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Warring for What? (updated
8/16/08)
Progress digitizing Faith Assembly recorded
sermons: through October 1997 complete, as well as January 2000 through March
2001, and October 2003 to the present.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Through Acts 2:13
We need what the disciples had in Acts 2! If we think we have it, maybe we need
to think harder. It looks to me like people are accepting a substitute. I have
to say, I do not see the disciples in the New Testament settling back, waiting
for a special “shove” from God to get them “out there,” before they can actually
use the divine enablement! Just as much as when I first was baptized in the Holy
Spirit, I sense there is more to be received from God. More anointing, if I can
call it that, to do the same things the disciples did in the book of Acts. I am
searching my heart, and imploring God to search me, to see what the holdup is,
in me, first of all, but also in others who have received the Holy Spirit.
Forty years ago, Christians who had
never received baptism in the Holy Spirit were seeking increased enabling and
increased empowering to carry out the purposes of God’s Kingdom, and that hunger
was satisfied with the baptism in the Holy Spirit. But they did not just stop
with receiving the Holy Spirit; they made use of the empowering! Here we are
today, watching power and signs and lying wonders drawing people down the path
to deception, to “confirm” a “word” that is nothing more than a fleshly gospel
of salvation without conversion, and forgiveness without repentance. People who
bear the name of Christ today are no different than the depraved, dark world
around them. The signs and wonders attributed to the gifts and powers of the
world to come are manifested only by greedy religious “superstars,” who draw
spiritual babies after them to cheer them on and to line their pockets with this
world’s material abundance. I don’t mean to suggest there are no true signs and
wonders, confirming the true gospel of surrender and reconciliation to God; but,
I am talking about the rule, not the exception! Something indeed is wrong!
Surely, we can see we are in a time of spiritual decline. How can people who
were so hungry that they sought high and low to receive the empowering from on
high now think they have all there is, and not be seeking more? The zeal people
had for God back in the 1970s and 1980s, to do battle and overcome the powers of
darkness, just isn’t here as it once was. Today, people seem satisfied just to
attend a church that believes in the New Testament empowering and gifts! I’m not
saying this to be critical; anyone with eyes can see it. Something just is
missing, and I want it back! And I give God the glory that He is intensifying my
hunger for greater power to fulfill the purposes for which He raised up this
assembly where I am the pastor. In Jesus’ Name, I shall see it come to pass!
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