"Perspective..................."

With many having volunteered themselves to work last week as staff at Youth Camp, Saturday evening service was missing a few familiar faces. Worship, however, was no less than all hearts surrendered in a musical praise of His name. The young woman who now pastors this group has a story to tell, a witness received, her life testifying to the message she brings. It is Pentecostal in its content, from beginning to end, void only in any mention of the Holy Ghost and indicative of where our group has gone over the last few decades. In quoting a John Hagee opinion that “What you memorize is what you utilize”, she spoke of “the enemy being afraid of me using God’s Word”, each of us, as believers, having been given “all power and authority” to swing the sword in this daily battle we all face and victory a matter of standing our ground in faith. It does preach well; it is the mindset of the mass; and it probably shouldn’t bother an old man in its abandonment of basic Scriptural truth. In Zechariah, the prophet declares “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord” and, while only one verse, it clearly points to the Bible, inspired though it be, apart from our knowing that same anointing, being susceptible to all that our humanity, in its tendency to stumble down the path, brings to the picture. I have come to the conclusion, however, that our theology and our character are two points always “under construction”, at least in so much as we are willing to surrender them to the Holy Ghost. God is at work in all us. Some of us just need to give the other fellow the same grace He bestows upon our own mess, indeed, this morning’s sermon dealing with “fences” that we yet build around us, even in Christ, bringing me forward to an altar for the first time in a long time……