"Direction..............."

My pastor’s Sunday morning sermon reached from the birthing of the early Church to a “State of the Union” address concerning where we sit today. Where he got his calculations from is beyond me, but supposedly, once the Apostle Paul started evangelizing, Christianity quickly conquered 50% of the known world. Putting that, however, into Biblical perspective, his message proposed that, in “these latter days”, we would once again know such growth, but it would come only by experiencing the same persecution suffered by those saints. Indeed, as he saw it, believers needed to place themselves under what he called “the Spirit of restraint”, a phrase self-manufactured, but arising from that verse in 2nd Thessalonians where the writer speaks of “the mystery of iniquity” already being afoot and “he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way”. I can agree with his identifying that latter portion with the Holy Ghost and have no problem with labeling the Comforter as a means of defense against the evil presently rampant among us; yet when he isolates the whole affair in terms of people achieving some state of “holiness” via an abandonment of “worldliness”, I find him coming up short on what it means to “held in check” by the inner connection we possess in Christ. He, and He alone, sanctifies me, empowers me, and guides me in the next step; and, in times like this, when all around us multiple voices shout in the wilderness proclaiming their own version of “truth”, His anchor-line is the salvation of my soul. If I’m hearing His voice above all else out there, the details will work out as we go……