Sugar Coated Preaching

     The Word has become adulterated with worldly antidotes. You see, I rarely hear a preacher preach on the “blood of Jesus” anymore. Instead, we talk about His love, His grace and His forgiveness. This is all good, but how can we experience His love, grace and forgiveness without first experiencing the “blood” that covers our sin. We’ve cleaned our churches up a little too much – don’t you think!

     The sugar coated gospel is designed to cause the unsuspected believer to become dependent on music, nice short preaching and wonderful philosophy etc., to experience a “quick fix” or good feeling inside. They also become church junkies, thus not knowing how to worship or study the scripture outside of the church.

        Scripture says: 2 Tim. 4:3-4 – “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;” “And they shall turn away their ears from the Truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

     These are ears always pricking with an uneasy desire for what would gratify the taste of a carnal, self-willed heart. Does this sound like you? Then there is a remedy.

     The question is; Do you Know Jesus as your personal savior? If not don’t wait! “…Behold now is the day of Salvation” 2 Cor. 6:2. Call upon His Name. 

A Bondservant of Jesus

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me …” (Galatians 2:20).

     These words mean the breaking and collapse of my independence brought about by my own hands, and the surrendering of my life to the supremacy of the Lord Jesus. No one can do this for me, I must do it myself. God may bring me up to this point three hundred and sixty-five times a year, but He cannot push me through it. It means breaking the hard outer layer of my individual independence from God, and the liberating of myself and my nature into oneness with Him; not following my own ideas, but choosing absolute loyalty to Jesus. Once I am at that point, there is no possibility of misunderstanding. Very few of us know anything about loyalty to Christ or understand what He meant when He said, “… for My sake” (Matthew 5:11). That is what makes a strong saint.

     Has that breaking of my independence come? All the rest is religious fraud. The one point to decide is—will I give up? Will I surrender to Jesus Christ, placing no conditions whatsoever as to how the brokenness will come? I must be broken from my own understanding of myself. When I reach that point, immediately the reality of the supernatural identification with Jesus Christ takes place. And the witness of the Spirit of God is unmistakable—“I have been crucified with Christ … .”

     The passion of Christianity comes from deliberately signing away my own rights and becoming a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Until I do that, I will not begin to be a saint.

 

Obedience or Independence?

“If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15).

     Our Lord never insists on our obedience. He stresses very definitely what we ought to do, but He never forces us to do it. We have to obey Him out of a oneness of spirit with Him. That is why whenever our Lord talked about discipleship; He prefaced it with an “If,” meaning, “You do not need to do this unless you desire to do so.” “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself …” (Luke 9:23). In other words, “To be My disciple, let him give up his right to himself to Me.” Our Lord is not talking about our eternal position, but about our being of value to Him in this life here and now. That is why He sounds so stern (see Luke 14:26). Never try to make sense from these words by separating them from the One who spoke them.

     The Lord does not give me rules, but He makes His standard very clear. If my relationship to Him is that of love, I will do what He says without hesitation. If I hesitate, it is because I love someone I have placed in competition with Him, namely, myself. Jesus Christ will not force me to obey Him, but I must. And as soon as I obey Him, I fulfill my spiritual destiny. My personal life may be crowded with small, petty happenings, altogether insignificant. But if I obey Jesus Christ in the seemingly random circumstances of life, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God. Then, when I stand face to face with God, I will discover that through my obedience thousands were blessed. When God’s redemption brings a human soul to the point of obedience, it always produces. If I obey Jesus Christ, the redemption of God will flow through me to the lives of others, because behind the deed of obedience is the reality of Almighty God.