This video is of my son, Caleb, preaching his first sermon at a junior rally. He was very nervous, especially during the opening verses but he did an excellent job if I do say so myself. Hope you enjoy it as well
Monday, April 21, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
A sermon from about two years ago
This is a sermon I preached at my church awhile back. Please read the whole thing, not just parts...... like many do the Bible.
CHURCH MEMBERS WHO MAKE GOD SICK
Rev. 3:15-17
"I will spue thee out of my mouth!" These are the words of the Lord Jesus and our word VOMIT would be a good translation of the word spue. The message is given by Christ to the church of Laodicea. the last mentioned of the seven churches in Asia Minor to whom the Spirit sent messages by John, the human writer of Revelation. The message seems especially given for the last days. The message to Laodicea comes just before the story of the coming of Christ for His saints as pictured in Revelation 4:1. "I know the works," Jesus said. He knows the human heart, and that which seems all well to the casual observer is nauseating to God.
"I know that you think you are well off," says Jesus. "You say, 'I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing' and knowest not that thou art poor and wretched and miserable and blind and naked."
WHO IS IT THAT MAKES GOD VOMIT?
Not the infidel! Not the atheist! Not the self-confessed unsaved sinner! Not those who deny Christ! They have never been in intimate touch with Christ how can He spue them out? One who is not a branch of Christ can never wither as Christ's branches sometimes do. (John 15:6) NO! It is not because they are cold that they nauseate the Saviour. It is because they are neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm. The people in the churches, not those on the outside, nauseate God. To lukewarm Christians God says, "I will spue thee out of my moth."
This doesn't mean one can lose his or her salvation. Yet, though a Christian cannot lose his salvation, never think that he has nothing to lose by sin! He can lose the joy of his salvation, he can lose his daily fellowship with his Heavenly Father, his enjoyment over the Bible, lose answers to prayers, perhaps lose souls that they might win, and certainly lose much of the reward they might have had in Heaven.
WOULD CHRIST PREFER THAT YOU BE AN OUT-AND-OUT SINNER REJECTING HIM, DESPISING THE BIBLE, INSULTING THE HOLY SPIRIT, REFUSING TO BELIEVE, THAN TO BE SAVED BUT LUKEWARM? YES!
"I would that thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." Christ desired that all His own be on fire for God, filled with the Sprit, but if you are not red hot, then Jesus prefers that you be cold. "I would thou wert cold or hot."
Of course, you feel that it is better to be a lukewarm Christian than to be a lost sinner going to Hell. And for YOU it is better. YOU had rather go to Heaven even though by your indifferent living, your lukewarm heart, your week Christianity you sent a thousand others to Hell! And that is what many Christians really do. If you have truly trusted in Christ and have been born again, you will go to Heaven. But if you are a lukewarm Christian, you thwart the gospel and damn other souls. All some people ever will know of Christ is what they see in you. And what they see in you, many do not want. They see no victory over sin, no Christian joy, no sincere testimony. They see no evidence of a changed heart, no proof of the reality of Christ and salvation to the believer. LUKEWARM CHRISTIANS ARE THE ALIBI OF SINNERS. Lukewarm Christians are double-crossers of Christ, spiritual adulterers who do more harm than good.
Symptoms of the Lukewarm Christian
Verse 17
SELF-SATISFACTION
How well pleased we are with ourselves! Our complacency is, in fact, the very hearth of our sin! If we were burdened by our own faults, if we could see our own shallowness, our own insincerity, our own spiritual poverty. the God would not be so nauseated and disgusted with us. But Jesus said to the lukewarm Christians of Laodicea that He would spue them out "because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." That is the reason He must vomit the lukewarm Christians out of His mouth!
The sin of our self-satisfaction! We have beautiful church houses, we have more modern church equipment than ever before. We have larger budgets than ever before, we have great Christian literature and radio programs. We have more missionaries being sent than at any time in history. In many cases the most influential people in some towns are members of our churches. We are rich and have need of nothing! SO WE THINK, but to God – our smirking self-righteousness, our being so well pleased with ourselves, is an abomination. We do not know that we are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked! The truth is our lukewarmness is simply a phase of our unbelief, of our unconfessed sin, of our love for the world. We are so full of self and the world that we have no hunger for God. We do not have a hunger for God and for some reason we do not care!!!
We are lukewarm Christians. And may God forgive us, for that self-satisfaction is the thing that makes us hopeless of God's blessings. We feel we have need of nothing, so we seek nothing and we find nothing! We are not hungry so we do not eat! We're not thirsty; so we do not drink! We are not conscious of lack of power; so we do not seek power from the Lord. We do not even realize how our sins grieve God; so we do not confess them nor forsake them! We do not feel any special need to pray; so we do not pray, we don't weep, we don't fast, we do not confess our sins! May God awake us self-satisfied Christians before we are spued out of the mouth of God, before we are permanently laid aside, never to be used in His service again.
NO CONCERN ABOUT HOLINESS Matthew 23:27
Sadly, the average Christian is really unconcerned with personal holiness. We all want to be respectable people. We want others to think well of us. Like the Pharisees we whitewash the sepulchers, which are beautiful to behold, while most will never see the rottenness and uncleanness on the inside. Surely it is true of us, as the Lord said through Isaiah and as Christ said in Mark 7:6 "This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." We TALK a good religion, but how much heart-hunger do present-day Christians have for personal holiness – to be pure in the sight of God, to be set apart altogether and absolutely for Christ? How many do you know today that seem to hunger and thirst after righteousness and have an unspeakable burden to be like Jesus? Probably not many!
Paul himself frankly confessed that he was not perfect and that he had not yet attained what he sought, but because of this Paul followed hard after the Lord Jesus. He said, "Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus"
(Phil. 3:13,14) Paul stated in the 7th chapter of Romans that he was a wretched man, serving the law of God with his mind, but with his flesh serving the law of sin. The key is that Paul makes the confession with an agony of heart and cries out, "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Romans 7:24) Paul was not perfect, but he mourned over his sins. Paul was not sinless, but he longed to be, prayed to be, tried to be. What could we accomplish for the Lord today if we each had this hunger for personal holiness.
Please understand, I am not saying that Christians are altogether cold on morals. That is not what God tells you. That is not what disgusts Jesus Christ. Christ did not say that we didn't have good morals, that we do not try to live good lives in general. He simply said that we are not red hot about it. We are not cold, but we are not hot either. We are lukewarm about personal holiness.
It is one thing to be an upright, respectable, moral Christian of good character and standing, and an entirely different matter to be a holy man or woman – set apart for God, longing and praying, with heart searching, with confession, with tears, with self-crucifixion, to be free of every secret thought, every touch of worldliness that would grieve the Holy Spirit of God. I'm not saying that we are cold Christians but I am saying we are not Hot Christians. Half-hearted Christianity is an abomination to God and Jesus wants you either hot or cold.
UNCONCERNED ABOUT THE BIBLE
2 Timothy 3:16
The lukewarmness of church members toward the Word of God is shocking. Many people do not believe "all" the Bible. (It's either ALL God's word or it's not God's word AT ALL) It's strange how many people CALL themselves Christians, even Fundamentalists, and yet do not believe certain parts of the Bible, they do not believe that all scripture is infallibly correct. Many believe in inspiration but do not believe in verbal inspiration (concepts vs. word for word). Many think that the Genesis account of creation is only allegorical and figurative, that no fish REALLY swallowed Jonah, or they do not believe that Jesus LITERALLY came out of the grave. Many women when they read the divine commands about obedient submissive wives ( not domineering and sneaky wives) and women not usurping authority to preach believe that Paul only wrote that because that was the way that women were treated back then. More than once I've had church members tell me that they would not follow the plain commands of proverbs about spanking children to make them obey because people tell them they should find other methods to persuade their children to obey. Most of us claim to believe the Bible, but our profession is insincere. We believe the Bible, but not that it is scientifically accurate. We believe the Bible, but not that it is historically correct. We believe the Bible, but not that Christ will literally return in the sky and call believers to join him in the air. We believe the Bible, at least we say we do, but we do not believe miracles are really possible. We do not believe God's promises about answered prayer. We are insincere hypocrites when we are indifferent toward the word of God. We do not take it very serious. Odd are that some off you here today are thinking that I'm taking this too serious. I have a feeling we'll all agree on this when we stand before the Lord. We believe God's word a little but not with all our hearts. We're not atheists, we believe the Bible in general but not in particular. We are partly for it and partly against it. We are not cold toward it but neither are we hot toward it. We have become lukewarm AND THAT NAUSEATES GOD
The Lord Jesus leaned upon the Word of God! His constant passion was to live every moment the Bible says "that the scripture might be fulfilled." He did not forget it in the garden, and it was repeatedly mentioned concerning the crucifixion. Christ died "according to the scriptures" and rose the third day "according to the scriptures". With the Word of God, Jesus defeated Satan at His temptation and declared later that not one jot nor one tittle should ever pass until all be fulfilled.
The fact is that Christians are not interested in the Bible. The average Christian had never read the Bible through. If I were to have everyone raise their hand to say that they have read the entire Bible through odds are that about 1/3 of the room would raise their hand. In most cases here I could ask people what their favorite book of the Bible is and when they answer they cannot tell me how many chapters are in that book.. I've seen Christians start turning in their Bibles and looking for the verse when the Pastor will tell them to turn to the book of Hezekiah or the book of Samson. The average Christian in our country today doesn't even know that these are not books of the Bible.
Christians do not know their Bibles even moderately well. If : Psalm 1, 23, 103- John 14 – and Romans 8, 12 were taken out of the Bible and about maybe 4 or 5 others then about two-thirds of all the scripture that the average Christian can quote would be gone. Christians know more about the life of Dale Earnhart Jr. than they do about the life of Jesus Christ. They know more about Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson than they do about Paul and Barnabas. Christians simply do not know what the Bible says about baptism or divorce or about Hell, it's no wonder why people jump from church to church to church because they don't know which church is teaching the Bible and which isn't. Very few Christians, if marooned on a desert island with an unsaved man, could show that sinner how to be saved. Lukewarm Christian do not know the Bible that they claim to love. Some read it, a chapter a day, read it with yawns, and then have to place a book mark at the place they stop so they can remember where to begin the next day because they do not remember what they read.
"I read the Bible I just cannot remember what I read even right after I read it" I've heard that statement at least a hundred times since getting in the ministry. Yet they remember street addresses, telephone numbers, and names of friends (illustration about baseball stats). The simple truth is that Christians do not read the Bible because they do not love it, they aren't reading it with a passionate fervor. A Christian will read a chapter in the Bible as a matter of duty and then read through the entire newspaper, equal in volume to about 2 books. They read the Bible because of duty and read the newspaper because they enjoy it. The sad truth is that we have no heart for the Bible. We do not love it, we do not search it, we do not meditate in it day and night. It is not to us 'sweeter than honey or the honeycomb' as it was to David. Surely nothing could show our backslidden state more quickly than our attitude toward the Bible. Prosperity and success in everything we say and do is promised to one who meditates day and night in the Word of God and does not depart from it's teachings. (Ps. 1 and Josh 1:8). Yet people read the Bible as a drudgery or not at all. Surely God is grieved and angry with us for this criminal and inexcusable indifference toward the holy Word of God!!!
COLDHEARTED PRAYERS James 1:6-7
Do Christian "mean it" when they pray? Evidently most of us do not. We have very weak prayer lives these days. We have prayer without fasting, prayer without supplication, prayers without tears. Most Christians have never prayed all night nor all day. Most Christians never missed a meal or a days work to pray. We are skeptics about prayer. Very few Christian expect God to heal the sick in answer to prayer. We call the doctor before we call on the Lord when someone gets sick.
We spend very little time in prayer. The average Christian does not spend 3 minutes a day seeking God's face. Those who do pray many times fall into vain repetitions or only praying for meals. New Testament Christians fasted and prayed. The disciples fasted before Pentecost, for Jesus said that 'when the bridegroom is taken away then shall they fast'. The Christians at Antioch fasted and prayed before they sent Paul and Barnabas one their missionary journey. In fact it says in Acts 13 that they fasted and prayed twice. The Bible says that Paul was "in fastings often". Even the Pharisees fasted. But fasting seems to be out of date with many Christians. We pray without fasting, we give without true sacrifice, we witness without tears, that is why we are reaping without sowing.
We do not love prayer, we spend little time in prayer, we do not expect blessings in prayer. No wonder the Lord Jesus counts our weak praying, half-hearted, insincere, dry-eyed praying as an abomination!
Conclusion
The sad fact is this and the bottom line is that we are not cold, and we are not hot. We love God but with no fervor. We pray, but with no passion. We give, but with no sacrifice. We testify, but with no power. We make God vomit with our lukewarm Christianity.
Will you get alone with God this morning in a time of holy confession, forsaking your lukewarmness, and begging Him to give you a burning hot heart? Will you plead for the anointing of our eyes to see the doom of sinners and weep for their salvation? Will you come this morning and start afresh with the Lord and give your life back to him. I pray that the Lord would forgive us of our lukewarmness.
CHURCH MEMBERS WHO MAKE GOD SICK
Rev. 3:15-17
"I will spue thee out of my mouth!" These are the words of the Lord Jesus and our word VOMIT would be a good translation of the word spue. The message is given by Christ to the church of Laodicea. the last mentioned of the seven churches in Asia Minor to whom the Spirit sent messages by John, the human writer of Revelation. The message seems especially given for the last days. The message to Laodicea comes just before the story of the coming of Christ for His saints as pictured in Revelation 4:1. "I know the works," Jesus said. He knows the human heart, and that which seems all well to the casual observer is nauseating to God.
"I know that you think you are well off," says Jesus. "You say, 'I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing' and knowest not that thou art poor and wretched and miserable and blind and naked."
WHO IS IT THAT MAKES GOD VOMIT?
Not the infidel! Not the atheist! Not the self-confessed unsaved sinner! Not those who deny Christ! They have never been in intimate touch with Christ how can He spue them out? One who is not a branch of Christ can never wither as Christ's branches sometimes do. (John 15:6) NO! It is not because they are cold that they nauseate the Saviour. It is because they are neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm. The people in the churches, not those on the outside, nauseate God. To lukewarm Christians God says, "I will spue thee out of my moth."
This doesn't mean one can lose his or her salvation. Yet, though a Christian cannot lose his salvation, never think that he has nothing to lose by sin! He can lose the joy of his salvation, he can lose his daily fellowship with his Heavenly Father, his enjoyment over the Bible, lose answers to prayers, perhaps lose souls that they might win, and certainly lose much of the reward they might have had in Heaven.
WOULD CHRIST PREFER THAT YOU BE AN OUT-AND-OUT SINNER REJECTING HIM, DESPISING THE BIBLE, INSULTING THE HOLY SPIRIT, REFUSING TO BELIEVE, THAN TO BE SAVED BUT LUKEWARM? YES!
"I would that thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." Christ desired that all His own be on fire for God, filled with the Sprit, but if you are not red hot, then Jesus prefers that you be cold. "I would thou wert cold or hot."
Of course, you feel that it is better to be a lukewarm Christian than to be a lost sinner going to Hell. And for YOU it is better. YOU had rather go to Heaven even though by your indifferent living, your lukewarm heart, your week Christianity you sent a thousand others to Hell! And that is what many Christians really do. If you have truly trusted in Christ and have been born again, you will go to Heaven. But if you are a lukewarm Christian, you thwart the gospel and damn other souls. All some people ever will know of Christ is what they see in you. And what they see in you, many do not want. They see no victory over sin, no Christian joy, no sincere testimony. They see no evidence of a changed heart, no proof of the reality of Christ and salvation to the believer. LUKEWARM CHRISTIANS ARE THE ALIBI OF SINNERS. Lukewarm Christians are double-crossers of Christ, spiritual adulterers who do more harm than good.
Symptoms of the Lukewarm Christian
Verse 17
SELF-SATISFACTION
How well pleased we are with ourselves! Our complacency is, in fact, the very hearth of our sin! If we were burdened by our own faults, if we could see our own shallowness, our own insincerity, our own spiritual poverty. the God would not be so nauseated and disgusted with us. But Jesus said to the lukewarm Christians of Laodicea that He would spue them out "because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." That is the reason He must vomit the lukewarm Christians out of His mouth!
The sin of our self-satisfaction! We have beautiful church houses, we have more modern church equipment than ever before. We have larger budgets than ever before, we have great Christian literature and radio programs. We have more missionaries being sent than at any time in history. In many cases the most influential people in some towns are members of our churches. We are rich and have need of nothing! SO WE THINK, but to God – our smirking self-righteousness, our being so well pleased with ourselves, is an abomination. We do not know that we are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked! The truth is our lukewarmness is simply a phase of our unbelief, of our unconfessed sin, of our love for the world. We are so full of self and the world that we have no hunger for God. We do not have a hunger for God and for some reason we do not care!!!
We are lukewarm Christians. And may God forgive us, for that self-satisfaction is the thing that makes us hopeless of God's blessings. We feel we have need of nothing, so we seek nothing and we find nothing! We are not hungry so we do not eat! We're not thirsty; so we do not drink! We are not conscious of lack of power; so we do not seek power from the Lord. We do not even realize how our sins grieve God; so we do not confess them nor forsake them! We do not feel any special need to pray; so we do not pray, we don't weep, we don't fast, we do not confess our sins! May God awake us self-satisfied Christians before we are spued out of the mouth of God, before we are permanently laid aside, never to be used in His service again.
NO CONCERN ABOUT HOLINESS Matthew 23:27
Sadly, the average Christian is really unconcerned with personal holiness. We all want to be respectable people. We want others to think well of us. Like the Pharisees we whitewash the sepulchers, which are beautiful to behold, while most will never see the rottenness and uncleanness on the inside. Surely it is true of us, as the Lord said through Isaiah and as Christ said in Mark 7:6 "This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." We TALK a good religion, but how much heart-hunger do present-day Christians have for personal holiness – to be pure in the sight of God, to be set apart altogether and absolutely for Christ? How many do you know today that seem to hunger and thirst after righteousness and have an unspeakable burden to be like Jesus? Probably not many!
Paul himself frankly confessed that he was not perfect and that he had not yet attained what he sought, but because of this Paul followed hard after the Lord Jesus. He said, "Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus"
(Phil. 3:13,14) Paul stated in the 7th chapter of Romans that he was a wretched man, serving the law of God with his mind, but with his flesh serving the law of sin. The key is that Paul makes the confession with an agony of heart and cries out, "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Romans 7:24) Paul was not perfect, but he mourned over his sins. Paul was not sinless, but he longed to be, prayed to be, tried to be. What could we accomplish for the Lord today if we each had this hunger for personal holiness.
Please understand, I am not saying that Christians are altogether cold on morals. That is not what God tells you. That is not what disgusts Jesus Christ. Christ did not say that we didn't have good morals, that we do not try to live good lives in general. He simply said that we are not red hot about it. We are not cold, but we are not hot either. We are lukewarm about personal holiness.
It is one thing to be an upright, respectable, moral Christian of good character and standing, and an entirely different matter to be a holy man or woman – set apart for God, longing and praying, with heart searching, with confession, with tears, with self-crucifixion, to be free of every secret thought, every touch of worldliness that would grieve the Holy Spirit of God. I'm not saying that we are cold Christians but I am saying we are not Hot Christians. Half-hearted Christianity is an abomination to God and Jesus wants you either hot or cold.
UNCONCERNED ABOUT THE BIBLE
2 Timothy 3:16
The lukewarmness of church members toward the Word of God is shocking. Many people do not believe "all" the Bible. (It's either ALL God's word or it's not God's word AT ALL) It's strange how many people CALL themselves Christians, even Fundamentalists, and yet do not believe certain parts of the Bible, they do not believe that all scripture is infallibly correct. Many believe in inspiration but do not believe in verbal inspiration (concepts vs. word for word). Many think that the Genesis account of creation is only allegorical and figurative, that no fish REALLY swallowed Jonah, or they do not believe that Jesus LITERALLY came out of the grave. Many women when they read the divine commands about obedient submissive wives ( not domineering and sneaky wives) and women not usurping authority to preach believe that Paul only wrote that because that was the way that women were treated back then. More than once I've had church members tell me that they would not follow the plain commands of proverbs about spanking children to make them obey because people tell them they should find other methods to persuade their children to obey. Most of us claim to believe the Bible, but our profession is insincere. We believe the Bible, but not that it is scientifically accurate. We believe the Bible, but not that it is historically correct. We believe the Bible, but not that Christ will literally return in the sky and call believers to join him in the air. We believe the Bible, at least we say we do, but we do not believe miracles are really possible. We do not believe God's promises about answered prayer. We are insincere hypocrites when we are indifferent toward the word of God. We do not take it very serious. Odd are that some off you here today are thinking that I'm taking this too serious. I have a feeling we'll all agree on this when we stand before the Lord. We believe God's word a little but not with all our hearts. We're not atheists, we believe the Bible in general but not in particular. We are partly for it and partly against it. We are not cold toward it but neither are we hot toward it. We have become lukewarm AND THAT NAUSEATES GOD
The Lord Jesus leaned upon the Word of God! His constant passion was to live every moment the Bible says "that the scripture might be fulfilled." He did not forget it in the garden, and it was repeatedly mentioned concerning the crucifixion. Christ died "according to the scriptures" and rose the third day "according to the scriptures". With the Word of God, Jesus defeated Satan at His temptation and declared later that not one jot nor one tittle should ever pass until all be fulfilled.
The fact is that Christians are not interested in the Bible. The average Christian had never read the Bible through. If I were to have everyone raise their hand to say that they have read the entire Bible through odds are that about 1/3 of the room would raise their hand. In most cases here I could ask people what their favorite book of the Bible is and when they answer they cannot tell me how many chapters are in that book.. I've seen Christians start turning in their Bibles and looking for the verse when the Pastor will tell them to turn to the book of Hezekiah or the book of Samson. The average Christian in our country today doesn't even know that these are not books of the Bible.
Christians do not know their Bibles even moderately well. If : Psalm 1, 23, 103- John 14 – and Romans 8, 12 were taken out of the Bible and about maybe 4 or 5 others then about two-thirds of all the scripture that the average Christian can quote would be gone. Christians know more about the life of Dale Earnhart Jr. than they do about the life of Jesus Christ. They know more about Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson than they do about Paul and Barnabas. Christians simply do not know what the Bible says about baptism or divorce or about Hell, it's no wonder why people jump from church to church to church because they don't know which church is teaching the Bible and which isn't. Very few Christians, if marooned on a desert island with an unsaved man, could show that sinner how to be saved. Lukewarm Christian do not know the Bible that they claim to love. Some read it, a chapter a day, read it with yawns, and then have to place a book mark at the place they stop so they can remember where to begin the next day because they do not remember what they read.
"I read the Bible I just cannot remember what I read even right after I read it" I've heard that statement at least a hundred times since getting in the ministry. Yet they remember street addresses, telephone numbers, and names of friends (illustration about baseball stats). The simple truth is that Christians do not read the Bible because they do not love it, they aren't reading it with a passionate fervor. A Christian will read a chapter in the Bible as a matter of duty and then read through the entire newspaper, equal in volume to about 2 books. They read the Bible because of duty and read the newspaper because they enjoy it. The sad truth is that we have no heart for the Bible. We do not love it, we do not search it, we do not meditate in it day and night. It is not to us 'sweeter than honey or the honeycomb' as it was to David. Surely nothing could show our backslidden state more quickly than our attitude toward the Bible. Prosperity and success in everything we say and do is promised to one who meditates day and night in the Word of God and does not depart from it's teachings. (Ps. 1 and Josh 1:8). Yet people read the Bible as a drudgery or not at all. Surely God is grieved and angry with us for this criminal and inexcusable indifference toward the holy Word of God!!!
COLDHEARTED PRAYERS James 1:6-7
Do Christian "mean it" when they pray? Evidently most of us do not. We have very weak prayer lives these days. We have prayer without fasting, prayer without supplication, prayers without tears. Most Christians have never prayed all night nor all day. Most Christians never missed a meal or a days work to pray. We are skeptics about prayer. Very few Christian expect God to heal the sick in answer to prayer. We call the doctor before we call on the Lord when someone gets sick.
We spend very little time in prayer. The average Christian does not spend 3 minutes a day seeking God's face. Those who do pray many times fall into vain repetitions or only praying for meals. New Testament Christians fasted and prayed. The disciples fasted before Pentecost, for Jesus said that 'when the bridegroom is taken away then shall they fast'. The Christians at Antioch fasted and prayed before they sent Paul and Barnabas one their missionary journey. In fact it says in Acts 13 that they fasted and prayed twice. The Bible says that Paul was "in fastings often". Even the Pharisees fasted. But fasting seems to be out of date with many Christians. We pray without fasting, we give without true sacrifice, we witness without tears, that is why we are reaping without sowing.
We do not love prayer, we spend little time in prayer, we do not expect blessings in prayer. No wonder the Lord Jesus counts our weak praying, half-hearted, insincere, dry-eyed praying as an abomination!
Conclusion
The sad fact is this and the bottom line is that we are not cold, and we are not hot. We love God but with no fervor. We pray, but with no passion. We give, but with no sacrifice. We testify, but with no power. We make God vomit with our lukewarm Christianity.
Will you get alone with God this morning in a time of holy confession, forsaking your lukewarmness, and begging Him to give you a burning hot heart? Will you plead for the anointing of our eyes to see the doom of sinners and weep for their salvation? Will you come this morning and start afresh with the Lord and give your life back to him. I pray that the Lord would forgive us of our lukewarmness.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Going strong
The Lord has continued to bless and our building project is on it's way. We held groundbreaking services on March 30th and our permits have been filed. Now all we are waiting on is the appraisel to come through and we will be ready to start the foundation. In March, we had three straight weeks with over 100 in attendance. This morning we had 1 woman (Audrey Crick) join the church. God is good and greatly to be praised.
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