I was very encouraged the last few days that I spent with a wonderful group of Christians from the West Coast Chinese Christian Conference, as I taught there four days on 2 Timothy 4. To be honest with you, I felt a little bit spiritually intimidated. Their commitment to prayer, the camaraderie, the joy, the closeness that they felt, the ready smiles, the encouraging attitudes, their unaffected love for one another. I got to reflect on my own life and I fall short in some of these areas compared to these folks. Here's the impact that it had on me, though.
On the one hand, it was an encouragement for me to excel in some of these others areas where I felt that I was bested by my brothers and sisters during that week. It was an encouragement for me to press on and grow, and that is what happens in the best of environments where you are surrounded by people that are growing spiritually like I was the last few days.
But at the same time I took comfort in the grace of God because I think that we get into a heavy confession mode for individual sins that we might commit. We have our particular besetting sin, and when we give in to that besetting sin, we go before the Lord and pour out our hearts in confession. We feel bad so we confess and feel better.
What we don't realize is that it isn't just that besetting sin that is a problem, but the sin that we are in the midst of every single minute of our Christian lives. There are a multitude of inadequacies that aren't always obvious to us in our standard surroundings, and often when we change our surroundings for a while then those things become clear like they were for me in the last couple of days.
This is actually one reason that I believe in eternal security, folks. Because those that talk about the fact that you can lose your salvation and fall out of grace look at these magnum sins that people might fall into -- drunkenness, adultery, or sexual sin -- but they are oblivious to the constant sin that is an ordinary and normal part of our daily lives.
R.C. Sproul said once, "The two greatest commandments--love God with all your heart, mind, soul, strength, and love, and your neighbor as yourself--do you realize how many times in the last hour since I have been speaking to you that I have violated both of those commandments?"
We don't realize how bad we are. We think of our obvious magnum sins that we confess, but underneath all that there is a current of continuous sin in which there are many areas where we fall short all the time.
I want you to get a clear picture of how desperately you need the grace of God, and understand that if there were any way that you could disqualify yourself from the grace of God, you probably would have done it by now and have done it many times. It's important to lead the kind of life that would be necessary to qualify for our salvation. Maybe we could clean up the adultery, and the fornication, and some of those other more obvious magnum sins. But sweeping out every evidence of pride in our life? Every vestige of small thinking, every bit of condescension? Every smidgen of arrogance? No way. When we realize how desperately sinful we really are I hope that throws you confidently back into the arms of Jesus Christ.
This last week I thought of how much and how frequently I fall short. I am so glad because of the on-going forgiveness that I have in Christ. Instead of always confessing all of these sins that we have, I think we should think more often about thanking God for the grace that we have before the throne. As the writer of Hebrews said in chapter 10:22, "Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering. For He who promised is faithful." Boy, that is good news.
I don't want to leave a wrong impression though. It is a mistake to assess spirituality simply on the basis of a person's emotional display. What you want to be careful of is looking around at people in the church service and seeing people really into it--on their knees, people singing with glazed-over eyes, people expressing a lot of emotion, people weeping--and drawing the conclusion that because people are responding emotionally that they have a deeper connection with God or a more mature faith than the person who is not reacting emotionally at all. This is a profound error.
I'll tell you a secret. Emotional response is not in any sense a Scriptural measure of spiritual maturity. Do you know what the measure of spiritual maturity is in the Scriptures? It is not the display of spiritual emotion, or even the display of spiritual gifts, but the manifestation of spiritual fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. You can't display all those in a one hour service each week. These are things that are tested in the crucible of life. These are the things that are manifest in a day by day walking with the Lord and you may be manifesting those kinds of things with no emotional reaction whatsoever.
I am not trying to glorify lack of emotionalism. I am trying to put things in their proper perspective. Emotional displays are not measures of the Holy Spirit's working. This is why I am concerned by things like the article today in the L.A. Times "God is Up to Something, and It's Big." It is an analysis of the feeling that many Christians have that revival is going through the country. They lead with an anecdote about the so-called Toronto Blessing. It's an assessment of the reality of spiritual revival based on the display of emotionalism in church.
"People emit fervent prayers and shouted praises. Hundreds of up-lifted hands swaying above the heads of believers as if reaching for a piece of heaven. A woman falls to her knees, weeping. A few yards away, a man stands still, an island of calm in the midst of tumult. He closes his eyes to seek the face of God. His lips form a prayer."
I'm glad for those people who may be touching God. But that is not what revival is, ladies and gentlemen. Revival is measured by the transformation of human lives and the transformation of culture as a result of those transformed lives.
I really wish the time would come when the newspapers will report revival or supposed revival, not because churches are filled with people raising their hands and singing joyfully, but that the streets are filled with people influencing their culture with the values of Christianity. We would know that revival is happening because fewer and fewer people are choosing to have an abortion, and more and more people are getting off of welfare and they are working to provide for themselves, and even have extra so they can give to those who are in genuine need. That more and more food kitchens are showing up across the country so people who are homeless and have genuine need can be fed. In other words, acts of kindness and mercy and genuine cultural transformation are the things that ought to mark an actual revival.
Why is revival measured in terms of raucous church meetings instead of what it ought to be measured by? The Wesleyan revival transformed the face of the culture. As a matter of fact, secular historians mark John Wesley's work and the movement of the Holy Spirit upon the lives of those Christians who were saved through that revival as averting revolution in England because so much was changed for good in that country. It had nothing to do with church services and dancing around and feeling wonderful. It had to do with genuine character renewal. That's what I call revival.
http://str.org/genuine.htm
Posted: Feb. 28, 1996
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