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The Church God Uses

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What is “the Church God uses,” and how do we become that Church?

Lately, I’ve had numerous encounters with fellow believers who espouse a Christianity that makes no sense to me. It makes no sense because it misses entirely the role of the Church in the world. How that’s possible, I can’t understand. The New Testament can’t be understood unless we grasp what God intended when He called the Church into being.

To become the Church God uses, we must rediscover the one distinction that sets the Church apart from all other groups and institutions on this planet. We can talk about what the Church does, its commission, its command of the things of God, but none of those define the Church.

What makes the Church The Church ? The Holy Spirit.

Have we forgotten the mind-blowing reality of Pentecost? The Eternal Creator God came and indwelt men and women! He sealed them for eternity as His people. He empowered them with charismata by His Holy Spirit. The charge Jesus Christ gave could now be fulfilled because He lived inside those who believed on His name!

The Muslims don’t have the Holy Spirit. The Hindus don’t have the Holy Spirit. The Rotary Club doesn’t have the Holy Spirit. The United Nations doesn’t have the Holy Spirit.

The Church of Jesus Christ alone has the Holy Spirit! That radical truth quakes the world and demolishes every misconception we hold about the task Christ charged those of us who have the Holy Spirit.

The Lord speaks:

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
—Acts 1:8

The transcendent power of the Holy Spirit took a handful of human rabble and used them to turn the world on its head! God-filled people tore down the wisdom of the philosophers. God-filled people raised the dead. God-filled people touched the untouchable and loved the unlovable. Why? Because God put His Holy Spirit in them—and us today–to accomplish His will on earth.

Christ gave us a commission and provided Himself living in us to make it happen. All we must do is say yes to that commission.

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

—2 Corinthians 5:18-20a

He gave us the ministry of reconciliation. He didn’t claim that ministry for Himself, but charged us to do it! And we can do it because He empowers us by His Holy Spirit.

Think of it—we are His ambassadors!

An ambassador comes in the name of the king of his nation, for the king has empowered the ambassador as his full representative. The ambassador embodies the law of the king, the words of the king, the ministrations of the king, and the power of the king, for the king Himself has imbued the ambassador with his title. When others receive the ambassador in their homes and palaces, it’s as if they receive the king himself.

Do we understand this, Church? Do we understand our ambassadorship as the people who minister King Jesus in all His glory? Do we understand what He has given us and the price He paid for it so that we can establish His Kingdom?

Some would say the need for fully-empowered ambassadors passed away once the initial establishment of the Church came to fruition. But that’s a grievous error. For the Church of Jesus Christ is forever being established until the Great Day of the Lord when He comes again in glory. The Church is still being established in people groups and nations that have never before heard the Gospel. And the Church is still being established from generation to generation. Because the Church is perpetually being established on earth, we ambassadors of Christ continue to be imbued with all the gifts, truths, and power to meet the commission of Christ as those first Christians on the day of Pentecost. None of those tools and gifts used to establish the first church have passed because the Church continues to be established!

For as Peter quoted from the Prophet Joel on that Day:

“‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.'”
—Acts 2:17-21

The empowerment of the Church to do the work of Christ continues unbroken and in full until the perfect King and Kingdom come in full revelation on the Day of the Lord, just as it says in the Scriptures. We are His ambassadors in the complete charge and power that He gave us until the end of time.

And we are to do the work.

But some don’t believe this.

If you’re a parent, you know that sometimes kids don’t always do what you ask them. Take cleaning a room. You ask the child to do the work of cleaning the room, you provide garbage bags, dusters, shelves and closets, and even a vacuum. And yet how many times have we all heard that precious little child look us square in the eye and say, “No, you do it!”

I think I speak for every parent here when I say that insolence doesn’t make mom and dad happy.

But it’s worse than that. Far worse.

Imagine that you literally wrote the book on cleaning. All knowledge and power to clean resides in you. You then tell your child that you will make the cleaning a snap to do because you will come live inside him/her and make it possible to do the work, even if it seems impossible. You lay your hands upon your child and confer all your cleaning skills in a moment. Afterwards, your moppet looks you square in the eye, folds those little arms, and says, “No, you do it!”

Watching, waiting to see who will do the workFolks, sad to say, that’s today’s Church. God gave us His Holy Spirit to work through us, but we continue to resist doing the work. We keep going back to the Father and telling Him He needs to do the work Himself. Even though He empowered us to do it by His Spirit, we’re sitting this one out. Or we’re picking and choosing when He can work through us and when He can’t, asking Him to bypass us to do the work when it seems too tough.

I’ve said this more times on this blog than I care to think, but if the Church doesn’t do the work, why do we think God’s going to step in and bypass us to get it done? When the widows and orphans of the Book of Acts needed to be fed, did God do it by raining down manna from heaven? No! He used the Church to feed them because God tasked the Church with that job and empowered them to do it.

Take a look at one man the Lord chose to do that work:

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch.

—Acts 6:1-5

And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people. Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called), and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen. But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking.
—Acts 6:8-10

God chose a man full of the Holy Spirit, an ambassador of His Kingdom, to wait tables filled with the lowest of the low, the widows and orphans of Palestine. Why? Because He trusts that kind of man to do the work.

Folks, God equips us for a reason: to do the work. We can’t sit back and act as if He’ll bypass us to do it if we sit this one out. Nor can we tell Him we don’t want Him to use us in impossible or supernatural ways. If that’s the way we think, then we should pack up the Church and go home.

The Scriptures exist so we can do the work:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
—2 Timothy 3:16-17

Faith exists so we can do the work:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
—James 2:14-18

The Church God uses understands this. It understands it’s empowered by God to do the work. It knows that apart from God we can do nothing, but it also knows we do not stand apart from God! He lives in us by His Spirit, and He is perpetually rewarding those who do the work with a larger container to hold His poured-out Spirit. And from that growing container, greater works will be done so that even the mountain cannot remain if told to be cast into the sea.

The priest and Levite who passed by the robbery victim lying near death on the side of the road were of Israel, but they didn’t do the work of their God. Instead, they passed the work back to God and insisted that He do it. But the Samaritan, filled with the kind of love that only the Holy Spirit can instill, saw the need and did the work. He didn’t pray to know what to do. He saw the need, understood the love of God within him, and did the work. He didn’t need to ask if he should do the work, because the Lord had already said yes. And the Lord always says yes to doing the work.

Every day, God brings others in desperate straits into our lives. They might not know Christ. They might be destitute. They might be facing disease or discouragement. God gave us His Spirit to do the work. His Spirit does not change, nor does He flinch in the face of the work. He empowers to do the work today exactly as He did 2000 years ago because the work has not changed and neither has He. We have to trust the Spirit.

If we want to be the Church God uses, we have to do the work. If we want to be the Church God uses, we must see the need and meet the need. If we want to be the Church God uses, we must not toss the work back to Him to do apart from us, but understand that He will work through us because He lives in us. That’s our reason to exist. That’s our worship.

If we want to be the Church God uses, if we truly want to be with all our hearts, we will be.

Are we ready?

Why So Little Evidence of Miraculous Power in the Western Church?

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I’d like to continue the theme on charismata by offering wisdom from A.W. Tozer, the “patron saint” of Cerulean Sanctum. When Tozer preaches, I can’t help but be moved, nodding my head to every word. He understood the Lord in a way few of us do today, and his prophetic voice still rings loudly in the ears of modern Christians.

Are we listening?

Here is Tozer from his book Paths to Power: Living in the Spirit’s Fullness :

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Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.
—Hosea 10:12

HERE ARE TWO KINDS OF GROUND: fallow ground, and ground that has been broken up by the plow.

The fallow field is smug, contented, protected from the shock of the plow and the agitation of the harrow. Such a field, as it lies year after year, becomes a familiar landmark to the crow and the blue jay. Had it intelligence, it might take a lot of satisfaction in its reputation; it has stability; nature has adopted it; it can be counted upon to remain always the same while the fields around it change from brown to green and back to brown again. Safe and undisturbed, it sprawls lazily in the sunshine, the picture of sleepy contentment.

But it is paying a terrible price for its tranquility: Never does it see the miracle of growth; never does it feel the motions of mounting life nor see the wonders of bursting seed nor the beauty of ripening grain. Fruit it can never know because it is afraid of the plow and the harrow.

In direct opposite to this, the cultivated field has yielded itself to the adventure of living. The protecting fence has opened to admit the plow, and the plow has come as plows always come, practical, cruel, business-like and in a hurry. Peace has been shattered by the shouting farmer and the rattle of machinery. The field has felt the travail of change; it has been upset, turned over, bruised and broken, but its rewards come hard upon its labors.

The seed shoots up into the daylight its miracle of life, curious, exploring the new world above it. All over the field the hand of God is at work in the age-old and ever renewed service of creation. New things are born, to grow, mature, and consummate the grand prophecy latent in the seed when it entered the ground. Nature’s wonders follow the plow.

There are two kinds of lives also: the fallow and the plowed. For examples of the fallow life we need not go far. They are all too plentiful among us.

The man of fallow life is contented with himself and the fruit he once bore. He does not want to be disturbed. He smiles in tolerant superiority at revivals, fastings, self-searchings, and all the travail of fruit bearing and the anguish of advance. The spirit of adventure is dead within him.

Breaking up the fallow groundHe is steady, “faithful,” always in his accustomed place (like the old field), conservative, and something of a landmark in the little church. But he is fruitless. The curse of such a life is that it is fixed, both in size and in content. To be has taken the place of to become. The worst that can be said of such a man is that he is what he will be. He has fenced himself in, and by the same act he has fenced out God and the miracle.

The plowed life is the life that has, in the act of repentance, thrown down the protecting fences and sent the plow of confession into the soul. The urge of the Spirit, the pressure of circumstances and the distress of fruitless living have combined thoroughly to humble the heart.

Such a life has put away defense, and has forsaken the safety of death for the peril of life. Discontent, yearning, contrition, courageous obedience to the will of God: these have bruised and broken the soil till it is ready again for the seed. And as always fruit follows the plow. Life and growth begin as God “rains down righteousness.” Such a one can testify, “And the hand of the Lord was upon me there.”

Corresponding to these two kinds of life, religious history shows two phases, the dynamic and the static.

The dynamic periods were those heroic times when God’s people stirred themselves to do the Lord’s bidding and went out fearlessly to carry His witness to the world. They exchanged the safety of inaction for the hazards of God-inspired progress. Invariably the power of God followed such action. The miracle of God went when and where His people went; it stayed when His people stopped.

The static periods were those times when the people of God tired of the struggle and sought a life of peace and security. Then they busied themselves trying to conserve the gains made in those more daring times when the power of God moved among them.

Bible history is replete with examples. Abraham “went out” on his great adventure of faith, and God went with him. Revelations, theophanies, the gift of Palestine, covenants and promises of rich blessings to come were the result. Then Israel went down into Egypt, and the wonders ceased for four hundred years. At the end of that time Moses heard the call of God and stepped forth to challenge the oppressor. A whirlwind of power accompanied that challenge, and Israel soon began to march. As long as she dared to march God sent out His miracles to clear the way for her. Whenever she lay down like a fellow field He turned off His blessing and waited for her to rise again and command His power.

This is a brief but fair outline of the history of Israel and of the Church as well. As long as they “went forth and preached everywhere,” the Lord worked “with them,…confirming the word with signs following.” But when they retreated to monasteries or played at building pretty cathedrals, the help of God was withdrawn till a Luther or a Wesley arose to challenge hell again. Then invariably God poured out His power as before.

In every denomination, missionary society, local church or individual Christian this law operates. God works as long as His people live daringly; He ceases when they no longer need His aid. As soon as we seek protection out of God, we find it to our own undoing. Let us build a safety-wall of endowments, by-laws, prestige, multiplied agencies for the delegation of our duties, and creeping paralysis sets in at once, a paralysis which can only end in death.

The power of God comes only where it is called out by the plow. It is released into the Church only when she is doing something that demands it. By the word “doing” I do not mean mere activity. The Church has plenty of “hustle” as it is, but in all her activities she is very careful to leave her fallow ground mostly untouched. She is careful to confine her hustling within the fear-marked boundaries of complete safety. That is why she is fruitless; she is safe, but fallow.

Look around today and see where the miracles of power are taking place. Never in the Seminary where each thought is prepared for the student, to be received painlessly and at second hand; never in the religious institution where tradition and habit have long ago made faith unnecessary; never in the old church where memorial tablets plastered over the furniture bear silent testimony to a glory that once was. Invariably where daring faith is struggling to advance against hopeless odds, there is God sending “help from the sanctuary.”

In the missionary society with which I have been associated for many years. I have noticed that the power of God has always hovered over our frontiers. Miracles have accompanied our advances and have ceased when and where we allowed ourselves to become satisfied and ceased to advance. The creed of power cannot save a movement from barrenness. There must be also the work of power.

But I am more concerned with the effect of this truth upon the local church and the individual. Look at that church where plentiful fruit was once the regular and expected thing, but now there is little or no fruit, and the power of God seems to be in abeyance. What is the trouble? God has not changed, nor has His purpose for that church changed in the slightest measure. No, the church itself has changed.

A little self-examination will reveal that it and its members have become fallow. It has lived through its early travails and has now come to accept an easier way of life. It is content to carry on its painless program with enough money to pay its bills and a membership large enough to assure its future. Its members now look to it for security rather than for guidance in the battle between good and evil. It has become a school instead of a barracks. Its members are students, not soldiers. They study the experiences of others instead of seeking new experiences of their own.

The only way to power for such a church is to come out of hiding and once more take the danger-encircled path of obedience. Its security is its deadliest foe. The church that fears the plow writes its own epitaph; the church that uses the plow walks in the way of revival.

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Amen, Dr. Tozer, amen.

A Letter to Rich, the Young Ruler

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Dear Rich,

What a pleasant surprise to receive a letter from you! Your previous letter said you’d been working 60 hours a week to get the promotion you wanted, and now I read that you’ve received it. Looks like your hard work has paid off. You certainly are living the American Dream!

Congratulations, too, on your new five-bedroom home and your new Porsche Cayenne. I’m sure your wife and kids are deliriously happy with both. Thanks also for the pictures from your recent vacation to St. Kitts. My, the twins sure have grown.

I read the printout you enclosed of the blog article written by the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. You agree with his contention that there’s no compelling reason to buy an Apple iPhone. That’s probably a wise decision.

In reading that article, though, I find his reasons for not buying an iPhone intriguing. Most of the reasons he cited were technological. I, for one, think a far better reason to avoid it exists.

In our previous correspondence, we’ve gone back and forth on Jesus and what it means to be a Christian. I know you are quite a spiritual person, a “seeker” as you say, but I believe being spiritual and religious doesn’t go far enough.

So, Rich, I’d like to consider a word you don’t hear much today: profligate. That’s a word I would have liked to have seen mentioned in the article from the Thomas Nelson CEO, but even companies that deal with words shy away from some of the less popular ones. Profligate is one of those words.

Here’s how the dictionary defines the term:

Profligate

†“adjective
1. utterly and shamelessly immoral or dissipated; thoroughly dissolute.
2. recklessly prodigal or extravagant.

†“noun
3. a profligate person.

I can’t help but think, Rich, that since perfectly good cell phones can be had for $50, the desire for one that costs ten times that much seems…well, profligate. No doubt, the iPhone reeks of style and trendiness, and no doubt, many people who claim to follow Jesus will buy one. I’m not sure, though, that those buyers understand the word profligate.

Let me tell you about some people I know. I know a couple who bought a small home in one of the worst neighborhoods in our city. He has a good job and could afford a much larger home, but he and his wife elected to use their extra money to meet the desperate needs of their poorer neighbors. I know a man who forgos the expensive medication he needs to feel better so he can help a woman who has no health insurance pay for the even more expensive cancer medication she needs. I know a family who sent $1000 of their hard-earned money to help an unemployed couple they had never met in person make a house payment so they could keep their home. I know a man who gave every cent he owned in the world to fund a missionary couple who would have been recalled. Those missionaries were in the middle of their translation of the Bible into a new language. They would’ve had to come home unless they raised enough money to complete the translation.

Funny thing is, those people I just mentioned don’t know the common, negative understanding of the word profligate either—but for a far different reason. They live a different way: the way of Christ. If they have any profligacy in their lives, it’s profligacy in giving, not taking.

You mentioned in your last letter that I sounded out of step with the rest of the world. Indeed, I fear I am. You see, for me, it’s not so much about accumulating the hip trinkets of this life, things that break, become obsolete, and ultimately do not satisfy the longings of the heart. That’s because I believe in a world far more real than this one, a world where hip trinkets pale in the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Yes, as you said, it’s a risky belief. It means not keeping up with the social standing of the rest of the world. I would probably never be voted into the wonderful country club you and Mrs. Ruler just got accepted to. But that’s okay, Rich. It really is.

Some Christians believe this world is not their home. They won’t be understood by the rest of the world, nor by some other people who say they believe in Jesus. They’ve said no to many of the things the world offers and that’s an exceedingly hard thing to do.

You see, Rich, it’s one thing to say you believe something. It’s another thing altogether to believe something so much that your life looks radically different from the rest of the crowd. The crowd says so many things and believes so many things, doesn’t it? But who is willing to die to the voice of majority and give what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose? In a way then, the true profligate may be the one who appears to have every thing deemed good by the world’s standard, but will one day wind up losing it all in tears and flames. He has gained the world, but lost his soul.

I know my letter may not make sense to you. I’ll keep praying, though, that for all your seeking, God in His grace will make Himself known to you.

But I must caution you, Rich. If He does, and you take that revelation seriously, it may mean an end to one dream and the beginning of another. That new dream won’t look much like the old one, though. It may mean not only forgoing an iPhone, but giving up cell phones altogether. You may end up thinking it better to share those extra bedrooms in your new home with orphans or widows even if it means you could no longer afford that home theater system you said you might be purchasing. Don’t expect to be popular for electing not to keep up with the Joneses so you can minister life to others. The folks you run with probably won’t approve of your new dream. You may lose your standing at the country club. You may even be kicked out because you’re no longer one of the right kind of people.

But then again, that new dream’s the only dream that counts, the only one that ends in the Eternal Golden City. I pray I see you there.

For the Kingdom,

B. A. Disciple