Wilmington First Pentecostal Holiness

Keep Moving On With God, Don’t Stop Here!

Human nature is a funny thing. We all want things to be fresh, but we don’t want anything new to disturb or change our routine, or to disrupt our comfort zone. That is true in church especially! If the music isn’t fresh, or the preacher doesn’t change up his preaching and preaching style once in a while, we become discontended with them. But woe betide the hapless preacher who changes the order of service or the style of music! If we are still where were 20 years ago as Christian, if we have not moved on, then we are stagnating and dying! What was once a fresh move of God and a really great blessing cannot be what we rely upon tomorrow! The mercies of God are fresh every monring, according to Jeremiah, so move on, don’t stop here!

Talent Quest 2009!

The Wilmington First Pentecostal Holiness Church had a National Talent Quest Winner this year. Kadie won the Audible Drama Individual Alpha Category, at the Greensboro, NC Fine Arts Festival! Congratulations Kadie, we’re proud of you! See Youth Quest through the eyes of Kadie and her peeps!

IDOLATRY: WATCH OUT, YOU’LL BECOME WHAT YOU WORSHIP!

When Isaiah saw the glory of the Lord in the temple (Isaiah 6:1-13), we often ignore the circumstances of the event and lose ourselves in a contemplation of what it must have been like to be in such a manifestation of the presence of God. According to G.K. Beale’s analysis of Old Testament idolatry, God warned his people that they would become what they worshiped. As a result of worshipping the gods of the nations around them, Israel had become deaf and blind to the things of God (cf. Psalm 115:2-8), particularly to holiness and righteousness. They had learned to take God’s presence for granted, and no longer reflected his glory to the world as a witness of God’s redemptive compassion for all humanity. Indeed, the key element of this passage is that while in the presence of God, Isaiah realized his own sinful condition, and that of his people (Isa. 6:5). However, Isaiah was transformed by an act of cleansing from the presence of God and became an imager of God to Israel. Israel on the other hand continued in a spiritual insensitivity that reflected the lack of living attributes of the idols they chose to worship, unconnected to God and incapable of enjoying or appreciating his presence among them.

IDOLATRY: FINDING THE RIGHT PLACE FOR THE CHURCH IN THE PROCESS OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH!

Willow Creek Church, along with 200 other churches, recently published findings from an extensive survey of congregants (80,000), which traced some of the dynamics of spiritual growth and the process of maturing as a Christian. Specifically they were able to identify four segments or levels of spiritual maturity in the church, Exploring Christ, Growing in Christ, Close to Christ and Christ-Centered Life. They based their assessment on the premise that spiritual growth is a process of increasing intimacy with God, under the Matthew 22:37-39 rubric. The upshot is that there is a shift in the role of the church between the earlier stags of growth and the later more mature levels. But in many cases the church has not reacted to this, and has elevated its role to the place of prime resourcer of personal spiritual growth at every stage in the Christian’s personal development. This is tantamount to church idolatry, especially when the shift to greater intimacy occurs more as a result of personal practices at these more mature levels, rather than what the church directly contributes. The church has in a sense inserted itself in the process where the Holy Spirit should be… and this can only be described as idolatry. The fall out is that while the church purports to want its people to grow, what it is actually doing has stunted and even arrested spiritual growth, by babying its people and failing to change roles to become the resourcer of ministry and service, by those who have grown past a direct dependency on the church for their personal spiritual growth.

WHOSE BABY ARE YOU?

We are all some one’s baby. You have your mother’s mouth, your dad’s ears, your uncles eye’s. We all tend to share characteristics with the family, and even 2 hours after we are born everyone is speculating who we most look like! G. K. Beale says that God actually mocked Israel in Exodus 32:1-14, when they worship golden calf in the wilderness, saying that they had become stiff-necked like a obstinate animal who refused to obey its master’s promptings. Israel became wild, like a wild animal, and had to be re-domasticated by Moses! In other words, they became what they worshiped. One of the key indictments of Israel’s idolatry in the wilderness was that they had exchanged their glory for shame (Psalm 106:19-20). By this Beale says the scripture means not God, but the glory of God that they should be reflecting to this world. God had made them imagers of his glory and they had exchanged that for something dim and unimpressive, the attributes of a beast, an animal, a cow! When, because of the strain of this incident, Moses asked to see the glory of God, the Lord passed before him and the glory of God was described as… “The Lord, the Lord the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love, and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness and rebellion…” (Exodus 34:6-7). In other words the glory of God consists in the manifestation of his attributes, his holiness, his love, his righteousness, not just luminescence! The reflection of the glory of God Israel had exchanged, was to represent the attributes of a loving, holy and righteous God to a dying and sinful world.

IDOLATRY: DO YOU KNOW WHY YOU ARE HERE?

It’s a fair question, since most of us want to be remembered when we are gone. What is life all about anyway? It can’t be just be about what I can get out of it by way of fun and pleasure, because somehow that never lasts very long. I thought I had figured out that life is what I make of it, but life has a way of reducing me to the lowest common denominator, so that I become whatever I put my energy into!

G. K. Beale says we become what we worship, either for redemption or ruin! So if I make the stuff around me the focus of my life… I become shallow, miserable and dissatisfied, because it is never enough, and because none of it provides me with a sense of purpose, or the sense that I am leaving a meaningful legacy behind. When I am gone, there maybe nothing of substance left to show that I have been here. I will have become as empty as the stuff I worshiped! So why do I have this craving to matter, to be somebody, to leave something behind, to have had a purpose for my life? I mean it is eating me up!

In Genesis 1:26-31 the Bible gives us a clue… God created us to be imagers of his glory, to reflect his attributes in this world and serve his purpose through diligent obedience to his will. Actually he created me with a purpose for my life in mind!

Practice not Theory!

Shame on us for making righteouness basically theoretical. In the New Testament, Paul the Apostle demands that righteousness produce tangible and practical results. People around us should be able to see the righteousness of God at work in us. At the root of our faith in God is transformation through salvation, but the Bible insists that this transformation should be followed up by obedience to God, the kind that originates from the power of the Holy Spirit who lives in us, producing the very things God intended from his people, but that the law could not produce, because it had no moral power. The Holy Spirit provides a new moral power in those who believe in Jesus Christ and are saved.

Never To Be Defeated!

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could be assured that we will never be defeated? If the Lord would just show us some guarantee that we are not going to fail, it would be the most tremendous encouragement in the world… wait a minute he has… right here is Roman chapter 8!

God is Light, There is No Darkness in Him!

What is the fundamental bedrock truth about God that every human being needs to know about God? Is it that God is Love? Indeed John tells us that. No, it turns out that if we want to know God, have fellowship with him and walk with God, we must realize first, above all things, that God is Light.

Persistent, Faithful Righteousness

Congratulations on being a Christian. However, understand that God expects us to strive after righteousness. In fact God values persistent, faithful righteousness above just about anything else; that and uncompromising love! We are not talking about legalism based or slavish obedience to the Old Testament law, but mature spirituality that follows after God through the power of a Spirit filled life, and that continues in faith in Jesus Christ until Jesus returns.

Do You Shine or Do You Blend?

Why is that so many of us argue for the right to do certain things that we have a nagging suspicion are probably not smiled at by God? In our culture that puts pressure on people who are serious about morality, as though we are the weird ones or have two heads, it is easy to cave into the pressure to conform to the “little sins” all around us. Indeed socially there is very little difference between the believer and unbeliever in America, very often. That is not acceptable to Paul the Apostle, who argued with the Corinthians for a rigorous, thoroughgoing righteousness based upon the complete transformation of salvation and indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.

What Assurances Do We Have in Our Anti-God Culture?

It is clear that our culture is slipping down the steep slope of ungodliness. We are moving away from righteousness, and morality. We feel lost in a mass of wickedness and secretly feel that it will be an outside miracle if holiness ultimately prevails. What assurances do we have that God knows who belongs to him in all of this chaotic mess we call America?

Who Do YOU Say Jesus Is?

In the end it is not what everyone else says about Jesus that counts, but what you say. In the end whether or not you understand or experience salvation and everything else the Bible says God offers the Christian, depends on you personally making up your mind about Jesus.

Who Is This Jesus?

We think that the question about who Jesus is is a new question, as though in the past there was no real doubt in people’s minds. The truth is people have been asking the question about who Jesus is for hundreds of years. Even the people who knew Jesus personally were trying to figure out who Jesus reaslly was. Do you know?

Why Do I Need To Rededicate Myself To God?

Aren’t I already God’s? I am a saint, I am saved already, so why do I need to put up with the preacher telling me to rededicate my life to God? It is hard for us to realize that at times in our lives we need a fresh dedication to God if the Spirit of God is going to produce a new move of God. We call up on God for revival, but we are often unprepared to reaffirm our commitment to God and to holiness. (Joshua 1)

Do You Follow The Rules?

How strange is it that people will displine themsleves to do all kinds of things, but are slack and inconsistent about the things of God. It seems that we cannot obey God, and that we cannot be involved and engaged with energy when it requires us to serve him consistently… but we never miss a night at the gym, or a ballgame, or a nightout with the boys!

Communion

What is the Lord’s Supper? What is it all about anyway? Is there really any benefit to it? How can I really be blessed by it and derive benefit from it?

God Was Never Defeated… (Even If His People Often Are)

Our problem is that we want revival experiences of God, not a life of revival. We go from victory to defeat, to victory and back again to defeat, over and over again. Our perception is that God is defeated when we are, and victorious when we are! But he is not. When the Philistines defeated Israel, and captured the Ark of the Covenant, God made it clear, that while his people were defeated, he remained unassailable. What would it be like, if we could simply live in the constant presence of God, instead of fleeting experiences of his victory giving power? The problem lies with our own spiritual inconsistency, not God!

When God Breaks In!

When should I expect God to breakthrough into my life? It is hard to imagine what is the most opportune time for God’s presence to break in and make a difference in our lives. But wait… what if God broke in now… you mean now, now? Yes, isn’t this a good time?

Loose It and Let It Go!

When Jesus finally turned up at Bethany, Martha and Mary had some major reservations about his timing. If only he had come earlier, he could have healed their brother Lazarus before he died. Jesus’ response to Martha was the he, personally, is the resurrection and the life. It mattered not when he came, but where his presence is. In other words where he is there is resurrection no matter what the circumstances are or how dire they may seem. Martha confessed that she did in fact believe in him and who he was (John 11:27). So the frustration was not a lack of faith, but a failure to understand the significance of the presence of God in connection with God’s seeming bad timing. When Jesus did raise Lazarus, he told his sisters to release him and let him go (he was bound with grave clothes). In the same way we must recognize that if God is at work among us, even in our own personal lives, it is his presence that makes the difference, not what we may think is the correct course of action on his part at some specific time that suits us. So it is time to release our lives and ministries from grave clothes of complacency, low expectations, laziness, unbelief, lack of effort, failure to plan ahead, preoccupation with other things, self pity and so forth, so that we can fully appreciate the power of the resurrection that comes with the presence of the one who is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25)!