Men today study God’s holy word as if there are no scriptures to be "opened up". My reader, do you know what this means - "opened up"? These same men, calling themselves "Bible students", are those who feel they are well able to hear God in all that He would have to say to them. Yet, to the choice Apostles of the 1st Century, the Lord Jesus said, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now" (John 16:12). At last, let us realize! One may read the scripture from the page, but only God can write it upon the fleshly table of the heart (2 Cor. 3:1-3)!
My reader, you may feel that your Pastor is eloquent of speech, but do you hear him speaking much of bowing down to God in prayer? If not, who is "the Preacher" ...really? Is it God the Holy Ghost, who alone can do the work (1 Pet. 4:11)? What about you, my reader? Are you honoring God - The Pastor (1 Pet. 2:25, Heb. 13:20) - feeling that your entire duty is to be "labourers together with God" (1 Cor. 3:9)? In other words, do you try to stay out of God's way while you engage in the work? Today men know nothing of what it means to be "a vessel...meet for the Master's use" (2 Tim. 2:21)... and, likewise, preachers are rich in pride because they are powerless to pray.
My reader, you may feel that your Pastor is eloquent of speech, but do you hear him speaking much of bowing down to God in prayer? If not, who is "the Preacher" ...really? Is it God the Holy Ghost, who alone can do the work (1 Pet. 4:11)? What about you, my reader? Are you honoring God - The Pastor (1 Pet. 2:25, Heb. 13:20) - feeling that your entire duty is to be "labourers together with God" (1 Cor. 3:9)? In other words, do you try to stay out of God's way while you engage in the work? Today men know nothing of what it means to be "a vessel...meet for the Master's use" (2 Tim. 2:21)... and, likewise, preachers are rich in pride because they are powerless to pray.
"Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to...anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see" (Rev. 3:17-18)
Do you see? My reader, have you ever wondered why Christ is so rich, and yet, you are so poor? Why Christ is so strong, and yet, you are so weak? Why Christ overcame the world, and yet, you are overwhelmed by it? Have you ever wondered why the treasury of Christ’s wisdom and knowledge is not opened up to you (Col. 2:3)? If so, look closely at the burden of the apostle Paul which drove him to his knees in continuous prayers:
| "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you..."  Ephesians 1:15-19, 3:14-21, Colossians 1:9-12 | "...the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him" "the eyes of your understanding being enlightened" "that ye might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding" "that ye...may be able to comprehend...to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God" |
All men have understanding, but not all men have "spiritual understanding". All men have eyes, but not all men have "the eyes of their understanding enlightened". All men seek knowledge, but not all men obtain it by "the spirit of wisdom and revelation". Do you know what these things are?
"And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight. And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?" - Luke 24:31-32
Dear reader, has God - the Holy Ghost - opened unto you the scriptures? Has Christ's actual, experiential, and communing Presence become the chief end of your learning and knowledge? Are you one of those who have been effectually called - by God - "unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord" (1 Cor. 1:9)? When a man is "filled with all the fulness of God" (Eph. 3:19), this is when the knowledge of God is comprehended, or rather, when the incomprehensible is Divinely revealed, for it is God that must open the eyes, open the ears, unlock the scriptures, and illuminate the mind. In all your learning, my reader, if you have not learned this...alas, you have learned nothing at all concerning God! In all your learning, seminarian, are you learning God? Counting the hours, have you learned to pray? Or can it be said of you that you cannot continue with Christ for one hour in prayer? Do you think that you know God, and yet, you cannot speak to Him at length, nor He with you?
We live in a day when men think well of themselves as preachers, as able ministers of God. How flippant is the calling sought after, and without gravity, engaged!? Men have no problem preaching because what they have learned is not a mystery. They are not, therefore, stewards of the mysteries of God (1 Cor. 4:1, Matt. 13:10-17). If you are a God-ordained pastor, how came your ordination? Did it come by prayer and fasting (Acts 13:1-4)? Was there any prophetic element to it? Most men cannot even keep the candle of their first love burning in the night, their prayers ascending like the flaming heat doth rise...even so, can such men be called pastors? God said of true pastors, they "watch for your souls as they that must give account" (Heb. 13:17)! May God give us mercy to hear that Divinely inspired question again - "Who then is a faithful and wise servant whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season" (Matt. 24:45)?
Who, in this dark generation, does walk out the command of Christ, "Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning" (Luke 12:35)? Preacher, if Christ does come to you "in the second watch, or come in the third watch" of the night, how will He "find" you to be? Will Christ include you in the number of those saintly few whom He spoke of when He said - "BLESSED ARE THOSE SERVANTS" (Luke 12:35-40)?
It is amazing that men can suppose themselves as the learned, the educated "Masters of Divinity", and yet they have never learned discipline and bodily subjection in the eternal cause of prayer, being invigorated thereto by a godly fear of God’s castaway wrath (1 Cor. 9:27). Having learned all manner of words, have you ever learned that which is not in “word only” (1 Thess. 1:5, 1 Cor. 2:10-13)? Having loved the “enticing words of man’s wisdom”, are you oblivious to what Paul called the “demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor. 2:4)? This learning - which is a spiritual experience - is not found by men because they are intellectual. This is what God calls “HIDDEN WISDOM” (1 Cor. 2:7) - but we are a generation of proud men who think God’s learning comes naturally (1 Cor. 2:14). How wrong we’ve got it!
Who, in this dark generation, does walk out the command of Christ, "Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning" (Luke 12:35)? Preacher, if Christ does come to you "in the second watch, or come in the third watch" of the night, how will He "find" you to be? Will Christ include you in the number of those saintly few whom He spoke of when He said - "BLESSED ARE THOSE SERVANTS" (Luke 12:35-40)?
It is amazing that men can suppose themselves as the learned, the educated "Masters of Divinity", and yet they have never learned discipline and bodily subjection in the eternal cause of prayer, being invigorated thereto by a godly fear of God’s castaway wrath (1 Cor. 9:27). Having learned all manner of words, have you ever learned that which is not in “word only” (1 Thess. 1:5, 1 Cor. 2:10-13)? Having loved the “enticing words of man’s wisdom”, are you oblivious to what Paul called the “demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor. 2:4)? This learning - which is a spiritual experience - is not found by men because they are intellectual. This is what God calls “HIDDEN WISDOM” (1 Cor. 2:7) - but we are a generation of proud men who think God’s learning comes naturally (1 Cor. 2:14). How wrong we’ve got it!
If men would pray, how would this affect their preaching?
 | “No preacher is going to skip into the pulpit with the “good news” that the church won the top honors in the interchurch bowling league if he has come from the closet of prayer with eternity blazing in his eyes.” - Leonard Ravenhill “No preacher leaves the closet with a sweat on his soul and offers a world of rebels the feeble utterance, ‘God loves you,’ without also stating, ‘God is angry with the wicked every day (Ps. 7:11).’” - Leonard Ravenhill |
In all your learning, have you ever come near to God, as it were, gazing upon His glory!? Have you ever abode in the thick cloud of His presence until time and sense seem no more, until suddenly, you are “endued with power from on high” (Lk. 24:49)!? In all your learning have you learned God? Has He thrust your heart through with the dagger of His painful love until you, joining with Him, are seeking and saving that which is lost? Has God affectionately bound your emotions to the success of His Great Commission? In all your learning, have you learned anything of what it means when a man is “endued with power from on high”? Or rather, like the wicked, are you afraid of the face of man? My reader, you hide from the face of man because you do not abide under the shining strength, the unconquerable courage, emanating from the Face of God Almighty (Ps. 4:6, 44:3).
My reader, if you truly sought God, no compromising, with ALL of YOUR HEART, what would He show you? What hidden thing would God reveal to YOU? A godly man once said, "The chief danger of the twentieth century will be: religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, heaven without hell" (William Booth).
My reader, if you truly sought God, no compromising, with ALL of YOUR HEART, what would He show you? What hidden thing would God reveal to YOU? A godly man once said, "The chief danger of the twentieth century will be: religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, heaven without hell" (William Booth).
RSS Feed