a Christian, and that's why my blog has a community of thousands, and my every word is commented on by hundreds of people a day. Of course my life is an example, because so many people say nice things about me, and buy my stuff.

ME, ME, ME, I, I, I, MINE, MINE, MINE!

How lonely and ignored the Lord Jesus is today among our affluent, modern, fantabulous Christians! In reading this drivel I'm driven by the Holy Spirit to remember and read in Scripture about my Lord's ministry--how humble it was, and how He never exalted Himself. I think of Paul and the other apostles--outcasts and hated by the world, persecuted and hunted down, opposed even by many in the religious world. Rioted over in the marketplace, lowered down city walls to escape mobs, protected from religious zealots by the pagan Roman armies, shipwrecked, beaten, hungry, cold, without permanent homes, and all because of their love for Christ and their refusal to compromise with the world.

No such life for the modern, fantabulous American Christian. Why should we live in such a Way? Why should we not live lusciously delicious lives, full of success, full of ourselves? After all, we've earned it! How talented we are, and how brilliant! We have become all we need, and to boot, we have Christ and the church! The Christian mob throws its uncritical approval upon us, and garlands of praise, and so stamps us with glory!

The Lord God stands aside for this procession. He is not the subject of all this self-adoration. He does not participate. His Word stands today as it always has, and we either humble ourselves, giving all, dying to self, following Jesus, or we will be left out on the Day coming, when God's true ekklesia, His scattered, suffering, persecuted, loved, cherished, faithful remnant, will be gathered from the four winds to His arms.

Other great processions, self-congratulatory parades of so-called 'Christian' religiosity, have marched across the globe at various times in history. Where are they now? Dead and buried and forgotten. Like all man's endeavors, they pass away like the grass. But the Word of God stands forever, and His Truth will always be, and only those who obey the Lord Jesus and follow Him on the nearly forgotten Narrow Road will be there with Him when He returns.

Many across the globe have not bowed their knee to the modern, affluent, fantabulous Baal. Thousands have continued to stand, uncompromised, unbowed, silent before those who ignore them, or accuse them, as our Lord Jesus was silent before the religious Jews and Pilate.

What will you do when you find out that your celebrity, your achievements in the 'Christian world', your fine plaques and trophies, your long resume, your leadership, your popularity, your self-accomplishments, all mean nothing to Christ? What will you do when He asks you who you are? If you can't answer 'I am nothing--my life has been You, and You alone, dear Friend'--then He will have to throw away your press releases, and your framed photos of you and your adoring fans and say, "Depart from Me, I never knew you."

Is all this temporary partying worth that?

HOW LONG WILL YOU WAVER BETWEEN TWO OPINIONS?

2011-11-20T14:23:00.000-07:00

DANCING BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

A. BROTHER

"How long will you waver

(literally, 'continue this wild and futile religious dance')

between two opinions?

If the Lord is God, follow Him;

but if Baal is God, follow him."

1 Kings 18:21

This morning I am convicted in myself of my sin. When I am steadfast, I hold to God and His Word, and am convinced of His love and His truth. Jesus and I walk in fellowship, and I bask in the warmth of His Word, and even the difficulties.

But when I am hard hit by certain things, and certain situations, I falter, and sometimes waver to the point of despair. I lash out at others, at God, and feel desperately alone. I dance around seeking some kind of resolution, suddenly unsure of everything, and hurt myself and those close to me by my unfaithfulness.

This sin of 'wavering' and 'dancing between two opinions' is my struggle. God is working in me to eradicate my doubt and fear, but it is a hard, deep work, and involves extrusion of my flesh through small openings that approximate the size of a needle's eye. Very painful, and for me, at times excruciating. The impossibility speaks to the power of God being our only possible means of success, and I don't even believe in the power of God at times.

When Elijah stood before Israel on Mount Carmel and spoke these words above, he was not speaking to heathen. He was speaking to those who had the truth, who knew the truth of God, who had the Word. It is important we understand this. God's challenge to us today is to you and me, those who know about Jesus Christ, who claim His Name, who label themselves Christians.

What will we do? Will we continue in our 'dance' between the world and the Lord? Will we continue to be wholehearted in good times, and dancing the dance of fear and anger in bad?

Only Christ, and His power, can deliver us from this.

"What a wretched man I am!

Who will rescue me from this body of death?"

Romans 7:24

Paul answer immediately, having been through much pain and suffering, the crucifying of the flesh by cross, the daily dying he experienced for his love of Christ.

"Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Romans 7:25

It is only Christ. He only can deliver, and make whole. It is His Spirit in us that leads and guides us away from sin, that empowers us to live holy lives. This unholiness in me, my tendencies to sin that I hate, cannot be eradicated by my hatred of it. No matter how badly I feel after I fall, I cannot rise into new strength and courage by my anger toward my own sin. It is only Christ's power that will deliver me.

Even Jesus, my Lord, Lord of all creation, and Lord of heaven, learned obedience by the same process through which He takes us now.

"Although He was a Son,

He learned obedience from what He suffered

and once made perfect,

He became the source of eternal salvation for all..."

Hebrews 5:8

It is my only comfort this morning that Christ is with me in this. He went through it all, and became my all-sufficient, perfect Savior through the things He suffered. His perfection means my perfection is possible in Him. When Peter says, "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" he meant that Christ in us will kill the wavering, dancing old man, and make us into strong, steadfast, powerfully holy men and women, if we only understand and persevere.

Yet we are called, as Elijah called Israel, to make the choice every day.

We must wake and make the choice each new morning. Will we dance around with the world, from fear, from greed, from lust, from anger? Or will we stand with Christ, letting Him do His work in us, letting Him be the answer for us?

Brethren, I pray for you and for myself this morning. Help, Lord Jesus. Many of us waver and dance between two worlds. Many of us haven't died to ourselves, our own dreams, our own goals, our own comforts and precious worldly things. We must have your power to step across that line, forsake sin today, and be Yours completely.

Forgive me for my grave sins of doubt, of fear, of uncertainty. These are at the core of all my stupid and senseless actions. Forgive me and cleanse me, Lord Jesus, and give me Your heart, soul, mind and strength to love and to go on to perfection.

WHEN TAKING THE STAGE IS GIVING YOUR LIFE.

2011-11-14T13:29:00.000-07:00

The other day I was walking outside on a break from work. I had been complaining to my Father that so few seemed to care about Christ at all, or even to know that He exists, and that extends to those of us who claim to know Him. So few, and who are they? So few, that sometimes I shake inside with fear that there is actually no faith on earth, as our Lord Jesus questioned there would be when He returns.

So much religion, and so much posturing, and so little actual faith.

I was walking, discouraged, and was passing a bush in the landscaping, when I spotted a piece of paper out of the corner of my eye. It was mostly hidden, laying flat under the trunk of the bush. I reached in, maybe out of some compulsion to gather litter, and picked it up, ready to drop it in the trash on my way back into the office.

Stunned, I stared at the paper, and memories flooded back from the past. Thirty five years earlier, I had met a man and his wife, and his family, and helped this man briefly to set up a speaking tour in my area of the country. I had been privileged to not only hear this man speak, and to wonder at his faith, but to have my world opened up to the suffering of men and women and children who dared to follow Christ in harrowing, life-threatening circumstances.

I stared at the paper, which was one page, old and dried out, torn from a book. It was a story, one I'd forgotten completely, of how this man I knew briefly in my life had been alone, facing his own Gethsemane and Golgotha, and had proven himself "one of the few".

It was the story of what happened in Romania when the communists, set up by Hitler's fall, slipped into the power vacuum in eastern Europe cleverly led by Stalin. In Richard's country, they disguised themselves as friendly comrades of religion, and called a religious conference, inviting all pastors and leaders of all faiths and denominations. Romania was largely Christian at that time, with Catholics and Protestants solidly entrenched throughout the country. Most of the people in this country would have called themselves Christians.

The 4,000 delegates to this convention were standing and speaking of solidarity with the new communist government, and how they were thankful that this new regime would partner with them in building a great society, full of equality and how they would support it. Richard stayed silent, listening in disbelief as man after man who claimed Christ stood and praised the communists, and vowed to create a new, more perfect society with them.

His wife, Sabina, who had recently brought their first son into the household, leaned over to Richard and said, "Richard, stand up and wash away this shame from the face of Christ."

Richard knew what would happen. "If I speak, you will lose your husband."

Sabina replied, "I do not wish to have a coward for a husband."

Pastor Richard Wurmbrand took the stage in the grand hall. A great silence fell, because this young pastor was well-known already, and considered the "Billy Graham of Romania" in his day, leading youth rallies that were bringing many to a new, vital faith in Christ out of the dead traditionalism that was all around.

He began to preach, and said, "Delegates, it is our duty not to praise earthly powers that come and go, but to glorify God the creator and Christ the Savior, who died for us on the cross."

Pandemonium broke out. Communist officials jumped up and denounced him, and pulled the plug on the sound system. Richard continued to preach the Truth from the stage. Gradually, the audience began to applaud, and then to rise up and chant in defense of this lone pastor, "The Pastor! The Pastor! The Pastor!" they cried, finding courage in the act of one man.

The congress went on chanting long after the microphone wires were cut and the event was ended for the day.

Not long after, Richard Wurmbrand was walking to church when a group of secret police kidnapped him. He was not seen for many years. In fact, his wife and son and all who knew him believed he had been killed.

In truth, Richard was led to a dank, empty, cold, wet prison cell 3 stories below the ground in an ancient Romanian prison. He was kept there, not seeing another human being except his torturers and his guards, for the next 8 years. He endured complete silence except when his interrogators took him to try to beat or cajole a confession out of him. He was alone, only Christ with Him in his cell. He didn't see sun, moon, stars or flowers. He didn't see anyone he knew. When he finally did come up to a regular prison cell, with other men, he could not even write his name or remember anything but the name of Christ. He had forgotten the many sermons he'd composed. He'd forgotten almost everything. Toward the end, he could not do anything to keep himself alive, but trudge around his cell, repeating the name of Jesus over and over. Christ was all, and Christ never left him.

Wurmbrand was in prison many more years, until God moved on some who would ransom Richard from the communists, who loved money above all, and he would become a voice in the wilderness in America and the Western countries telling the true story of what happens when we lose faith. When we become compromised with the world. Telling the true story of what it means to be one of the few with Christ. He would reveal the plight of thousands of true saints throughout the modern world, working to help them, as nobody had been able to help him.

I knew Richard as a thin, tall, very dignified elderly man (he was only around 65 years old, but to me appeared as 90), who walked around in his stocking feet because they couldn't abide shoes after being broken in beatings so many times. He was kind, and soft-spoken, and always seemed pre-occupied with something intensely important.

The young man (me) who set up his speaking tour in the Northwest must have seemed immature to the point of embarrassment. I looked at him and at Sabina, and talked with them, and felt like I was on another planet. I was concerned about everything around me, and worried about how the schedule was going, and worried about the microphones, the platform, the seating, the attendance, and all else. I know now that Richard and Sabina had been through so much (Sabina had spent years in prison herself, losing not only her husband, but not knowing anything about her son), that they considered their present circumstances heaven in comparison. They had achieved the state of faith where they trusted Christ to build His own Kingdom.

I know now that God had me with them to teach me about Christ's few. They were to be examples to me, though ignored for many years, of how to stand for Christ, and how to endure hardship like good soldiers for Jesus. They were living symbols for me, and now, here I stood, so many years later, having wasted enormous amounts of time and energy being that man consumed by fears and doubts, that man consumed by lusts and worldly desires, holding in my hand pages 63 and 64 of "Jesus Freaks", a publication from somewhere, from which this single page had been torn and tossed to end up under a bush for me to find.

Coincidence? You tell me.

The God of the Universe never gives up on His chosen. It is up to us to respond and be ready when our congress is called, and the thousands stand to praise the enemy and join the parade.
Exactly where my own earthly country is headed right now.

Will we risk all to stand and speak? Or will we be so weakened and compromised, so hardened to sin, so dependent on the world, that we actually become Satan's tools in his quest to rid the earth of all who name the name of Christ?

What if our spouses, instead of encouraging us as Sabina did, to stand and wipe the shame off the face of Christ, implore us to sit down and shut up for the sake of all we hold dear, all we've worked for?

You few. You chosen. Christ's simple band of fishermen, tax collectors and other sinners. Wake up and listen today. Can you not hear the voice of our Lord, saying, "For whoever wants to save his own life will lose it, but whoever loses his own life for Me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?..if any man is ashamed of Me and My Words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His Father's glory with His holy angels." Mark 8:35-38

All courage in Christ today, brethren.

A. Brother

PROPHETS OR FARMERS?

2011-11-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

PROPHETS OR FARMERS

A. Brother

“On that day every prophet

will be ashamed of his prophetic vision.

He will not put on a prophet’s garment of hair

in order to deceive. He will say,

‘I am not a prophet.

I am a farmer; the land has been

my livelihood since my youth.’

If someone asks him,

‘What are these wounds on your body?’

he will answer, ‘The wounds I was given

at the house of my friends.’”

Zech. 13:4-6

I am not a prophet. I am a farmer. The Word of God is the seed, and I have been given the task of sowing it. I am not responsible for the increase of it, only the sowing. I am not responsible for the reaping of it, only the sowing. The wounds on my body are the wounds of my Friend, Christ. This is a simple revelation, but one we must listen to.

Too many of us are zealous to do the Lord’s work. The Lord requires us to put off the natural man, and to “put on Christ”, who will do His work in us, and who will advance His work through us without our particular help. The importance of this putting off of self, and putting on of Christ cannot be overemphasized. So many of us strive and strive, we take up a “work for God” and do it in the natural man, we undertake tasks for God, we run off and do things for God. Yet the important work, the making of each of us into a man or woman of God, we neglect and ignore.

We have been raised in a wrong way of thinking. Even in the churches we have stressed the doing of things. We have stressed the building of things, the taking hold of things, the effort of things. We talk of “living the Christian life” and “doing the Lord’s work” and we haven’t died at all, we have just taken up a work in our own strength and our own hands.

In the calling of Abraham, God did the impossible. He took this old man, and his old wife, and he made them parents of an entire nation. He did something, not out of the efforts of the old man, but out of His own power. This resulted in glory for God alone, and not for Abraham. Abraham’s only glory was that he “believed God and it was reckoned unto him as righteousness.” (see Romans 4:18-25)

This man is a picture of Christ in us. It is God who calls, God who wills, God who works in us for His good pleasure. It is none of our effort that benefits the Kingdom. Our faith is our glory, because it brings glory to God alone. Until we see this, we are still viewing Christ as someone outside ourselves, who we serve because we want to earn His favor, to be significant. We are striving because of the emptiness inside us, which many of us know to be the truth from experience. Even those of us who’ve claimed Christ as Lord for many years KNOW this emptiness, this striving after wind.

The wounds of Christ are His marks in us. What does this mean? It means we must die, and be marked with the death of Christ in us before we can experience His life in us.

Too many of us claim to speak for Christ. Yet we live without scars and wounds, and we have never gone up to the “Place of the Skull”, Golgotha, carrying our cross, dying to self, and having God turn His face away during our time of dying. When Jesus was on the cross, He cried out in his natural man, “MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?” Yet the Father had to turn away in his grief, and not save His only Son, but let Him die for us. At that moment, Jesus became man in the way that allows Him to know every suffering we will ever go through. So the Father must turn away and let us die many times in this life on earth, because He knows, even in His grief over our pain, that we must go through the dying in order to have Life.

The small things are the significant things. The things that go unnoticed by the world, and sadly, often by the people of God. These are our Golgothas. The places of dying. These are necessary for Resurrection to take place in us.

Then, with Paul, we will understand, and say:

“Since you died with Christ…

Since then you’ve been raised with Christ…”

Col.

2:20;3:1

In this new place, this place of resurrection beyond the grave:

“Here there is no Greek or Jew,

circumcised or uncircumcised,

barbarian, Scythian, slave or free,

but Christ is all, and in all.”

Col.

3:11

Brethren, we must stop our striving to be someone in Christ. We must stop working to be someone of significance. We must stop working to do the Lord’s work. It is Christ in us that does His work. We must rest in Him, and let Him work. His work in us will be enough.

DON'T BE LED ASTRAY BY TODAY'S SERVANTS OF SATAN.

2011-11-06T14:17:00.000-07:00

MASQUERADE

A. Brother

“But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived

by the serpent’s cunning, your minds

may somehow be led astray

from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

Or if someone comes to you

and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached…

you put up with it easily enough.”

2 Cor. 11:3,4

“…Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.

It is not surprising, then, if his servants

masquerade as servants of righteousness.”

2 Cor. 11:14,15

Since Christ came, there have been those who knew Him, and preached Him truly and faithfully. These men, like Paul, suffered much to follow Christ, and were examples of his love and sacrifice. They lived the “sincere and pure devotion” which Paul talks about here to the people they brought into the Kingdom of God.

They were examples to the flock of Christ’s compassion, humility, and generosity, giving of themselves without thought of being paid back, and desiring only that men and women find Christ for themselves, and that they be taught the truth consistent with Scripture and the life of Jesus. From the apostles on down, these men and women are our examples for life and service in Christ.

But today, as always, we have many who do not preach and teach the Jesus of the Bible. They are fakers and deceivers, deceiving and being deceived, and take many with them down the path of disobedience and confusion. Our churches in affluent America have gone down this path with alarming speed over the past decades, growing fat and complacent, leaving the elementary truths of God’s Word behind in their love affair with the world and its ways.

Our leaders, the so-called shepherds of the flock, have led the way in being deceived, and in accepting the wages of the world.

The vast majority of our church traditions, practiced daily, weekly and monthly among the churches calling themselves by Christ’s Name, are weak and faulted, based upon the traditions of men rather than on the revealed will of God in His Word.

The traditional church service. The Sunday School. The tithe. The sacred days, like the Sabbath, Christmas, Easter. The role of pastors. The clergy/laity division. All are dangerously removed from Biblical teaching, and must be examined as man-made traditions, much like those gradually adopted by the Jews over the centuries, which Jesus our Lord spoke against, and still speaks against in His Word. Our desire to have religion and its trappings has resulted in a maze of religious tradition that entraps people who would know Christ from finding the way to Him.

God abhors religion. He hates man-created religious tradition, pomp and ceremony. He despises our attempts to rein in the Holy Spirit and put Him in the confines of liturgy and rigid conformity to comfortable schedules and staid religious structures.

Who are we to stand against the Word of God? To ignore His clear Ways? To replace His power with our placid, powerless religion? To preach a gospel other than that which Paul and the other apostles preached? Who are we to disobey the God of Heaven, who reached down in Christ to pluck us out of dead religion, and grabbed us away from the world and its basic principles? Who are we to mold ourselves after the weak and miserable traditions of men, instead of holding fast to the Truth that is the power of God in us?

As Paul told the Corinthian ekklesia of God in the passage quoted above, they were already being led astray by smooth-talking professional preachers and teachers who were more interested in securing lucrative and steady employment than in serving Christ by taking up their cross of pain and suffering. So today, we have a professional clergy that is dedicated to continuing the puny traditions of men, so that they can thrive in steady, salaried, comfortable positions of prominence.

If Paul were preaching today, he’d be standing against this unholy system of paid prophets and secure shepherds, because he stood against it in his day.

The tithe we preach and teach today has absolutely no place in the teaching of the New Covenant. The teaching of the New Covenant in Christ is giving, without reference or basis in tithing. Generosity, love, sharing, and giving up all one has is the new standard. Love for the brethren is the key concept in giving, and support for those who preach and teach God’s Word among us is expected, not in worldly business paradigms, but in spontaneous, abundant, loving provision out of hearts full of gratitude to Christ. Our giving to Christ is not counted in percentages, but in possibilities.

The church services we hold have no resemblance to those held among the scattered ekklesia of God in New Testament days. Their coming together was marked by the leading of the Holy Spirit, and though done in orderly fashion, was marked by the enthusiastic input of all in the Body that were present, with songs and teachings being brought by many, and confession of sin and prayer for healing of those sins being a regular part of their gatherings. The music was spontaneous and came from the heart. The gifts of the Holy Spirit were allowed to be manifest among the brethren as He led, and the unfettered growth of the Body in love and strength and encouragement was the result. There was mourning and grieving, repentance and confession as well as joy and praise. There was no “professional” staff hired to plan and develop sophisticated service traditions, and to do all the leading and teaching and preaching and music themselves.

Leaders were expected to shepherd the flock, down in the trenches, loving and working individually with their sheep. They knew their sheep as Jesus knows them, doing the difficult work of feeding and caring for them, as Jesus did. Every sheep was expected to grow and contribute, and the leaders were charged with teaching and preaching, making sure the flock learned how to follow Jesus, and going after the strays personally, as Jesus would. The leaders were charged also with training others to lead, and growing up others into the maturity in Christ that would allow them to teach others how to follow Christ.

There were no special days, because the birth of Christ, His death, and His resurrection were celebrated in the daily life of the Body. They were in the process of dying to self, and being resurrected to new life, and it wasn’t a once a year thing. It was daily. That’s why they met together often, as often as they could, because they loved to be together, and didn’t need special days and special events to make it worthwhile.

There were no staid traditions. It was each day with Christ, each day by faith and not by sight, each day in danger and difficulty on the Narrow Road with their Savior. They, like many Christians in the non-affluent countries today, knew that following Christ meant exposure to mistreatment, and hardship. As it would for us in

America

if we truly followed Christ, instead of playing dead religious games.

We must fall on our knees and repent, asking the Lord God for forgiveness, and for His will in His Word to be revealed to us in freshness by His Spirit. We must weep and mourn and wail as James says, seeking God’s forgiveness for our apostasy and comfortable disobedience. We ask God for the wrong things, and we ask Him with wrong motives, to spend them on our own spiritual comforts and pleasures.

Woe to those who lead the flock of God into the wrong pastures! You who eat of the best, and sit at the seats of honor at the banqueting tables, and hold the pulpits away from the Lord’s people so that you can have the preeminence.

Woe to you who treat the Lord’s holy offices of leadership as a career, and your positions as secure ways of income!

Woe to you leaders who lead with unexamined and untested lives, emulating not Paul and the other apostles, not the Lord Jesus Himself, but the worldly leaders around you. Woe to you who rely on worldy management principles to govern the One Holy Nation of God!

“Woe to you who are complacent in Zion,

and to you who feel secure on Mount Samaria,

you notable men of the foremost nation,

to whom the people of Israel come…

You lie on beds inlaid with ivory and lounge on your couches.

You dine on choice lambs and fattened calves.

You strum away on your harps like David

and improvise on musical instruments.

You drink wine by the bowlful and use the finest lotions,

but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph.

Therefore you will be the first to go into exile;

your feasting and lounging will end.”

Amos 6:1-7

Listen to the Word of God, kneel and repent of your wickedness, before He comes and removes you from your exalted and comfortable position. Grieve over the ruin of the churches, put aside your self-absorption and insistence upon your security, and become like the Lord Jesus, the Servant, and like the apostles and prophets who are given us as examples in Scripture.

Abandon Broadway, and take the Narrow Roads with Christ, and find true fulfillment in your calling, or suffer the loss of all you have worked for!

Sheep of the One Flock, heed your One Shepherd’s voice, and leave the dead religious traditions of men. Follow Christ, your Lord and find His joy, His peace, His love, His Way. Leave the men and women who “masquerade as servants of righteousness” but preach a Jesus other than the Jesus preached by the Word of God. Leave them and follow Christ, for in the final Day, you will have no excuse!

WHEN YOU HEAR OF WARS AND REVOLUTIONS.

2011-11-03T06:29:00.000-07:00

"When you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened.

These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away."

Luke 21:9

Brothers and Sisters,

This morning I hear the voice of Christ

telling us to calm down,

and not to worry.

Too many of us are troubled constantly

by the seemingly out-of-control events

in the world.

Do not worry, and don't be afraid.

This is all in the Father's hand.

We are in the Father's hand.

Nothing can happen to those who cling to Jesus

except what the Father deems necessary.

Take this into your life today.

Be strong, and of good courage,

for Christ has overcome the world.

A. Brother

HAVE YOU JOINED THE CULT OF SELF?

2011-10-24T16:39:00.002-07:00

THE CULT OF SELF

A. Brother

“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us,

that we should be called the children of God!

And that is what we are!

The reason the world did not know us

is that it did not know Him.”

--1 John 3:1

When we look around at our cultures and our churches, we see a self-focus that has become so pervasive it has twisted even many of the faithful into mere shadows of what God intends us to be. This self-focus is a worldly focus, and turns our light into darkness, our good deeds into nothing.

Scripture teaches that our “self”—this unique, God-created person—is prone to sin, subject to decay, and that we must deny our “selves” in order to enter the Kingdom of God. (Mark 8:34) Christ in us completes us. When Christ inhabits us by His Spirit, He helps us let go of the old man, and behold, all things become new in Him. (2 Cor. 5:17) This new man is not full of self, but full of Christ, and led and empowered by the Spirit of Christ within. (Col. 3:3)

We are dead, and our lives are now with Christ, in Christ, and His life is in us, in this new man, created by God, reborn into freshness, and able to live the Christ-life by His power, and to His glory. Living the successful Christ-life has everything to do with dying to self, and depends upon that death of self for its beginnings.

However, many of us have been taught a self-focused gospel, which has come out of the churches in recent generations, especially in America. This self-focus is really like a cult. Its adherents are adamant about their personal rights to a good life, their political rights to freedom, their entitlements to receive the blessings of God because they claim the Name of Christ.

This gospel is not the true gospel of Christ, or it would teach what Jesus taught.

Jesus taught self-denial. Jesus taught us to be other-focused. Jesus showed us how, with His life of self-sacrifice for our sakes. So how could we have been led astray by this Cult of Self? How could we follow teachings that fly in the face of all that our Lord Jesus exemplified? I don’t have the answer to that question, but we’ve done it.

Think about Satan’s temptations of the Lord Jesus when He was out in the desert, practicing what He was soon going to preach by denying Himself food for forty days, and spending all His time with His Father preparing for ministry. What did Satan tempt our Lord with? Self-gratification, self-glorification, and self-focus. (Matt. 4:1-11) It was all about Jesus’ inner self, His manhood, His personhood, His pride, His need for attention, even His placement in the world. Satan tests us in the same ways, and many of us are failing the test, because we have been unprepared.

In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus left His disciples while He went to pray in agony about the death He was going to die the next day. How did He admonish them in that moment? “Watch and pray that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” (Matt. 26:41) Yes, it is our flesh that is weak, and we not only experience these temptations to self-focus that Jesus did, but because we have been taught this self-focused gospel, we have often fallen to them.

Brothers, I admonish us, and I pray for us, that we would give up our membership in this Cult of Self. There are many of those who claim Christ whose entire life is centered around themselves, their families, their churches, their jobs, their possessions, their activities and hobbies, their time, their efforts. It’s all about us. It’s all about me. It’s all about my fulfillment as a person. Our entire society is geared to this self-focus, and we’ve bought into it.

We even preach Christ as if He’s the self-help guru, ready to bring us to self-fulfillment by following Him!

What a lie! He’s going to bring us to self-death, so that in our new, God-wrought personhood, Christ is all, and we are nothing except His Sons and His Daughters. As John cries out in joy, we are children of God now, and what a privilege! Though the world hates us, we are His and His alone, and find our fulfillment in that fact.

How dare we preach a gospel that is other than that handed down to us in Scripture! When Christ comes back, will He find faith on earth?

Those who seek Him will find Him, and when He returns, they will find their lives as promised, for eternity.

“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but

whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”

--Matt. 16:25

OUR GREAT SINS: A CONFESSION FOR THE MODERN AFFLUENT CHRISTIAN CHURCHES

2011-10-16T14:53:00.000-07:00

OUR GREAT SINS:

A CONFESSION FOR

MODERN

CHRISTIANS

A. Brother

With those who have been confronted by sin: their own sin foremost, and then the sins of the so-called churches of Christ, I bow before the God of Heaven, and seek His forgiveness for all of us.

Oh, Lord God Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth;

I am overwhelmed with grief and sadness over my sins,

and the sins of all those who claim the Name of Christ.

We have departed from Your Word.

We have not listened to Your prophets.

We have ignored the simple commands of Scripture.

We have left the Narrow Road that our Lord Jesus

asks us to walk with Him, and have built superhighways,

freeways, and high-speed trains with our own hands.

We have left the simple, steep, footpath of Christ that

winds its way through the mountains and valleys,

preferring instead to bulldoze our own wide trails,

flat, smooth and free of obstacles.

We have built enormous, comfortable lodgings for ourselves,

while Your House lies in ruins.

We have designed beautiful, gracious religious buildings,

and built them at great expense

to satisfy our own cravings for recognition,

while our brothers in need go unrecognized and

the poor among us go unfed.

We have taught a gospel that is not a gospel,

which allows us to come to church and participate

without true repentance and renewal in our lives.

We have accepted and embraced the world’s ways,

marketing You like a commodity,

presenting Christ as a product,

selling our way of life like a better mousetrap.

We have given up on You.

We have left the Way, and planned our own trip.

We are captive to the kings and princes of this world,

yet claim we are free.

We are slaves to our own affluence,

rich in land and homes, cars and businesses,

electronic gadgets and leisure time,

yet are grindingly poor in Your eyes.

We have ignored You, and so You ignore us.

Our meetings, our festivals, our celebrations, our banquets,

our concerts, our shouting and loud worship, our solemn

assemblies, our processions, our programs, our curricula, our

advanced degrees, our fine educational institutions, our vast

entertainment industries, our constant activities—all are

an offense to You, and a bore.

Please forgive me, and forgive the sins of Your people.

Have mercy, Oh, Lord, and don’t sweep us away

with the lost on the Day of Christ.

May Your people return to You,

in true repentance,

in true saving faith,

in love for You and one another.

May we leave all other ways behind,

and follow Jesus, the Way.

May we sell all we have to obtain

the pearl of great price,

the Kingdom of God.

May we be willing to lose our own lives

so that we may gain Christ.

May we decrease and become nothing,

so Christ Jesus may become everything in us.

May the churches abandon their own plans

and schemes in favor of your revealed Word.

May our leaders repent of their sins,

leading us to You instead of away.

May you forgive us, and Your great

mercy be upon the modern, affluent,

self-satisfied ‘Christian’ churches.

When you discipline us, remember

to keep a remnant for Yourself, as

Your Word promises. Have mercy on

us, Lord, and save us.

CROWDS OF CASUAL OBSERVERS

2011-10-12T07:43:00.000-07:00

"Then you will say,

'We ate and drank with you,

and you taught in our streets.'

But He will reply,

'I don't know you

or where you come from.

Away from me

all you evildoers!'"

Luke 13:26,27

Many are avoiding the Narrow Gate. Many want to hang around Jesus like pals at a party, eating and drinking, coming for the fun stuff, the big event, and counting themselves part of the crowd of Jesus' followers.

Jesus dispels any thoughts of the effectiveness of this ruse. In Luke chapter 13 He tells us in harrowing detail what will happen to those who make this error--this completely arrogant assumption that they are Jesus' true friends--just because they come around at party time.

Jesus told this crowd of casual observers, as He tells us now, that the only Way into the Kingdom of God is through Him. Not by being on the A-list at the local Christian celebrity event, but by walking with Him on the Narrow Road, the road of sacrifice and peril, the road of risk and loss, the path that leads through Gethsemane and Golgotha, the Way of the cross and the empty tomb.

Are you asking Him today for this life? Are you willing to change what you're doing to achieve a different result? Are you and I willing to forsake the crowd of casual observers, the safe play-callers and color commentators, the theater-box of the critic and the armchair of the spectator, for the blood, sweat and tears of a contestant? Like Paul said, are we willing to enter the real race to win the prize of our high calling in Christ Jesus?

Are you a participant or a spectator? Don't find out on the day when Christ is revealed. Then it will be too late, and Christ will turn to you and speak those terrible words He spoke to the religious partiers in Luke 13.

"Enter through the Narrow Gate.

For wide is the gate and broad is the road

that leads to destruction,

and many enter through it.

But small is the gate

and narrow the road

that leads to life,

and only a few find it."

Matthew 7:13,14

Your brother,

A. Brother

NOT LACKING ANYTHING MEANS BEING MATURE AND COMPLETE

2011-09-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

NOT LACKING ANYTHING

A. Brother

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds,

because you know that the testing of your faith

develops perseverance.

Perseverance must finish its work

so that you may be mature and complete,

not lacking anything.”

James 1:2-4

“Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial,

because when he has stood the test,

he will receive the crown of life

that God has promised to those who love Him.”

James 1:12

Do I want to be mature and complete in Christ? Then I will be willing to take my trials with joy, facing them boldly and confidently in our Lord Jesus.

Perseverance is the character trait we often lack. We are not complete and mature because we don’t persevere under trial. We don’t face our trials in love and hope and joy, because we’ve been taught wrongly. We’ve been taught, either by direct words, or by default attitudes around us, that trials come to those who are disobedient to God, and that severe trials especially are signs of sin, and are avoided by the godly. After all, are we not judged righteous by the results of our actions? Do we not reap what we sow?

These misuses of Scripture are rampant today among some Christians. They judge in a worldly way, which is according to appearances, and not God’s way, which is to discern the attitudes and intentions of the heart. Only God can judge these inner things, and that’s why God doesn’t require judgment on our part, only grace and mercy.

We are to bear one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2), not judge each other in our trials. The source and the manifestation of the trials are not our concern. Our concern is toward our brother or sister, no matter what the trial they go through. One of the commonly held misconceptions is that I should judge the validity of the needs that people have before I give to them when they ask for help. That flies directly in the face of Jesus’ own Word:

“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

--Luke 6:30,31

Love is the answer to every question. Love is the guiding principle for us, whether we are the recipient of the trial, or the observer of a brother’s trial. We are going to be held accountable for our own attitudes and intentions, and God, who sends His rain on the just and the unjust, will worry about our brother’s attitudes and intentions. We just love, as God loves us, and it takes care of our part.

When we are going through trials, we are to turn to our brothers in Christ for help. The “rugged individualism” which has captured many people as a result of its lionization in modern American society is hogwash, and unscriptural. God never created us to be independent, selfish, and living alone. We were never intended to “find ourselves,” we were created and called by God to be found in Him, and in the Body of Christ together. We are “called out to be together” (Ekklesia), the Greek word given us over a hundred times in the New Testament to describe the people of God. Emphasis is on the word TOGETHER. We were not meant to face our trials alone, which was taught faithfully throughout the New Testament by Paul, James, John, and Peter. They were with the Lord Jesus personally, who taught them these things before and after His resurrection, and instructed them to follow His Way. It was to the be Way of Love, and especially centered around the love of the brothers, which meant they would stand by one another in their trials.

That meant they were to be together, living as citizens of a New Kingdom, established by Jesus, and based upon the principle of love, mercy and grace, not judgment, rules and regulations.

Today, brother, you may face “trials of many kinds.” Together, we must help each other to persevere, so that we can, together, receive the crown of life.

MODERN AFFLUENT CHRISTIANITY IS A DEAD RELIGION

2011-09-27T08:49:00.002-07:00

MODERN AFFLUENT CHRISTIANITY IS A DEAD RELIGION

A. Brother

“I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit—I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel.” --Romans 9:1-3

Paul is speaking through the Holy Spirit to us today in these passages in Romans. The entire evangelical Christian world, the millions who call various churches their own, who inhabit the membership rolls and pews and chairs of the thousands of church buildings throughout our affluent and modern countries, must look at these powerful and important Words from the Lord again. For we, the privileged, the entitled---those who call themselves Christians and consider ourselves lights to the world and leading the procession of God’s people—may be lost ourselves, and in danger of being cut off from the Kingdom when Christ comes to call His own from the four winds.

How can I say this? The parallels between the situation in Israel during Paul’s time and the situation of the modern western affluent churches in our time are striking and frightening.

The Jews relied on their spiritual pedigrees, their traditions, their adherence to principles and religious laws for their salvation.

So our modern churches talk about salvation by faith, but in actuality, practice a salvation that it earned by church attendance, Bible study, tithing, and “having a personal relationship with God”. There is little understanding of what salvation really is, and much unbelief among those who are claiming to follow Christ. There is the problem of sin hidden--sin not confessed and forsaken--and the Body of Christ is weak because of these things.

We trust in our creative worship, thinking that somehow if we just present ourselves with better music, and take up artistic endeavors for God with more gusto, and sing louder and hold our hands up higher, that He will be pleased with us.

We trust in our well-crafted and delivered sermons, our well-designed and acoustically-pleasing sanctuaries, our well-trained and well-paid staff, our well-striped parking lots and well-lit meeting rooms.

We trust in our many books, and our vast curricula, and our audio tapes and our media.

In other words, we trust in our own work—the work of our hands—to bring us closer to God.

This sin is the essential sin of Adam and Eve, and of Cain. It is as old as man. It is not new to God, and He is never fooled by such clever little pretenses.

Just as it didn’t fool Him when the Jews tried it, over and over and over again through thousands of years of history, so He is not fooled by modern affluent Christians, who try to bamboozle Him with this religious nonsense.

It is just another way of earning salvation. It is just another way of creating a religious front that covers up the inside of the cup and dish that are filthy and full of greed and corruption.

Why are we in this situation? How did we progress to this point?

Brethren, many of us have been seduced by the world and its charms, and have adopted the world’s ways into the churches. Just as the Jews had succumbed to their ideas of what would impress God and earn them His favor, so have we.

But in the meantime, we are disobedient to the most basic commands of Christ.

We don’t love others, and we don’t take care of one another’s needs in the Body. We don’t give up our lives for Jesus, and walk the narrow, unpopular road, taking up our crosses daily to live against the current of godlessness and evil within our society. We don’t understand salvation as obedience to Christ, but we think of it as license to live a good life now, and to have all the things we’ve wanted.

We are like the Israel of Paul’s day, who prided themselves on looking good, on doing the right things, on being regarded as spiritual in the eyes of the world, yet who were spiritually bankrupt in God’s eyes, having the form of religion without God’s power and glory being revealed.

This is a call to repentance from dead religion. Many are estranged from the churches now because they see nothing in them that differs from the world. And so they have more discernment than many who inhabit the pews. Perhaps they are more honest than we are.

God’s salvation is by faith alone. Is there anything in your life today that requires faith? Does anything in your church life reflect complete and utter dependence on our Father and His power? Or is it all about us? Is it all about presentation, and performance? Is it all about making ourselves feel good about how spiritual we are?

God’s true believers, those who trust Christ, are dependent wholly on Him for everything. The do not trust in themselves or their religion. Even if that “religion” happens to be what we consider enlightened, entitled, and privileged modern, affluent Christianity.

The time has come to separate ourselves from this charade. God’s chosen are “children of the promise” –Rom. 9:8

A promise is future. We live now in daily dying, dying to ourselves, our religious ways, our ideas and plans and goals and dreams. We live now looking forward to the City whose Builder and Maker is God.

God’s chosen live in tents now, preferring to suffer with the children of God than to live lives of luxury and comfort on earth. Children of the promise do not look for their best life now. They look to let Christ live His best in us now. His chosen live by faith, and walk by faith, not relying on religious pretenses or pedigrees.

Leave your own efforts, and the ridiculous and embarrassing parade of evangelical religion.

Be saved and obey the Lord Jesus, coming out of the world, not striving to copy and emulate its ways.

ARE YOU CALLED TO PREPARE GOD'S PEOPLE?

2011-09-25T12:37:00.000-07:00

THE CALL TO PREPARE GOD’S PEOPLE

A. Brother

“Many of the people of Israel

will he bring back to the Lord their God.

And he will go on…to make ready a people

prepared for the Lord.”

Luke 1:16,17

There are those God is calling as John the Baptist was called. The Spirit of God is searching the hearts of men now, to find those who will obey the Lord God in this call.

God’s choices will be startling to many, because these called ones will be lowly and discarded by the world. They will have no earthly pedigree, no outward signs that give an indication why God would choose them.

But these men and women will be branded with the brand marks of Christ, His wounds, His scars, His fullness of the Spirit. They will walk in obscurity, but their cries will be heard by many of God’s lost ones.

God’s chosen vessels will be purified through fire, and be tested beyond their own limits by flood and famine and war. They will know the Lord, and will have His Word written in their hearts. They will be as the apostles were, expending themselves physically and mentally, their bodies broken for the Christ who was broken for them. They will not worry about food, clothing and shelter, but will seek the Kingdom first. Their knees will be calloused, their hearts will be soft.

These men and women will make ready the people of God for the Lord’s Coming. They will speak anything they hear from the Father, and they will do His will, walk His Way, love with His love, and give with His unlimited grace. They will speak only the Truth of Scripture, and not defend the ways of men.

These men and women will go to the cross for Jesus, as He went to the cross for them. They will not hold onto worldly goals, nor fight for anything less than Christ in His people. These prophets and leaders, unrecognized and unappreciated by many, will nevertheless bring back the ‘ekklesia’—the ‘called out to be together’ people of God—to readiness to receive the Kingdom of Christ.

“And he will go on before the Lord,

in the Spirit and power of Elijah…”

Luke 1:17

These called ones will be filled with the Spirit of God, not just in word, but in deed, and will exhibit the love of God, the fearlessness of Jesus, the power of the Spirit to call men and women to repentance out of their lives of compromise and sin.

“And the child grew and became strong in spirit,

and he lived in the desert

until he appeared publicly to Israel.”

Luke 1:80

These men and women, like Moses, like John, like many of the prophets before them, and like their Lord Jesus Christ, will be nothing in the eyes of the world. They will be veterans of the desert, long periods of obscurity and suffering. They will have been forgotten by almost everyone, but not by their God. The Lord will call them out, and they will witness of what they know by experience—what they have learned in the furnaces of affliction—and teach others to persevere in Christ to the end.

The truth of God, from His Word, will be their primary concern. They will not be swayed by religious tradition and weak and miserable principles of this world. They will be “eyewitnesses and servants of the Word.” --Luke 1:2

The results of their lives, though given up freely for others, will be life in Christ for many. The fruit of their hearts will be love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, humility, faith, and self control. They will call many to repentance, and example the life of Jesus among His people. They will build up the Bride prepared for Christ, which looks ugly, poor, and in rags to the world, but is beautiful to her Betrothed, who looks on the inside, not the outside.

Today, there are those reading this who are called to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. To bring the Word of repentance to the modern, affluent, self-satisfied churches who are really “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” --Rev. 3:17

You know who you are. God is calling you, as he has called from the beginning of time for those who will obey Him. As the apostles, after being filled with power and the Spirit of God to bring the Word of Christ, experienced opposition and hardship, so God has been preparing you in the desert trials of your life to stand up and shout from the rooftops what God has whispered in your ear.

Today, we must obey the Lord, and not men.

Let us obey His voice, no matter how full of fear and trembling we are at what might happen—at the opposition and the anger, the abandonment of others, the worldly hatred that will come our way. Let us speak out, as Peter, James, John, Stephen, Andrew, and the others did, whether it means a painful death, or exile. Let us go outside the gates of comfortable, self-satisfied churchianity, preaching the true gospel of Christ, and our Lord, by His power, will lead many out of bondage to dead religion, and worldly evils.

“Go, stand in the temple courts,” he said,

“and tell the people the full message of this new life.”

Acts 5:20

THE INFANTILE CHURCHES DEMAND MILK, NOT SOLID FOOD.

2011-09-20T08:45:00.000-07:00

THE INFANTILE CHURCHES

A. Brother

“We have much to say about this, but…you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish between good and evil.”

--Hebrews 5:11-14

True prophets of the Word of God do not abridge or water down God’s Word to His People. Listen to this, modern churches who claim to serve Christ.

We have ignored the commands of the Lord Jesus in order to play around in the spiritual nursery. We are slow to learn about the true righteousness that Jesus requires of His disciples because we are busy slopping about in the milk on our

high-chair tray.

We would rather stay babies in Christ, letting our Father watch over us as we splash safely around in our wading pool at the park, then to “go on to maturity.” –Heb. 6:1

Not content with the solid food He places before us, we demand the milk bottle instead, wanting to hear over and over again about the basics.

“Tell us again,” we cry, “about Jesus dying for my sins, and about His wonderful sacrifice for me, and how He loves me, and tell me again, Daddy, the stories from the Bible about David and Goliath, and Joshua, and let’s sing another song about faith, and about joy. And let’s have cookies with our milk, today!”

The Father is waiting impatiently for us to embark on the journey of spiritual maturity. We have played around long enough.

Brothers, God is not pleased. Our Father is weary of our infantile demands for milk, and our spiritual “Peter Pan” complex.

He has called us out from the world to obey Him, not to play church.

As our own children grow up in this world, we expect them to become more serious students, understanding that an education is meant to help them live competent, useful lives in the world. When they reach adulthood, we hope they will then use all that education to go out and live, having been trained to function within society, and to bear their own burdens and be able to help others, also.

How much more, in the Kingdom of God, is it of eternal importance that we become mature and serious about living as our Father commands us? Our example is Jesus, who at the age of 12 was already discussing the deep things of God with the rabbis and teachers in Jerusalem, while the other children played in the dusty road with the caravan on its way home. He was getting ready for God’s Kingdom.

Are you still playing church?

Does your heart still demand milk from God, and are you refusing to move on to maturity by your constant need for “the elementary truths of God’s Word?” (5:12)

And how about our pastors, preachers, teachers, leaders? Are you still coddling your flock? Are you enabling and permitting their infancy to continue by catering to their whims? Or are you truly called and chosen to lead by Jesus Christ, who has given you the responsibility to speak the truth in love to His Sheep?

Are you leading your flock to maturity in Christ by treading the narrow road with them, teaching them to obey the Lord God in everything, and to give up all to follow Him? Or are you content to play in the shallows, avoiding the deep end with all its difficulties, trials, opposition, and hardships?

You, the ones who claim to lead God’s people, are most responsible. You have claimed the head of the table, and have the platform, and the position. You are the ones who are looked up to, and seated in the place of honor. Do you follow the Pharisees and their ilk, who love those seats, and the position of prominence, and so heap on yourselves judgment by refusing to lead your flock as your Good Shepherd did—on the road to self-denial and sacrifice—the narrow road upon which He carried His cross and laid down His life for His friends?

“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and you do not understand these things?” --John 3:10

If you don’t understand true discipleship, how can you teach it to others?

If you haven’t moved on into maturity, learning to distinguish between good and evil by experience in the trenches of life, how can you lead anyone else into maturity?

We have ignored the basic commands of Scripture, and so do not lead lives of obedience and power. We do not obey, and thus we do not have righteous lives. We do not have righteous people in our churches, and so our churches have been weak and ineffectual in the world. Our leaders play around, trying to find ways to make the hard gospel truth seem more friendly and palatable to their followers, instead of preaching Truth and the Way that has never changed.

Like irresponsible parents we continue to blend up the food into creamy pablum for our children, instead of encouraging them to eat solid food and become mature.

Maybe we like it that way, because we don’t want to go to the trouble of fixing and feeding them full meals, and sitting down together and working out adult ways of living. Being a family is a messy business, full of trial and error, and the working out of many tough things.

Being the ekklesia, the “called out to be together” people of God, the Family of God, is also a messy business. It requires tough men who will lead like Jesus did, out and among His disciples every day, imparting that toughness and spiritual maturity to them that He possessed.

And notice what Jesus made the prime focus of His ministry. To train and teach His Sheep to lead others. He prepared them to serve others, to lay down their lives for each other, and to teach each other His Ways. He encouraged them, and strengthened them toward becoming leaders themselves.

The Lord Jesus taught us what was important, yet we choose to ignore the simple truths He gave us, in order to follow our man-made rules and traditions of the churches.

It is our responsibility, as followers of Jesus, whether we are lowly and without position or power within the current churches, or whether we are highly placed and have a pulpit, to obey and follow the Lord, not men.

Jesus Christ is Head of His Chosen People. He is our Lord, and no religious institution, no denomination, no organization made by men, is to circumvent His authority over us by demanding we disobey Him. Yet we allow this every day, and we compromise the very heart of the gospel to man-made tradition.

We cannot rest on our claims of religious leadership. They mean nothing. We cannot rest on the fact that we have built signs outside our buildings that say we are Christian churches. We cannot rest on our busy schedules, and our fancy services. We cannot rest on our participation in the life of the temples we have built. We cannot rest on any of our own worship times and good music.

“Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words and say, ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!’

“While you were doing all these things, declares the Lord, I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen; I called you but you did not answer. Therefore, what I did to Shiloh I will now do to the house that bears My Name, the temple you trust in…” --Jeremiah 7:2-4,12-14

As God used the Philistines to destroy the temple in which His people had put their false hopes, so He will use the destructive forces of the world to destroy our disobedient churches. He will not put up with our childish desires to stay infants, but will force us to go out into the world and live dependent on Him only.

We will not be allowed to hold to our delusions that God will protect us because we have built for ourselves fancy and comfortable temples in which to worship. God disciplines those He loves, and because He loves those He calls, we will be disciplined, severely if necessary, in order to become mature.

“For we are the temple of the living God.” --2 Cor. 6:16

We are the temple, the ekklesia, those called by God in Jesus Christ. We are to live out the life of Jesus, and not hide in our temples made with hands.

Sell your buildings and give the money to the poor people in your own neighborhoods, and share it with your Christian brothers who are in need. Become like the New Testament believers, who gave all they had, and shared all God gave them, and loved each other, devoting themselves to the Kingdom of God as Jesus had taught them. Take care of each other and protect each other and love your brothers, above all. Begin the process of going on to maturity, along with all those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Leave behind the elementary milk, and move into the hard, tough life of being a true disciple of Jesus Christ. If you lead, then lead with faith, and love and perseverance, and be willing to face opposition when you give out the Truth. You will become like your Teacher, like your Master, and you Friend, the Lord Jesus, who faced such opposition from sinful men.

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus,the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lost heart.” --Heb. 12:2,3

Are you willing, dear brother or sister, to endure opposition, and be shamed for Jesus Christ? Or are you so comfortable in your pew or your position that you will not stand up for the truth you know?

Stand up today, and begin standing for the real gospel, and going on to maturity in Christ, before sin hardens your heart to the point you are lost along with the religious multitude.

“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received a knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay’, and again, ‘The Lord will judge His people’. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” --Heb. 10:26-31

RELIGION IS SATAN'S BEST DECEPTION

2011-09-19T07:47:00.000-07:00

NOTE: This is such an important teaching. Read it over a few times if necessary to have the Lord Christ open your eyes to its truth. This needs to be shouted from the rooftops in this age. We are blinded by our traditions, no matter how holy they seem, and how well-intentioned they be. We must call out these deceptions, these "mannish" things we bring to the throne of God. He never asked for them, and He doesn't regard them.

RELIGION IS THE BEST DECEPTION

T. AUSTIN-SPARKS

“The Most High doesn’t live in temples made by human hands.”

Acts 7:48

Christendom is largely constituted by this sense—its architecture, its ritual, its music, its adornment, its lighting (or lack of it), its tone, its atmosphere, its vestments and so forth. All are of the soul...(meaning of "humanity", the "mannishness" of life is in the soul)

[NOTE: think about our modern evangelical churches, even the ‘charismatic’ churches, and the rituals and particular music, tone, atmosphere, and how they are also of the soul, how they are also of "man" and his comfort levels…A. Brother.]

Spiritual death marks that realm, and while there may be intense emotions which make for resolves, 'high' thoughts and desires, there is no genuine change in the nature of those concerned, and repeated doses of this must be taken to maintain any measure of soul-self-satisfaction which makes them feel good.

All religions have this soulish feature in common, more or less, and it is here that the fatal blunder has been made by many religious people who contend that other religions, which are undoubtedly devout and sincere, should not be interfered with, but the good in them should be recognized and accepted.

It is the confusing of religion with what the Bible means by being spiritual. Religion can rise to high levels and sink to terrible depths. It is the same thing which does both.

But that thing never rises above the human level; it never really reaches God.

Religion can be the greatest enemy of God's true thought, because it is Satan's best deception.

Asceticism is no more truly spiritual than aestheticism. There is no more a brief with God for rigours, denials, fastings, puritanic iciness, etc., as such, than for the opposite. Simplicity may give God a chance, but it is not necessarily spiritual. It may be a matter of taste...

How near to the truth in perception and interpretation can the mystical go! What wonderful things can the imagination see, even in the Bible!

What thrills of awe, amazement, ecstasy, can be shot through an audience or congregation by a master soul! But it may all be a false world with no Divine and eternal issues. It may all go to make up this life here, and relieve it of its drabness, but it ends there.

What an artificial world we live in! When the music is progressing and the romantic elements are in evidence—the dress and tinsel—and human personalities are parading, see how pride and rivalry assert themselves, and what a power of make believe enters the atmosphere! Yes, an artificial world...

The tragedy in this melodrama is that it is 'real life' to so many. This soul-world is the devil's imitation. It is all false, wherever we may find it, whether associated with religion or not...

'The Christian Faith' embraced as a religion, a philosophy, or as a system of truth, a moral or ethical doctrine, may carry the temporary stimulus of a great ideal; but this will not result in the regeneration of the life, or the new birth of the spirit. There are multitudes of such 'Christians' in the world today, but their spiritual effectiveness is nil.

THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE IN THE WORLD FOR TRUE DISCIPLES

2011-09-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE IN THE WORLD

FOR TRUE DISCIPLES OF CHRIST

A. Brother

For those Christ calls to stay within the borders of the Christian religion:

It's the most dangerous place in the world, there in the heart of the large, modern, affluent churches. Be aware, be on guard, and be seeking Christ without the bells and whistles at all times. He will keep you, He will meet you. But stay focused on Him alone, and be ever vigilant to be the watchman on the walls of Jerusalem, telling the truth in love, no matter how uncomfortable some people are. With humility, my brother or sister.

You have a high calling--being in the modern churches, but not of the fluff and worldly puff--and it's one that will create huge tension and pain in you in Christ very often.

But Christ is absolute Sovereign, and if He has called you to it, He will keep you in it.

I have no faith at all in myself, or in the churches, or even in you (no offense), but only in Christ, and the John 15 life.

We true disciples trust ultimately in Christ our Rock, and know that all we see will pass away, when He chooses. So all we have that will last is Christ, and His Kingdom, which He will reveal when He comes.

Warning:

What will happen is this: you will be challenged at every turn to compromise. To accept religious things that distract people from seeking Christ as "just the way things are". To accept new ideas from people on how to run "church" that have nothing to do with what you see in the Word of God. To accept the status quo because "it's not a big deal" or "but we've done this particular thing for 28 years this way" or "how could all these godly people who do this be wrong?" or "who do you think you are, anyway, the apostle Paul?"

Thousands will be swaying to the music of modern, affluent, self-driven, self-satisfied Christian pomposity, while you sit alone, with the Word of God pounding in your heart, pounding in your ears, telling you it's not the Way. Christ whispering in your soul that He is not found in the parade, the clanging cymbal, this man-made religious sub-culture that has copied the world in so many ways. And the sure thought that this is part of the wood, hay and stubble God directed Paul to teach about only 30 years after Christ's resurrection.

While hundreds and thousands of Christ-followers died as martyrs at the hands of religious zealots in those early years, and every generation of true disciples from then on suffered the same, yet we believe we are different. That we can have our religious cake and eat it, too. That Christ promises us health, wealth, and a wonderful life here among the heathen. That we can marry ourselves to more than one bride. That Christ will overlook our slide into self-focus, self-aggrandizement, self-congratulatory evangelical fleshianity. That somehow He will be impressed at our slick marketing and technological savvy. Our state-of-the-art this and that.

The modern, affluent, self-focused, self-worshiping churches are the most dangerous place in the world for true disciples of Christ. For they pull us off the Narrow Road, and put us on Broadway.

Be aware, be on your guard. If Christ calls you to stay there, He will keep you there. You need not fear. But have the healthy understanding that ultimately, those people who smile and greet you now, may at some point, when tables have turned and the heat is on, be the ones who deny you at your trial before the heathen.

Go to the Word of God, go to Christ. May all who seek Him be satisfied in Him.

A. Brother

RELIGION HATES CHRIST

2011-09-15T07:46:00.001-07:00

A. Brother

For those who seek truth, and not religion, there is Christ.
Christ alone brings us to the Father.
Religion is the enemy, and would keep us from truth.

From the beginning of time, religion has fought God.
Religions are man's attempts to reach God on man's own terms.
Religion sets up barriers on the road to God.
Religion demands things that God never required.
Religion hates Christ, and it was religion that nailed him to the cross.

Today when we hear men defending the "Christian religion", or "Christianity",
remember they are not defending Christ. They are defending their own way.

Nothing has changed. It's always been this way.
The early Christ-followers were persecuted by all other religions.
The earliest believers in Christ faced fierce opposition from the Jews,
God's own chosen people.
Throughout history, Satan has used religion more than any other vehicle
to distract and destroy the faith of men.

Witness the world today.
Islam seeks to dominate the world with its sick blend of supposed
God-worship, male-superiority, hatred of Jews, Christians, and all other
infidels, strict cultural imperatives, and warring ways.
Hinduism and Buddhism and all other "isms" keep a billion or more
enslaved in ancestor worship, and other forms of idolatry.
Mormonism is like Islam, a deceptive and warlike religion that seeks
nothing less than a world kingdom and domination.
Communism is still alive and well, which is the worship of the state.
Yes, communism is a religion, and it still seeks world domination.
Anything we believe brings salvation for mankind, even if it is a political
or social cause, is a religion.
And Christianity fits the bill.

For those of you seeking Christ today, you won't find Him in religion.
He is on the narrow road, and He is found only through the cross and
resurrection for the individual. You must follow Him, and not man-made
religions, which always, the moment they are created, cause us to stumble.

Many seek alternatives to Satan's religions.
Atheists and agnostics are all created by contact with religion.
These labels simply apply to people who hate what they've seen of
those who claim to know God, but who really just represent their own
religious ideas of what it means to know God.

Those who want Christ must seek Him.
Forsaking all others, cling to Christ, and know the Father.
As He did with the earliest followers, He will meet with you in
hidden rooms and gardens of the heart. He will show you Himself,
and in doing so will show you the Father, and give you His Spirit.
And then He will give you others who know Him, and who walk
with Him outside religion.

The religious will come with their torches and swords to find you.
They will call you out one day, and you will face your own trial as
He did. They will drag you before courts and magistrates to accuse
you as they did Christ. Jesus warned us. What He suffered at the hands
of religious people, we will suffer, if we truly follow our Lord.

Blessings on all who heed these words today.