. . . Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.
— James 2:18b
One area of thinking that needs reform is our practical beliefs about God's design for mankind. I emphasize practical beliefs, because there is a difference between nominal beliefs and practical ones. A nominal belief is what you hold in name, and the practical belief is what you hold in reality and what holds you. While probably there are not many faults to be found with the nominal beliefs, there are a great deal to be found with the practical beliefs. These practical beliefs need restoration to their happy and bright state with faults and abuses purged. It has been a long time since Jesus was born in Bethlehem, died on the cross, rose again the third day, ascended to the right hand of God the Father Almighty and sent the Holy Spirit to establish His church. Since those days there have been changes in the world so radical, sweeping, all-pervading and revolutionary as to be entirely incredible to anybody living in Jesus' day. Today's world was entirely unimaginable to the people of those times. Have these changes forced God to modify His plans for His church and for mankind? Here is where we have fallen by the wayside. . . .
thought
Our daily living expresses our real beliefs, not the beliefs or theology we say are ours but that which determines our daily living.
prayer
Lord, I invite You to examine my belief system. Expose the sham. Enable me to embrace truth and live by it. May others be able to read my beliefs by the life I live.
Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me?put it into practice...
— Philippians 4:9
Then there is the removal of faults and abuses. Where are the faults and abuses? Look around at the religious scene and you will see the faults, the abuses and the desperate need for change. Where are the model saints? We ought to be raising model saints, the kind Christians could take as examples and say, "I want to follow these men and women and be like them as they are like their Lord." But we are simply not producing saints in this generation. Most Christians are bad examples to other Christians. We work hard to get people converted, and we think we do God's service. Then after we get them converted and they get to know us, we are bad examples to them. I consider this an abuse in the church of Christ. . . . Another fault is carnality. The Apostle Paul talked about the carnal Christians of Corinth, and he labored and prayed and wept over the carnality of those Christians.
This describes most evangelicals today: carnal, immature, without miracles, without wonders, lacking a wonderful sense of the presence of the Lord, held together by social activities and nothing else. Another roadblock to reformation is prayerlessness among God's people. For 100 years the Moravians never stopped praying. They staffed a prayer tower as a factory staffs its machines. In eight-hour shifts the Moravians continued their prayer vigil for 100 years. Carelessness is another fault among evangelicals. Careless Christians do not discipline or examine themselves. Plato once said, "A life that is not examined is a kind of death." People who simply live by their instincts and do the best they can, but do not examine themselves are careless and, according to Plato, may as well be dead.
thought
Who among us would be so bold as to invite others to follow our example as did Paul? But we are modeling?negatively or positively?whether we intend to or not.
prayer
O God, make me a discipling instrument to walk beside other believers?teaching them to study Your Word and modeling the living of it. Only by Your enablement can I do it!
Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
— Acts 17:11
Today we need people who dare to question the status quo and say, "Wait a minute here. Where do you find this in the Bible?" The idea that all you have to do is to accept Christ and you are in is a great mistake. It leaves people with the impression that if they accept Christ they have no fight to fight, no warfare, no job to do and no temptations. They are just in. When you accept Christ rightly as your Lord and Savior you are in, but to be honest, you have just started to fight. People get converted and we do not tell them that they must fight all the way through to heaven because of the spirit of degeneration and the tendency to deteriorate. They must fight, pray through, suffer it out and live in praise and worship, because if they do not they will deteriorate. Read the history of the Christian church if you can keep your faith and keep from weeping.
thought
Winning people to Christ is one thing and extremely important. Discipling them is another: teaching them God's Word and how to study it for themselves and apply it to themselves. Have we neglected to disciple?
prayer
O Lord, thank You for those whom You have used to disciple me by word and especially by example.
You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!
— Acts 7:51
This is hard for people to face up to. Religion deteriorates just as fruit rots and just as people get old in spite of all they try to do at the drug stores. It is inevitable that we get old, and so it is with religion. It is built-in that we start to deteriorate shortly after God comes and blesses us. Look what happened to Israel. God called Israel out of Egypt, and it began to deteriorate before it reached the Red Sea. Then He gave it a revival by taking it through the Red Sea and into the wilderness.
But Israel started to degenerate before it had gone 20 miles in the wilderness. As a result the people eventually wandered for 40 years. You can follow the history of Israel and see the story of the kings. It is a depressing story. Here is a man. He lived and did evil in the sight of the Lord. He had a son, and his son did evil in the sight of the Lord as his father before him. The status quo was maintained.
thought
History demonstrates that each generation needs its own dramatic encounter with God, its great awakening. And each of us personally needs it. Spiritual life is not inherited from our forebears. It is experienced through personal encounter with God!
prayer
O Spirit, I want to be filled with You, not to resist You.
And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little chirldren, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
— Matthew 18:3
We need sweeping reformation. Let me give a definition of reformation as it is given in a religious dictionary: "Change by removal of faults or abuses, and a restoration to a former good estate." Now that is not so bad. I do not know how anybody who believes he or she is a Christian could ever object to changing in the direction of the removal of faults and abuses toward the restoration to a former good estate. The problem is change, which disturbs many people. They have accepted the status quo as being the very tablets given by God on the mountain. Most people, if they happen to be in any church anywhere, accept the status quo without knowing or caring to inquire how it came to be. In other words, they do not ask, "Oh God, is this of You, is this divine, is this out of the Bible?"
Because it was done and is being done, and because a lot of people are doing it, they assume it is all right. Then songs are written about it, and it gets into magazines. Pretty soon people are called to it, and the first thing we know we have gotten into a religious situation that is not of God. It is not according to Scripture, and God is not pleased with it at all. Rather, He is angry. Yet we do not know it because we do not like the word change. The change took place slowly, before we arrived on the scene, and we think because it is everywhere it is therefore right. We accept the status quo, the existing state of affairs, and say, "This is it," forgetting that history demonstrates that religions invariably degenerate.
thought
Change by reversion to the past seems safe except that a return to external forms does not insure recapture of the inner reality. Nor does the invention of new forms assure heart change.
prayer
Fascination with the new contemporary; nostalgia for the forms of the past; neither guarantee encounter with You. It is You I need, O God, You!
"Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool."
— Isaiah 1:18
The second question is: How many are worthy to hear His voice? In Acts 13:46b Paul and Barnabas told the people, "Since you reject it . . . we now turn to the Gentiles." This is a terrible judgment. But here is the gist of what I want to say: A radical and sweeping reformation is imperative among the people called Christians? Protestants generally and evangelicals in particular. What is meant by reformation? Some may recoil from that word; I have heard people say, "I do not believe in reformation ?I believe in regeneration." That sounds good and it gets some amens, but the fact is, if you do not have reformation you cannot have regeneration.
The Holy Spirit will not come and regenerate carnal, stubborn people who will not obey Him. First there must be a reformation. "Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. 'Come now, let us reason together,' says the LORD. 'Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool'" (Isaiah 1:16-18).
thought
A heart committed to obey more quickly and clearly perceives God's voice. Sometimes we only want to hear what we want to hear.
prayer
Father, sometimes the cost of obeying You seems so great, so painful. But what infinite cost is not obeying You.
The LORD came and stood there, calling as at the other times, "Samuel! Samuel!" Then Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening."
— 1 Samuel 3:10
. . . There are two questions before us. The first question is: How many of us are willing to hear the voice of God? Jesus said, "Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate" (Matthew 23:34, 37-38). Were these people willing to hear the voice of God?
Thousands of years before Christ was born in Bethlehem, the Holy Spirit said, "Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech: 'How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you. But since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke, I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you'" (Proverbs 1:20-26).
thought
We all delight in hearing God's voice in words of forgiveness and comfort. But are we willing to hear His voice in unvarnished truth and naked honesty? "Speak, for your servant is listening" or are we?
prayer
Lord, there seem to be a thousand voices calling to me in this world. Help me to discern Your voice above them all and obediently listen!