Christfollower

Sifting

The following quotes are from my reading in my pursuit of finding and connecting with God:

"The sifting process is God's way of bringing us back to our first love and our first call. Though the process is often painful, slowly but surely everything that is unimportant gets cut away. Sifting brings you back to the drawing board, to what is eternal -- who you are as a man or woman of God. Sometimes you don't realize that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you've got. In order to bring you to that realization, Jesus will cut everything else out, the things you've learned to depend on and trust, so that you will return to Him -- not to the church or to your identity in ministry, but to who you are in Him."

"A sifted life in an influential life. Your greatest influence takes place after you have been sifted and have survived. Who is the person who has the most credibility when someone is diagnosed with cancer? Its the woman who has wrestled with cancer and survived. . . . Unsifted Christians won't have as much influence, and that's simply the way God has designed it to be. Sifting is how God separates the old from the new, the good fruit from the bad, the material that is unusable from that which God can effectively employ for his eternal purposes."

Both of these quotes are from the book, Sifted by Wayne Cordeiro

Finding the mountain of God. . .

19 When Ahab got home, he told Jezebel everything Elijah had done, including the way he had killed all the prophets of Baal. 2 So Jezebel sent this message to Elijah: “May the gods strike me and even kill me if by this time tomorrow I have not killed you just as you killed them.”3 Elijah was afraid and fled for his life. He went to Beersheba, a town in Judah, and he left his servant there. 4 Then he went on alone into the wilderness, traveling all day. He sat down under a solitary broom tree and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors who have already died.”5 Then he lay down and slept under the broom tree. But as he was sleeping, an angel touched him and told him, “Get up and eat!” 6 He looked around and there beside his head was some bread baked on hot stones and a jar of water! So he ate and drank and lay down again. 7 Then the angel of the Lord came again and touched him and said, “Get up and eat some more, or the journey ahead will be too much for you.”8 So he got up and ate and drank, and the food gave him enough strength to travel forty days and forty nights to Mount Sinai,[a] the mountain of God.

Looking for the mountain of God is a long journey. Just saying.

Henri Nouwen wrote:

"I am not accustomed to rejoicing in things that are small, hidden and scarcely noticed by people around me. I have become accustomed to living with sadness, and so have lost the eyes to see the joy."

The Apostle Paul wrote: "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!" Phil. 4:4

Words from Oswald Chambers

He is one of my favorite writers and his books are some of my most cherished. This paragraph was good enough to cause me to want to include it on my blog. Personally hoping for and heading for God's frontier.

"Redemption does not amount to anything to a man until he meets an agony; until that time he may have been indifferent; but knock the bottom board out of his wits, bring him to the limit of his moral life, produce the supreme suffering worthy of the name of agony, and he will begin to realize that there is more in Redemption than he had ever dreamed, and it is at that phase that he is prepared to hear Jesus Christ say, "Come unto Me." Our Lord said, "I did not come to call the man who is all right; I came to call the man who is at his wits end, the man, who has reached his moral frontier." A man will know sooner or later; It will depend upon the pride of his intellect or the crass obstinacy of his nature how soon he gets there; but when he does he will have reached the frontier where God works.

From the book: Shadow of an Agony by Oswald Chambers

I have been silent for nearly one year because I didn't know how to say it any better than it was said in my last post on April 4 of last year. I still believe the church in America is in dire need of God and that they have no idea how badly they need Him.

To the church in America

I am really wondering what it will take for the church in America to get on their knees and repent.

I believe that we are close to being forced there by global circumstances that may greatly effect life as we have come to expect it in our Country.

Wouldn't it be better if we started talking to God now instead of waiting for the world "to catch on fire?"

Most people in the American church are incredibly naive regarding the "ball" we have dropped. It was our job to take the message of Jesus Christ to our world. It was our great commission to go and make disciples of all nations. American Christianity has not been this weak in Centuries. The good news is that God is moving around the world. His church is alive and well. It is not rich but it is spiritually thriving in many places.

The world is erupting yet we continue in many places to have our little services, sing our little songs, and have our little church suppers! Many Americans never pick up the Bible, never get on their knees, never share their faith, never pray for an unsaved person and frankly do very little to foster the relationship they claim to have with Jesus Christ.

Jesus said I wish you were either hot or cold but if you are lukewarm I will spit you out of my mouth! (Rev.3)

So what do we do? Stockpile food and water? Built a bunker? Become political? I am not sure any of that is all that important. I think we should repent and cry out to God on a daily basis.

Repentance Prayer List for the American Church:

We repent that we have quit talking to You, God.

We repent that we have become more like the world than like You.

We repent that we have spent most of our resources on ourselves both at home and at church.

We repent that we have taken for granted the blessings of life.

We repent that we have failed to take the gospel across the street let alone the world.

We repent that we have wasted countless hours talking to ourselves in our church buildings instead of building relationships outside of our churches.

We repent that we could have cared less about the poor.

We repent that we have become comfortable with sin as a part of our lives.

We repent that more of us believe in sinning every day in word thought and deed then loving God 100% everyday in word thought and deed!

We repent that by our actions (or in-actions) we have demonstrated that we would rather the world go to hell if it meant that we had to change anything in our churches.

We repent that we have fought about music and completely forgotten the Message in the process.

We repent that we don't honor you with our tithe off the top of the resources You have given us but keep spending on ourselves even though most of the stuff we buy brings us no joy.

We repent that we seldom if ever spend anytime reading the Bible let alone studying it or hiding it in our hearts.

We repent that we have settled for a free ticket to heaven and forgotten what it means to be a disciple or Chrsitfollower.

We repent that as a nation we have totally turned our backs on You. We (the church) have grown comfortable with vileness and sin around us and especially in our entertainment.

We repent that while we believe You created us in Your image, we have returned the favor and created You in our image. We have lost our sense of emulating and following You but demand that You follow us around saving us from any hurts.

Lord we repent. We are sorry. We ask you to return and once again work through Your church. For this and a thousand other things Lord we pray this prayer of repentance. Lord hear our prayer.

The Eve of Destruction. . .

Barry McGuire wrote this song over forty years ago. Someone has put some modern pictures in but it takes me back to the feelings that were very real in the sixties and early seventies. The world spins a little precariously sometimes. Apparently we are in such a time. While I make no predictions regarding the end of the world as we know it I do wonder at the lack of prayer. I wonder where "the church" in America is regarding what is happening on our planet. I wonder who will pray and who will stand in the gap on behalf of those who have no one to stand for them. Here's the song. Obviously we weren't on the eve of destruction when it was written although that depends on your perspective of time in general.

May God help us to care and to talk to Him about our world. My goal is to do everything I can everyday to make a difference in Jesus name.



Finally someone actually says what needs to be said. . .

 So I digress from my old dusty books for a brief commentary on today's popular preaching. I have done everything I can in my own pulpit just short of naming names to counter Mr. Osteen's "happy happy" preaching. I am amazed and floored at how many people I know digest this stuff as if it is really biblical. I appreciate Driscoll's graciousness in light of how aggravating it is to preach in these days when this kind of non-biblical stuff is being listened to and held onto by millions around the world.

God does love us but bad stuff happens to all of us and serving God should never be seen as a special shield that always protects us from challenges in life.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Here is my favorite all time quote from Martin Luther King Jr's Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

"In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators."' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust."  

These words from decades ago have sadly come true. Christianity has been marginalized and is a dying religion at least in influence on a culture desperately in need of the message of Jesus.

In 1878, the author of A Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, published a book entitled, Bible Readings. Hannah Whitall Smith wrote this little book as a look at the spiritual "types and metaphors" in some of the Old Testament stories and books of the Bible. She wrote some of the most helpful and positive Wesleyan Holiness literature in the latter part of the 19th Century.

I am choosing a passage for this post from the chapter on the book of Judges.

"No position in grace, no height of Christian attainment can keep the soul from failing. Only the present power of an indwelling Holy Ghost can do this, and nothing but continual faithfulness to the Lord can secure His abiding presence.

We never at any stage of our experience reach a place where we may relax in our obedience, or become indifferent in our trust. Obedience must keep pace with knowledge, and our trust must be daily and hourly fixed on our keeping Saviour, or all will go wrong.

Sanctification is not a state so much as a walk, and every moment of that walk we need the Spirit's power and the Spirit's presence as much as we did at first. . .

. . .But, let me repeat it, there must be no compromise with sin. By faith we must put to death every one of our enemies, (speaking here of inward sin or carnality/indwelling sin) every day of our lives. And this death is a real thing. . . We must have our enemies die, and our souls be actually delivered from them or there is no peace or security. . .

. . .Consent then to die. let the Lord send crosses, or afflictions or pain, if only by these He will but rid us of pride and self will and anger and all others of our inward enemies, and will conform us in every thing to the image of Christ. Let us, if Israel did not, obey the command of our Lord to drive out every enemy from our land, and then we need have no fear that the sad and God dishonoring experience of the book of Judges will be ours."

Much of her writing in the chapter was based on these verses of warning found in Judges 2:10-12:

"After that generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel. The Israelites did evil in the Lord's sight and served the images of Baal. They abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them our of Egypt. They went after other gods, worshipping the gods of the people around them. And they angered the Lord."  

This feels to me like the generation I live and minister in. This feels like most of the church world in America. Denominations seem consistent in one thing, after 100 years they all go the same way until there is a reformation/reforming movement.