In a brilliant sermon called "Discipleship," G. Cambell Morgan says, "Jesus Christ could speak to the sorrow-burdened heart of humanity words so full of mother-love that father-love as to make men crowd and press around Him. On the other hand, He could suddenly speak words that flashed and scorched and burned until men drew back in astonishment. "Bracketed in the last group would be these two commands: "Take my yoke upon you" and "My disciple, take up your cross and follow me." Both of these words imply discipline.
When we sing in a sunlit church "Oh to be like Thee; Oh to be like Thee," we get weepy and feel an emotional lift. But permit this simple challenge: Do we really mean "Oh to be like Thee" - like the Christ of God, who was a man of discipline? Do we really mean "Oh to be like Thee" - fasting alone in the desert? Do we mean "Oh to be like Thee" to touch the depths of prayer that make us cry, "All Thy billows are gone over me." Do we mean Oh to be like Thee" - to become habituates of the fastness of the prayer chamber? Do we mean "Oh to be like Thee" - in a will like His, for He said, "I always do the will of my Father." Is that not discipline?
The religious sentimentalist who sings, "Just a closer walk with Thee" but walks close to the ungodly and sits with the blasphemers, is not taken seriously in either heaven or hell. Be very sure, friend, that this vile world is NOT "a friend to grace to help unto God." We need to pray the Father to put some blood into his "water" that runs through our veins. Our Simon-like natures need the Upper Room fire to clean us out and the discipline of the Spirit to shape us into soldiers.
Twenty-five years of discipline in a crow's nest of an office up behind his church in Chicago brought about a Dr. A. W. Tozer, who produced a book, The Pursuit of God." This in turn produced on the ocean of spiritual teaching waves that lap their way to the ends of the earth.
After I spoke at a session in the Bible School of Wales, Mrs. Rees Howells called me for a private talk. We stood on the veranda of her home overlooking beautiful Swansea Bay. I can see her finger upheld as she said, "Many talk of my husband's buying this place with a shilling (fourteen cents) in his pocket. What they forget is that he prayed twelve hours a day for eleven months to know the mind of God." Brethren, that's discipline!
Today, immediately when one gets out of step with a nearby Christian, he is considered a legalist. Just remember, in "that great day of Judgment" when we must stand before His throne, no man will be ashamed he was dubbed over-spiritual, though many will weep, groan, and "suffer loss" because of lack of discipline. Discipline is a harness by which we enable the Spirit to get the best out of our frail humanity. The apostle Paul was a disciplinarian like his Master: He disciplined his body: "I keep my body under." He disciplines himself to loneliness: "All men forsook me." He disciplines himself to scorn: "We are fools for Christ's sake." He disciplines himself to poverty: "We suffered need." He disciplined himself to rejection: "We are despised." He disciplines himself to death: "I die daily." He disciplines himself to suffering: "Persecuted, but not forsaken."
May this be our prayer, "Oh Lord, I bow my neck to Thy Yoke!"
Since the hour Adam first rose to his feet, man has not stood, as today, between such potential and such peril. America is still the richest nation in the world. It is a mighty crucible into which refugees of almost all modern nations are poured. it has far more Bible schools than any other nation. In these Bible schools is dedicated manpower. Here, too, is wealth to get this manpower to the ends of the earth, and here is linguistic ability unmatched in and annals of time.
Even the gathering at Pentecost had not the potential, humanly speaking, that this vast nation has. Do you wonder, then, that from every angle, hell has America under cross fire? This mighty land is cursed with blessings. I fear that unless she awakens, repents, and puts on the whole armor of God, she will be blessed with cursings. Already other nations are in the slavery of oppression. Can America and Britain long remain free? Unless we are to have the war of wars that will usher us into the night of nights and the judgment of judgments, we must have the revival of revivals. Pale, pathetic, palliating preaching must be driven from the church like the idols it promotes. It is time for the church to cry again, "Where is the God of Elijah?"
Ambrose Fleming called the resurrection of Jesus Christ "the best attested fact in history". Yet at Easter time, vain effort is made to rationalize the stupendous event of the Resurrection in order to try to save face before pseudo-intellectualism, which boggles at the fact that the Lord of glory died and rose again, triumphant over death, over hell, and over the grave. Who, then, can dispute the following biting statements of Murdo MacDonald in his book, The Vitality of Faith: "Ever since the Renaissance, men have been trying to water down the Christian creed. Give us a religion purged of everything that defies logic, a religion stripped of the supernatural and emptied of miracle, a religion that is smooth and palatable and rationally acceptable - this has been the popular cry" Surely the church, weak in heart and courage, has gone out of the way to oblige!
The doom of this decaying civilization is spelled out in our crowded divorce courts, our all-time high of alcoholics and drug addicts, the number of illegitimate births or the number of abortions. A Gallup poll shows that these days most people accept lying as part of everyday business. Virtue is scorned! Truth lies fallen in the street!
Somewhere in the archives of the British Admiralty at Whitehall, London, they have the record of a fine piece of maritime strategy. Ships of five nations were anchored in a bay in the South Pacific. A fierce storm was gathering offshore. The British captain decided to run, not away from the storm but into it. Everything available was battened down. Out crashed the ship into the boiling seas - pitching, tossing, rolling, and shuddering. Indeed, she did everything but go down. A couple of days later, buffeted but not broken, she returned to the port to find the ships of the other nations piled up on the beach.
The storm of the ages is about to break. Let the church call its crew to a new dedication. Remembering that Christ is at the helm, and with Christ's Crest as our ensign, let us run into the storm. After the storm, we, too, shall return to see upon the shores of time the battered, piled, wrecked, hell-inspired ideologies of the hour.
~Leonard Ravenhill~
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