Today's Sleeping Giant # 2
If the church is going to attain to her potential in this last hour, it is apparent that we are going to have to dust off an old word that many of us have forgotten is in the English language - DISCIPLINE! To some, this word discipline will have a monastic flavor, for it smells of the Middle Ages or throws onto the screen of the mind a picture of an unwashed hermit or a hollow-eyed anchorite. Be not deceived. Every smart "top brass military expert has arrived there because he wore the harness of discipline. This brings to mind the words of the poet: "The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward through the night!"
In a brilliant sermon called "Discipleship," G. Cambell Morgan says, "Jesus Christ could speak to the sorrow-burdened heart of humanity words so full of mother-love and father-love as to make men crowd and press round Him. On the other hand, He could suddenly speak words that flashed and scorched and burned until men drew back in astonishment." Bracketed in the last group would be these two commands: "Take my yoke upon you" and "My disciple, take up your cross and follow me." Both of these words imply discipline.
When we sing in a sunlit church "Oh to be like Thee; Oh to be like Thee," we get weepy and feel an emotional lift. But permit this simple challenge: Do we really mean "Oh to be like Thee" - like the Christ of God, who was a man of discipline? Do we really mean "Oh to be like Thee" - fasting alone in the desert? Do we mean "Oh to be like Thee" to touch the depths of prayer that make us cry, "All Thy billows are gone over me." Do we mean "Oh to be like Thee" - to become habituates of the prayer chamber? Do we mean "Oh to be like Thee" - in a will like His, for He said, "I always do the will of my Father." Is that not discipline?
The religious sentimentalist who sings "Just a closer walk with Thee" but walks close to the ungodly and sits with the blasphemers, is not taken seriously in either heaven or hell. Be very sure, friend, that this vile world is not "a friend to grace to hep on to God." We need to pray the Father to put some blood into this "water" that runs through our veins. Our Simon-like natures need the Upper Room fire to clean us out and the discipline of the Spirit to shape us into soldiers.
Twenty-five years of discipline in a crows-nest of an office up behind his church in Chicago brought about a Dr. A. W. Tozer, who produced a book, The Pursuit of God." This in turn produced on the ocean of spiritual teaching waves that lap their way to the ends of the earth.
Today, immediately when one gets out of step with a nearby Christian, he is considered a legalist. Just remember, in "that great day of judgment" when we must all stand before His throne, no man will be ashamed he was dubbed over-spiritual, though many will weep, groan, and "suffer loss" because of lack of discipline. Discipline is a harness by which we enable the Spirit to get the best out of our frail humanity. The Apostle Paul was a disciplinarian like his Master: He disciplined his body: I keep my body under." He disciplines himself to loneliness: "All men forsook me." To scorn: "We are fools for Christ's sake." To poverty: "We suffered need." To rejection: "We are despised." To death: "I die daily." To suffering: "Persecuted but not forsaken." May this be our prayer: "Oh Lord, I bow my neck to Thy yoke!"
Ambrose Fleming called the resurrection of Jesus Christ "the best attested fact in history". Yet at Easter time, vain effort is made to rationalize the stupendous event of the Resurrection in order to try to save face before pseudo-intelliectualism, which boggles at the fact that the Lord of glory died and rose again, triumphant over death, over hell, and over the grave. Who, then, can dispute the following biting statements of Murdo MacDonald in his book, The Vitality of Faith, "Ever since the Renaissance, men have been trying to water down the Christian creed. Give us a religion purged of everything that defies logic, a religion stripped of the supernatural and emptied of miracle, a religion that is smooth and palatable and rationally acceptable - this has been the popular cry". Surely, the church, weak in heart and courage, has gone out of the way to oblige.
The doom of this decaying civilization is spelled out in our crowded divorce courts, our all-time high of alcoholics and drug addicts, the number of illegitimate births or the number of abortions. A Gallup poll shows that these days most people accept lying as part of everyday business. Virtue is scorned!
TRUTH LIES FALLEN IN THE STREET!
Somewhere in the archives of the British Admiralty, they have the record of a fine piece of maritime strategy. Ships of five nations were anchored in a bay in the South Pacific. A fierce storm was gathering offshore. The British captain decided to run, not away from the storm but into it. Everything available was battened down. Out crashed the ship into the boiling seas-pitching, tossing, rolling, and shuddering. Indeed, she did everything but go down. A couple of days later, buffeted but not broken, she returned to the port to find the ships of the other nations piled up on the beach.
The storm of the ages is about to break. Let the church call its crew to a new dedication. Remembering that Christ is at the helm, and with Christ's crest as our ensign, let us run into the storm. After the storm, we, too, shall return to see upon the shores of time the battered, piled, wrecked, hell-inspired ideologies of the hour.
~Leonard Ravenhill~
(The End)
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