This is from “My Utmost for His Highest” by Oswald Chambers.
“If God has had his way with you, your message as His servant is merciless insistence on the one line, cut down to the very root, otherwise there will be no healing. Drive home the message until there is no possible refuge from its application. Begin to get at people where they are until you get them to realize what they lack, and then erect the standard of Jesus Christ for their lives -”We never can be that.” Then drive it home -”Christ says that you must.” “But how can we be?” “You can not unless you have a new spirit.” (Luke 11:13)
There must be a sense of need before your message is of any use. Thousands of people are happy without God in this world. If I was happy and moral before Jesus came, why did He come? Because that kind of happiness and peace is on a wrong level; Jesus Christ came to send a sword through every peace that is not based on a personal relationship to Himself.
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I love those paragraphs. Paul says that all he preached was “Christ crucified.” My fear is that many churches stray too far from the message that Paul preached. God is love and God demands that we love our neighbors and help those in need. But let us never forget that the message of the cross demands a changed heart. God demands that we strive to live holy lives. God is not afraid to call sin, sin, and neither should we be. Not in the condescending way of the street preachers but in a manner that speaks the truth while demonstrating the love with which Christ gave his own life for us.
I am so thankful that God has given me a chance to be a part of a church that preaches the true Gospel. That doesn’t shy away from the Truth but doesn’t forget the poor and needy.
Father, let us never never become unbalanced. Let us never preach so much love that we neglect Holiness and Righteousness. But let us never preach so much holiness and righteousness that we neglect love. Give us compassion for those who are poor and hurting in the physical realm, but also give us compassion for those who are poor and hurting in the spiritual realm. Help us paint an accurate picture of who You are.
