A message to God's children everywhere
If you don't obey God now, the same thing will happen to you as has happened to the church system as a whole.
The spirit I see creeping in within our own ranks is the feeling that we have arrived. Are we satisfied with what we've accomplished? The minute you get that feeling, that's as far as you'll get. You'll never get any further.
The most uncomfortable place for a Christian is a comfortable place. One of the greatest dangers you have right now is the feeling that you've accomplished so much that you no longer have a desperate hunger and thirst for more of God.
But when a movement stops moving, it stops being a movement. And when a Christian loses sight of the Great Commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, he or she stops being a Christian.
How much like death moving is! It's the ending of one life and the beginning of another. Moving is hard to do. You can understand why Paul said, "I die daily", when you consider how he was constantly on the road. But we've got to stay constantly on the move if we are going to get the job done.
If you're not willing to die daily right now in order to get the message into all the world, you'll never be able to die someday as a martyr, as you claim. And if you're not willing to deny yourself in all the little ways every day to reach the lost, you'll never be able to deny yourself in the end by a martyr's death.
The church will eventually have to forsake all, but they're not going to get any credit for it then, because they won't do it today when they could do so purely voluntarily, and for the sake of reaching others for Christ. They're going to wait until God takes it all away and they're forced to live like this - all together, like we do, sharing with each other and dependent on the Lord and our brothers and sisters.
| OBEDIENCE |
If you're not willing to choose to be missionaries for Jesus right now, you never will be! And being a missionary begins in your own neighbourhood, in your part of the world.
One lady said, when going out witnessing with her church group, "This just kills me!" But that's exactly what it's supposed to do. It should kill your pride, your selfishness, and maybe even cause some physical sacrifice as well.
If you're not willing to go out witnessing now, one of these days God will see to it that you do it anyway - in chains, involuntarily, as captives and slaves.
If you have lost that compulsion - that feeling like you just have to get out there and do something for God or you'll die. If you don't have that feeling any more that you'd rather die for something than live for nothing, then you've lost the martyr spirit. The Greek word for 'martyr' comes from the same word as the Greek word for 'witness'. We must die daily to be a true witness for Christ.
This dying daily is the hardest kind, because you do it a thousand times, whereas at the end of your life, the final death is nothing by comparison. Your final death is your graduation. This slow death of dying a little each day - that's what takes a lot more guts.
Don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today. It may be later than you think! You're counting on doing the job some day, but we'd better do it now, or we may never get it done!
Some people have already said that the Jesus Revolution was just a phase that we went through for a while! They're going back into the churches and sitting in their pews.
The shocking question I want to ask you Children of God is: Is this happening to us? Are we getting in a rut? Are we losing our fire, our conviction, our vision, our faith?
There's nothing that succeeds like success. But at the same time, there's nothing that fails faster than failure! You are never so near the abyss as you are when you are standing on the mountain top.
That mountain-top of past achievements is like a cliff. Being at the top of it is not only the most victorious place to be, but it's also the most dangerous. At the bottom you have nothing to lose. There's no place to go but up. But when you start succeeding, you've got the danger of pride as well as dangers coming from the System.
Prior to the time of Moses, Egyptian Pharaohs never worried about the Jews, because they were neither numerous nor powerful. Then, when they began to be a genuine threat to the System, Pharaoh tried to put a stop to them.
And if we don't stay on the move, the same thing can happen to us today.
Witnessing vs Baby-sitting
One of the greatest hindrances to outreach is all the work it takes to baby-sit the followers that we already have. But it's not really our business to preserve the old bottles in our fellowship. If they're not able to stand on their own by now, it's time we walked off and left them. If those inflated old bottles have lost their first love and the martyr spirit and forgotten what they joined the army for, it would be better to lose them!
They'll grow real fast when they have to.
By the time we've had a disciple in our ranks for three months, he/she ought to be able to stand on his/her own. They may not be able to lead others, but they ought to at least be able to get out witnessing.
In our school we turned the graduates around facing the incoming class and said, "Here, you teach them what you've just learned."
If we have the churchy idea that the job is to grow in numbers, we have lost our way. Our job is to reach the ends of the earth with the gospel. If nurse-maiding problem disciples keeps us from doing that, we better get rid of them!
Look at the churches. They got so busy accumulating properties and members that they forgot what their main job was. We should cut the apron strings rather than let overgrown babies hold us back from doing the job.
I'd like to see a few real soldiers who cannot stand to be tied down in a base, but who want to hit the road and reach the ends of the earth with the gospel. If you find any, you better give them all the literature that they need to do the job. At least we can do that much for them.
Are we holding them back because we want them to hang around waiting for our approval? If we're not willing to go out there with them ourselves, at least cut them loose.
Almost our top priority is to get out the literature. We're getting just like the churches, sitting around on our bums doing nothing, maybe studying the Bible a little, but not obeying it!
If we send them all out to get on-the-job training, we may lose a few, but we'll gain a few good workers instead of loafers. We'll find who is there just for the loaves and fishes too!
If what we are saying is true, then we can kick everyone out of the nest and some of them are bound to make it, not through faith in us, but through faith in the Word. If you really believe what Christ has said, it's time to get everyone working and obeying him.
Living in communities isn't an end in itself. It's a means to a greater end, and that end is the evangelisation of the entire world. No one deserves to hear the gospel twice until everyone has heard it once.
A base is only a means to a greater end. No base is ever permanent. We're only there to sow the seed and reap the harvest and then be on our way. And we should be taking the 'harvest' that we reap in one field on to reap other harvest fields too.
When we've been publicised far and wide in a country, we have, in a way, finished our job there. When they've heard about us, they've usually heard our message - at least that we live together and forsake all and witness. When they've heard that much they're responsible. If they're concerned enough, they can look us up and find us. Christ didn't build churches for his followers. His followers were the church, and his "follow up" was to let them follow him up one side of the mountain and down the other.
This principle of dying daily must work at all levels. We must die to ourselves, as well as to our system. If we try to hang onto numbers or a good reputation it will end up destroying our true effectiveness for God and his kingdom. But as we let these things die, they come back to us with greater blessing from God. "Except a grain of wheat die, it abides alone. But if it dies, it will bring forth much fruit." (John 12:24)
