miraculous will take place. It may not always show up statistically but there will be conviction and men will sense that God is there and has spoken. Too many of our meetings can be explained on natural grounds. We need to see some meetings that cannot be accounted for except by saying, “ It is the Lord” . In the second place, we might ask: “WHERE ARE THE MIRACLES IN THE CHURCH TO DAY?” If the Holy Spirit were removed today, some churches would hardly know the difference. We quote, “Not by might nor power but by My Spirit” and then go on working in the energy of the flesh. The church at Pentecost presented the world with a miracle, men and women filled with the Spirit, and the congregation asked, “What meaneth this?” Something supernatural had come to town. People did not join that church casually as one might join a civic club or Ladies Aid. God was in it and men feared. Electricity was in the world before Franklin and Morse and Edison dis covered some of its powers. The Spirit of God has been among us through the centuries but only now and then does a Whitefield, Finney, Moody or Evan Roberts demonstrate the power from above. The church today is busy lecturing the world, enter taining the world; she has become a big business and occupied all too often chiefly with keeping her set-up and organization and program going. What the church needs and what the world needs to see is miracles,—miracles of Spirit-filled testi mony, conviction, repentance, conversions. These are supernatural for they are wrought of God. Churches only make themselves ridiculous trying to compete with the world at its own game. We have something the world does not have. We have Christ and the message of the Gospel. This world has nothing to match that. When we descend to the natural we gain only the scorn of the world. It is high time to let the church be the church. Paul gloried in the foolishness of preaching, not in words of men’s wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and power. Our peculiar native gifts may indeed be sanctified and used of the Spirit but men will not be impressed by the man but by the miracle, the miracle of a Spirit-filled mes sage and a supernatural Christ. When anything less than miracle is the chief impression, we have failed. When the church becomes again what she is meant to be, a miracle, living by miracle, preach ing miracle, demonstrating miracle, she will not degenerate into dull, dead dignity on one hand or wild delirium on the other. Of course, this brings the whole matter to the door of us individuals who compose the church and, borrowing Gideon’s phrase again, we may ask, “WHERE ARE THE MIRACLES IN CHRIS TIAN LIVING?” There is very little evident in
the average Christian that cannot be explained on the natural plane. A minister’s message is often drowned out by the way his people in the pew live. We need miracles in daily living, miracles of faith and love and power that prove the promises o f God. God has always had His witnesses through the years who have taken Him up on His chal lenge, “ Prove Me now” , and have lived their life in the flesh by the faith of the Son of God. But there are not enough of such witnesses. Most of us live largely on the natural with maybe an oc casional excursion into the supernatural during a revival or when we get into trouble. How we do need miracle lives, not a sensational exploit now and then but victorious Christian living day by day in the home and shop and office. This bizarre age plays up the spectacular: if a wife is unfaith ful to her husband, that is news, but the thousands of faithful wives do not make news. Goodness is not recognized unless it does something very flashy. The church has become infected with this distemper and would have the verse read, “Be thou flashy unto death and I will give thee a crown of life” . The New Testament constantly discour ages fitful Christianity and exhorts us throughout to live Christ daily, in season and out, always abounding in the work of the Lord. In other words, we are to have miracle lives in a natural world. Gideon asked two questions: “ If the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us ? and where be all His miracles which our fathers told us o f?” These questions are interwoven. Miracles prove God and we need miracles because we need to see God work. “ It is time for God to work.” Elisha did not ask, “Where are the miracles of Elijah?” but “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” We need miracle preaching, miracle churches and miracle lives, because we need to see God work, not men working for God but God working through men. What kind of men does God manifest Himself through? Men like Gideon who are burdened over the times, conscious of their own weakness and anxious to see God do something. “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him” . Such men may have their faults; they may need a lot of prompting and even a fleece now and then, but they had better under-rate themselves than fare forth in their own strength. Their methods may amuse the wise-acres even as Gideon’s three hun dred with lamps and pitchers looked ridiculous to the Midianites but if their motives are right and they obey the Lord, He will make them the instru ment of His power. It is not God’s fault that all this has befallen us these days. He is still among us but we have failed to make Him known miraculously in our preaching, our churches and our lives. H b |
FEBRUARY, 1968
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