STAYING FRESH

STAYING FRESH

                “Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.” 2Cor. 4:16

                Being born again is not just a one- time event. Oh yes, there was that first time, that encounter with Jesus when you accepted Him into your heart and received Him as your Savior and Lord, but if we are still talking about how we came to the Lord in 1972 it is time for an update.

                Our spirit can be renewed every morning. Every day we can start out with a clean slate and a restored reservoir of vitality and spiritual power.

                Many Christians go to church to get their dead batteries recharged, but it doesn’t need to be that way. If we have a vital relationship with the Lord, we can go to church charged up and ready to share our anointing and our spiritual strength with those who are weak.

                We are carriers of His presence. We are temples of the Holy Spirit. Wherever we walk, it is holy ground. The Lord is in His holy Temple because we brought Him with us. He doesn’t dwell in buildings… He dwells in human hearts. The presence of God in any given church service is only commensurate with the amount of Holy Spirit in the people who have come.

                This is why God tells us not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Paul says in Hebrews 10:23-25 “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; AND ALL THE MORE AS YOU SEE THE DAY DRAWING NEAR.” Heb. 10:23-25

                Has church become dull and boring to you? Do you have to drag yourself to church with dead batteries every week hoping that the pastor will say something to spark a little life in you? Start renewing yourself in the Lord every morning. Start going to church with your batteries already charged. Go to meet the needs of others… pray for others… encourage others… and you will soon discover just how exciting church can be. Not only that, but the people who used to ignore you will begin coming to you for prayer and a good word.

                Do you understand how hungry the world is for just one hug… one encouraging word… one prayer… one smiling face? And they need it from someone other than the one person that hands out the bulletin. Indeed they hunger to enter into a place where the Spirit of God is creating an atmosphere of life and love and joy and peace and all of the other fruit.

                Since when did we decide that we are assigned to sit in our usual spot and glare at the preacher and complain about this and that and judge everyone that walks through the door as you sit there in your superior saintly way? You have become an agent of the devil… that is what you have become and you will never know until judgment day how many people left your church because they visited and found only sour faces and bad attitudes.

`               It’s time for the harvest to begin and the word today is this: “Either get up or get out. If God hasn’t been able to sweeten your sour grapes by now, He probably never will. Go then to the grape harvest where maybe God can yet squeeze a little wine out of you.

                Either that, or get the joy of the Lord working in you by the infinite power of His Holy Spirit. Get renewed… let Him light a fire under you and in you. It’s harvest time and there will be no fence walkers… no down in the mouth grumblers… no tares left that will not be thrown into the fire.

                Now chances are none of you reading this are the sour grapes. I am preaching to the choir. But all of us, who are alive, need to begin to see church as a field ripe for harvest. Half of the people there are half in and half out and THEY NEED WHAT YOU HAVE! They need the Holy Spirit and fire breathed upon them. They need renewal. They need direction and a purpose. We need to lift up the hands of our pastors instead of eating them for lunch. We need to pitch in and volunteer, becoming builders instead of users… worshippers instead of spectators.

                We are not only reservoirs of the Holy Spirit … we are conduits of the Holy Spirit to others… we are the reconcilers … the peacemakers… the fire starters. We are Jesus to them that are thirsty. Do you believe it?

                Does not the Bible say, “As He is, so are we in the world? Did Jesus not say, ”As the Father has sent M, so send I you? John 17:18. We are anointed with the same Holy Spirit that anointed Jesus . And just as the Holy Spirit produced a Son through Mary, so the Holy Spirit is bringing many sons to glory in us. Heb. 2:10

                It is time to gear up for the harvest and that means learning how to walk as Jesus walked, doing what He did, living each day by divine appointment… learning to do His works with complete dependence upon the Father even as He did… learning to walk in such a way that it changes the atmosphere wherever we go … where demons flee while children sing praises to God.

                It is time to put away foolish pride. We are not on this planet to fulfil our dreams… we are here to fulfill His dreams. We have been bought with a price! Remember? We don’t belong to us anymore. We have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless we live, yet not us, but Christ lives in us and the life that we now live in the flesh w live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave His life for us.” Gal 2:20

                Galatians 2:20 is the door into the harvest. We can’t do what God wants done until we can die to what we can do and learn to live solely by what HE can do.  Only God knows how to pull off this harvest. Only God knows everyone that belongs to Him… whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life… and some of those sheep may be covered with tattoos and shooting drugs in an alley somewhere. We simply must be able to hear and obey His voice.

                Well okay… I know this is a bit pithy… but we live in pithy times and there is no time left for cotton candy Christianity… even by this fall, we may begin to understand just how short time really is.  Stay fresh my friends! Selah.