"Sorting It Out...................."

With our pastor away on another evangelical excursion, the pulpit during each of our three Sunday services was filled by three different men. In the early one, the message concerned itself with the truth that, while the Word is indeed “inspired” of God, it is the Spirit who empowers it in our life. I wasn’t there to hear the next fellow, but was given a snippet of its theme when I returned for the evening offering, a declaration based on a prophetic utterance informing our congregation that is was time for us to “go forth with our sword”, the sinful world around us needing to be conquered for Christ. Fifteen minutes into the third sermon, it was enough for me, the preacher declaring us to possess “the blessings bestowed upon Abraham” and therefore being “the head and not the tail”. How can we so quickly, within the same sanctuary, go from what I consider “solid theology” to what seems like, more and more as we go, the boast of the Laodicean assembly? It’s like reading a book wherein the contents feed you so greatly that immediately you search for something else by the same author; then, plunging into it, you find yourself bewildered that out of the same vessel should come such nonsense. Not that I claim any clear perception of the Gospel in so far as having the only way to interpret its message unto us. Indeed, the point I would make here is that none of us, no not one, holds such gift; and where that leaves all of us is in a stumble down the strait path. Assurance is not a mental, doctrinal credo committed to memory and labeled “faith”, but a risen Savior convincing me of His reality via tangible encounters at the well. Life remains a lesson in progress. Salvation is a matter of “hungering and thirsting after righteousness”, having sense enough to know that, apart from Him, we are lost…..