True Christianity

True Christianity

James1: ²¹ Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
²² but be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

²³ For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror;

²⁴ for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.

²⁵ But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
²⁶ If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless.

²⁷ Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

James 4: ¹ Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?

² You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask.

³ You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.

⁴ Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

⁵ Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?

The word “Christian”, according to the dictionary, means:

Ø     Relating to a belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Messiah, and acceptance of his teachings, contained in the Gospels

Ø     Kind and unselfish. Showing qualities such as kindness, helpfulness, and concern for others.

In other words, Christianity means to be like Christ.

People will tell me after hearing this message that I am being too "drastic". Well, I want to say to you that I am not being drastic enough. In fact, it would not be possible for me to overemphasize just how disastrous and awful and horrific it is that our backslidden North American church today has, to all intents and purposes, lost its Christianity and in doing so it has lost its very reason for existing.

Ø     Where is the CLEAN CONSCIENCE, washed in the blood and then KEEPING IT CLEAN?

Ø     Where is the transformed life?

Ø     Where is the "FREEDOM" from sin?

Let me state now that it is not real Christianity without these things.

We have lost it all.

Ø     Our people very rarely repent.

Ø     We often go for years without water baptism. Water Baptism is a symbol of the old man, the sinful fleshly nature being dead, buried and washed away. The apostles always baptized people RIGHT AWAY.

Ø     Then we fail to help people become 'FILLED' with the Spirit. How are we supposed to walk in the spirit of 'HOLINESS' if we have not even been filled with the "HOLY" Spirit? The apostles always made sure that people became Spirit-filled RIGHT AWAY.

We have lost Christianity and we don't even know it.

Ø     We have invented a Christianity of 'convenience',

Ø     A Christianity without the cross,

Ø     A Christianity without holiness

Ø     A Christianity without the power to live a Christian life

Ø     A Christianity that shows no-one how to get a CLEAN CONSCIENCE or how to WALK IN IT.

We should be ashamed of ourselves for allowing this type of preaching to be even called Christian. This is not the walk of a person who is Christ like. No wonder today's church is lukewarm! Becoming like Christ is the building block upon which everything else is built. It affects all that we do and all that we are. To lose it is simply the worst disaster imaginable.

Ø     Despite the Christian books now found in every Wal-Mart,

Ø      Despite our Christian mega-stores and CD's and DVD's and Study-Bibles

Ø     Despite the thousands in our mega churches today,

Ø     Despite our lavish Cathedrals and comfortable pews

Ø     Despite the warm entertainment offered in our churches every week,  

Ø     Despite our projector screens and $30,000 sound systems,

Ø     Despite the "crossover" of Christian artists into the mainstream,

 

We have utterly lost Christianity.

Ø     We left it behind somewhere when we shifted our churches from the inner city streets into the "comfortable" suburbs.

Ø     We left it behind when we stopped welcoming the poor off the street into our meetings and started welcoming the "respectable" people.

Ø      We left it behind when we stopped preaching "take up your cross" and turned the gospel into a prosperity formula.

We don't seem to know how to get true Christianity back again, or even worse than that, we don't really WANT to get it back again. The cost simply doesn't bear thinking about.

Ø     So, we happily attend "church" as we know it, once a week for 2 hours

Ø     So, we continue to live a life that is about as unlike Jesus as one can get,

Ø     So, we continue to live a spoiled life of comfort that billions around the world can only dream about.

The fact is that we don't really CARE that we have lost original Christianity.

Ø     We are too busy.

Ø     All of this is just negative talk.

Ø     It will all be OK.

Ø     We will all make it to heaven in the end.

Ø     We are all "decent" people here.

Ø     We have "prayed the little prayer” and have given our heart to the Lord'.

Ø     We act like people can safely forget about CONVICTION of sin

Ø     We have forgotten about DEEP REPENTANCE

Ø     We no longer worry about WATER-BAPTISM

Ø     We think that getting FILLED with the Holy Spirit is just an "optional extra"

James 1:27 Pure religion and undefiled is this: To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

It is an interesting fact that James was preaching to professing Christians. What he was doing was waking up the church people because he found that most of them were not living in a state of true salvation at all. The church was 'unsaved'!  

 

There are THREE THINGS that always needed to happen in scripture when someone wanted to become a Christian in the New Testament:

(1) Repentance

(2) Water Baptism

(3) Being filled with the Holy Spirit accompanied by 'tongues'.

Every time, these were the three things that happened straight away.

Ø     Acts 2:37-41, Acts 8:12-20, Acts 10:44-48,

Ø     Acts 19:1-6, Acts 22:16, Heb 6:1-2, Mk 16:16-18

There is a 'social' Christianity going on.

Ø     There are a huge number of people who attend churches where they are told they are 'saved' when clearly they are not.

Ø     Most of these churches are like "holding pens" for the lost - telling people that they are 'OK', when in reality they are headed for destruction.

Personally, I find this very hard to take.

Today we see exactly the same thing in North America that Jesus saw in His day. We see a church that is very largely UNSAVED. A truly "saved" church (in the New Testament sense) behaves and looks and sounds utterly different to what we have today.

Even in our Pentecostal/Charismatic circles we often find many "previously-saved-but-no-longer-walking-in-it" believers.

Ø     This is not a state of 'salvation'.

Ø     These people are lost.

Ø     You are either walking as a 'new creature' in love with Christ or you are not.

Ø     The Bible is very clear that only those who continue walking daily in Christianity and who "overcome" will be saved.

Ø     If you are not walking in it then do not assume you are "saved" - no matter what some preacher tells you.

Ø     It is all or nothing with God.

Ø     The Bible tells us to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling".

What does this unsaved Church think will happen to it on Judgment Day?

But what is that thundering voice I hear? "DEPART FROM ME." 'But LORD... But LORD...Didn’t we…?' “Don't call me Lord. You never truly lived like I was your Lord and you know it. For I was hungry and you gave me no food; I was thirsty and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take me in; naked, and you did not clothe me; sick and in prison, and you did not visit me...."

I realize that I have probably shocked, provoked and even offended a number of you with this word. Please believe me; I myself was very shocked when I first came face-to-face with these truths some years ago.

Jesus was hated and despised by church men of His day for saying such things.

Ø     How DARE He preach in such a way that assumed that many 'fine church members' were unsaved?

Ø     How offensive.

Ø     But Jesus had such a passion and a burden to reach all the lost with the gospel.

Ø     This was exactly what God had called him to do.

This is a burden that is very much on my heart. And I am convinced that only the coming Holy place, true five-fold ministries will have the anointing to break through the walls of 'Religion' to reach these people with the truth.

Ø     We are talking about millions upon millions of precious lost souls here.

Ø     I am convinced that the coming revival must begin with individuals in the Church.

Ø     It will begin with repentance and a nature change in those who already call themselves Christians.

Ø     This has always been God's order. "First in Jerusalem, then in Judea...."

I am deeply burdened for the church in the North America.

Ø     Let the true five-fold ministries arise.

Ø     Let the trumpet sound go forth.

Ø     The message of PIERCING REPENTANCE must be heard in the land once again.

Ø     I am convinced that such true ministries must arise in order for Revival to come in these last days.

We have spoken about "Revival" many times, but what we need to realize is that without praying and crying out for this nature of Christ to grow in us there can be no revival.

There is a pattern in most Revivals down the centuries.

Ø     What Revival was, was the church coming into true SALVATION for the first time.

Ø     They THOUGHT they were saved before, but realized that they had been under a delusion.

Ø     When the great revivalist ministers arrived and preached to them, suddenly they saw that they were still in a lost, fleshly nature, and multitudes repented.

Ø     Revival always begins with the church.

Revival is far more than just a brief visitation.

Ø     It is the long-lasting restoration of true Christianity and then the true Church.

Ø     If we want true Christianity restored today, we must first see our natures changed from this worldly, selfish flesh and restored to the very nature that Jesus had, the nature of Christ in us. It is the most important key to it all.

Ø     We must allow the Holy Spirit to bring to us those who will preach true Christianity without compromise and reveal Christ to us.

Surely we live in the days of the 'restoration of all things' about which the Scriptures speak. For Christ cannot return until a glorious Bride is made ready for Him, without "spot or wrinkle".