Gospel Outreach

In our previous article on Revival we endeavoured to remove misunderstandings as to what true Revival is.  Now we take the subject a step further.

 Its manifestation is to be in the Church of God and as a result, it will be expressed by the Church, amongst others in evangelisation and mission work.  All of the exceeding great and precious promises from the Lord are for His own people who by rebirth are living in the Lord Jesus Christ.  See II Peter 1:3 & 4 as well as II Corinthians 1:20.  The richest of blessings are all, and exclusively for, the people of God.  He has ‘blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ’ (Ephesians 1:3). Reading Galatians 3:9, 13,14,29, we see that those who are Christ’s by faith inherit the blessings pronounced on Abraham.  This is possible because Christ was made a curse for us so that we may receive the blessings and the Promise of the Holy Spirit.  When we read Genesis 22:17 etc we see how rich and abundant those blessings are.  God confirmed the certainty of these by both His Word and His oath, not just for Abraham’s sake but for our sake for we are heirs of these promises.  See Hebrews 6:17,18.

 When one reads throughout the Gospels, the Book of Acts as well as the Epistles that follow, one cannot but conclude that there are promises most amazing and glorious and yet we are not living in terms of these.  Let us look at just a few of them:

 In Matthew 17:20 Jesus tells us that if we had faith as a grain of mustard seed, we could move mountains and ‘nothing shall be impossible unto you’.  He said something similar in Matthew 21:21,22.  In fact He made it very simple in Matthew 7:7&8 where He plainly said ‘Ask and it shall be given you…for everyone that asketh receiveth…’  We readily believe John 6:47 when Jesus said ‘…He that believeth on Me hath everlasting life’.  However in John 7:37-38 He says amongst others ‘He that believeth on Me…out of his inner most being shall flow rivers of living water’.  Then still taking this a mighty step further we look at John 14:12: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto My Father’. 

 It is at a point like this that expositors start rephrasing their interpretation of the plain words of Jesus.  However the truth is that He offers to all who follow Him a life of complete super-abundance.  This is why He came; see John 10:10.  Paul understood this very well and therefore prayed for the Ephesian Church that the eyes of their understanding should be opened to enable them to grasp the greatness of the glory and wonder of what the Lord wants to do in His Church. (Ephesians 1:18-23).  Afterall, the Church is to be His body, receiving all of His fullness.  According to Ephesians 3:10 He wants to make the Church His ’showpiece’ to all ‘principalities and powers in heavenly places’.  And reading Ephesians 5:27 He wants to have ‘a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle or any such things… holy and without blemish’.  Then consider Paul’s prayer for this Church in Ephesians 3:16-21 and note the climax in verse 19 namely ‘that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God’.  And in case the mind boggles completely he then says in the ensuing verse that God is ‘able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us ‘.  And verse 21 says clearly that this glory is to be seen IN THE CHURCH OF GOD .

 We can consider the amazing experiences of the Church recorded for us in the Book of Acts.  And note that these continued for many years way beyond the Pentecostal experience.  Then we can turn to what Paul holds out to the Romans, the Corinthians, the Ephesians, Galatians, Colossians and from there further on and see that He upholds to the Churches a lifestyle that is none other that supernatural with abundant blessings.  Space fails us to give all the references but a simple reading of these Letters makes it very clear.  Then when we come to writers like James, Peter, Jude and John, they breathe the same spirit.  In fact the first Epistle of John is one that is saturated with a record of a life of victory, purity and power with a consistency of prayers being answered.  

This must bring us to the question as to why such a life is not made manifest in the Church of God .  There is a vast discrepancy between the precious promises and blessings held out to the Church of God and the inglorious, unblessed, struggling, fruitless, prayerless (and in fact disgraceful in certain places), reality we find in the Church of God.  

The point that we strive to make here is that REVIVAL IS NOT A ‘NICE TO HAVE’ ADDITION TO WHAT WE ALREADY HAVE BUT IT IS AN IMPERATIVE NECESSITY IN THE CHURCH OF GOD.  THEREFORE THE CHURCH THAT IS NOT LIVING IN TERMS OF BIBLICAL DESCRIPTION AND DEMANDS IS LIVING IN DISOBEDIENCE AND CLEARLY OUTSIDE OF THE WILL OF GOD.  There maybe blessings but nothing abundant.  Prayers maybe answered but that is few and far between.  There maybe conversions but they are so rare that we must make a show of them when they occur. There are certainly godly individuals but they are observed because they are the exceptions to the rule.  

The power of the Holy Spirit, the experience of the Supernatural, the knowledge of great grace, great fear and great growth both in numbers and in spiritual standing were all commonplace to the early Church and God holds out this to us as a common, everyday experience.  THUS IT IS TO BE THE NORMAL LIFE OF THE CHURCH.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 26th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Revival News.