Modern Churches Have Substituted An Institutionalized Religion For The Life-Changing Dynamic Of A Living Faith

                                                 When The Door Slams 

To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ.                                                                             (1 Corinthians 2:2-3 ESV) 

            While the church may seem to be experiencing a season of growth and prosperity, it is failing to move people to commitment and sacrifice. The hard truth is that we have substituted an institutionalized religion for the life-changing dynamic of a living faith. For most of us the church is the building where we assemble to worship; its ministries are the programs that we get involved in; its mission is to meet the needs of its parishioners; and its servants are the professional clergy we hire to shepherd us. Church growth has come to refer more to such things as location, marketing, architecture, programs, and head counts than to the maturity of the body of Christ.

            When compared with previous generations of believers, we seem among the most consistently at peace with our culture, the least skillful at transforming society, and the most desperate for a meaningful faith. Our reason for being is confusing, our mission unclear, and our existence as a people in jeopardy. Worst of all, our leaders know it--but seem unable or willing to do anything about it. 

            Think about this: In light of this, it should not surprise you that while plenty of people are still walking through the doors of churches, secularism reigns as the dominant world-view of American culture. It is hard to imagine, therefore, a more urgent or critical task than the recovery and restoration of the biblical view of the church.

            Affirmation: And Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, "Save yourselves from this crooked generation. So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousands souls.                                                            (Acts 2:38-41 ESV)       

 Ask the Holy Spirit to search your heart and reveal any areas of unconfessed sin. Acknowledge these to the LORD and thank Him for His forgiveness.        

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Religious Churches Praise The Lust Of The Eyes, And The Lust Of The Flesh

                                                 When The Door Slams

Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will dwell in them And walk among them. I will be their God, And they shall be My people." Therefore "Come out from among them And be separate, say the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, And I will receive you."  I will be a Father to you, And you shall be My sons and daughters, Says the LORD Almighty."  (2 Corinthians 6:14-18 NKJV)  

            At this point Satan is doing his deadliest work because what has just occurred went unnoticed, unseen, and produced no shock or alarm. It is not by the open confrontation of evil that Satan corrupts and disrupts the church, but by quite, unnoticed substitution. The holy things of God are being removed, the spiritual gives place to the natural, and the divine is eliminated because it is made secondary.

            A growing trend among Evangelical churches is to attract people through their events, clubs, shows, performances, sports, and any other convenient methods. But these activities appeal to the sinful appetites, the lust of the eyes, and the lust of the flesh. This alarming and scandalous and cries out for God's judgment. How radical the contrast between the activities of the modern, worldly church, with those of primitive church. The original methods and gatherings were wholly spiritual, calculated to strengthen and cultivate all the graces of the Spirit to preserve a deep experience of God. 

            The church was a training school for the spiritual life. They never lingered in things exclusively moral, aesthetic, and mental. They developed no taste or inclination which was not spiritual. They took it for granted that all who came to them really desired to flees from the wrath to come, and were sincerely sorrowful after full redemption. These carnal activities are regarded by many as the perfection of spiritual things. But in the end all that is distinctly spiritual is eliminated, and when this occurs anything that is deeply holy will not survive the death of things spiritual. Edification, a high priority of the church, is wholly forsaken, and vain amusements and things pleasing to the flesh take its place. The social forces not only suppress the spiritual forces, but effectually destroy them. What do church activities and meetings filled with worldliness and carnality have in common with true holiness and the fruit of the Holy Spirit? "How can two walk together unless they are agreed?' (Amos 3:3). "What communion has light with darkness . . . and what agreement has the temple of God with idols?" (2 Cor. 6:14,16). "Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening?" (James 3:11). 

            Think about this: Disguise it as we may, apologize for it as we do, we vainly boast of growth, but the truth is, we have lost that intense type of experience, that deep conviction of spiritual things which are evidences of the blessing and presence of the Holy Spirit. Many preachers and people have fallen so low in their experience that they don't hunger for spiritual channels of grace, but attend "churches" to gratify their non-spiritual tastes which are halfway between Christ and the world. Few of them might possess one grain of spiritual power, and can never be the means of communicating spiritual life.

Ask the Holy Spirit to search your heart and reveal any areas of unconfessed sin.                Acknowledge these to the LORD and thank Him for His forgiveness

                                                                    Never Rest Ministries           

The Holy Spirit Or The World

                                                When The Door Slams

Jesus answered, "I assure you and most solemnly say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot [even] enter the kingdom of God. [Ezekiel 36:25-27] "That which is born of the flesh is flesh [the physical is merely physical], and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.                                                                 (John 3:5-6 AMP)     

            The religious leaders, secular thinkers and philosophers used the phrase "let's save the world." All this sounds fine, and agrees with this material age, and becomes practical in operation, and impressive in results. But does this agree with the essential purpose of the church? Do we need any church to obtain these ends? Councilmen, police, and social workers can achieve these results. It requires no church, no Bible, no personal holiness, to secure these ends. The purposes of the church rise in praiseworthy above these childish dreams and fanciful philosophies.

            Our goal is to regenerate and sanctify the individual; to make him or (her) holy and prepare him for heaven by purifying and training him in the school of Christ. The church is like the net cast by fishermen into the sea. The purpose is not to change the sea, but to catch the fish. Let the waves roll in their natural way, but the net will catch the fish. To save the world and ignore the individual is not only unworkable, but damaging in every way. In the hopes of saving the world, as noble as it appears, it will be the undoing of the church. It will make the church worldly and unfit for her holy and praiseworthy mission. Christ said that gaining the world and saving the man are antagonistic ends. Christ taught Peter[Matt. 16:16-24] that his satanic suggestion would gain the world for the church, but would lose the soul. Everything seems helpful to the cause of God, when in reality it was death. 

            The church is distinctly and preeminently a spiritual institution. It is created, energized, and directed by the Spirit of God. Her methods, activities, rituals, services, and officers have no beauty, no sufficiency, no power, except as they are vessels and channels of the Holy Spirit. It is His indwelling and inspiration that equips the inner man and secures its divine purpose. If the Holy Spirit is persistently grieved and quenched, the church will lose its power to bring divine life into the world. If the devil can blind the eyes and dull the minds of church members to the desperate need of the Holy Spirit's sanctifying power, he has effectively lulled the church to sleep.

            Think about this: Satan tries to accomplish this by marginalizing and retiring the means which God has ordained, and replaces them with natural talents and fleshly works that are useless without the Spirit's power. Christ announced a universal and immutable law when He said "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit" (John 3:6). The church may have a holy preacher, a man of prayer, who is filled with the Spirit. But if Satan can instigate his removal and replace him with a prayerless, popular, and eloquent man, the church may seemed to have gained, but it has substituted the spiritual for the natural, a change that has unconsciously weakened the church.

 Ask the Holy Spirit to search your heart and reveal any areas of unconfessed sin. Acknowledge these to the LORD and thank Him for His forgiveness.

                                                Never Rest Ministries                          

We Need Holy Spirit Power

                                                 When The Door Slams

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:1-4 ESV). 

            The Holy Spirit is able to make the word as successful now as in the days of the apostles. He can bring in by hundreds and thousands, as easily as by ones and twos. The reason why we are not more prosperous is that we don't have the Holy Spirit with us in might and power as in the early times. If we had the Spirit sealing our ministry with power, it would signify very little about out talent. Men might be poor and uneducated; their words might be broken and ungrammatical; their words might have no polish or glorious thunder; but if the might of the Spirit attended them, the humblest evangelists would be more successful then the most leaned theologians or the most eloquent preachers.

            It is extraordinary grace, not talent, that wins the day. It is extraordinary spiritual power, not extraordinary mental power, that we need. Mental power may fill a chapel, but spiritual power fills the church; mental power may gather a congregation, but spiritual power will save souls. We need spiritual power. We know some religious leaders have nothing compared to their talent, but have no spiritual power; and when they speak they have not the Holy Spirit with them. But we know others--simple-hearted, worthy men, who speak and stand up to preach in their place and the Spirit of God clothes every word with power. Hearts are broken, souls are saved, and sinners are born again. O Spirit of the living God, we want You! You are the life, the soul, the source of your people's success. Without You they can do nothing; with You they can do everything. 

            There are two ways of directing the church, God's way and the devil's way. God 's way and man's way of running the church are worlds apart. Man's plans, methods, and solutions are Satan's devices. The cross is retired, the world comes in, self-denial is eliminated, and all seems bright, cheerful, and prosperous. But Satan's hand is on the steering wheel, men's schemes prevail, and the church fails to produce, under these devices of men, any spiritual fruit. 

            All God's plans have the mark of the cross on them and death to self and crucifixion to the world in them. But men's plans despise the offense of the cross. Man's plans have no self-effacing, self-denouncing, self-denying in them. But the devil brings as much of the world as he can into the church until all the holy, powerful, life-changing work of the Spirit is forgotten and retired. This satanic device is designed to distort the purpose of the church and to teach that the church's mission is not to save individuals, but to save society, culture, and the dignity and worth of man. This popular, seductive, deadly, and misleading the very foundation of Christ's church. It is a trend so strong that it will sweep away every ounce of spiritual life if we do not watch, pray, and speak out with the Holy Spirit power.

 Ask the Holy Spirit to search your heart and reveal any areas of unconfessed sin. Acknowledge these to the LORD and thank Him for His forgiveness  

                                                    Never Rest Ministries