qell, again, same as when I was praying for Charlie right after hearing he'd been shot, I found myslef listening to the Memorial serice on Sunday and having the "wrong" reaction which distressed me greatly. Everythibg else seemed to be deeply moved by the worship before the program began, and by the whole event for that matter. Many said they felt the Holy Spirit there and just wahat a wonderful memorial it was for Charlie and what a wonderful expressio of Christianity for the world to see.
I agree it was avery impressive event and a great memorial service overall for Charlie, very well put together, well thought out, and the speeches were all inspiring in their own way. The gospel was preached in almost every speech and that was wonderfl. The worship usic was high calibre, very progressional, emotionally moving, the voices of the singers beautiful and powerful. I understood only a few days later that these were the top tirer of Christian performaers in the music culture, hugely talented. I only knew one name among them. I'm juist not into pop style worship music, though I admit that some of the songs are very nice.
But I kept feeling I should be more moved and involved in all this, shoultn' I? Why isn't this affecting me the way it is affecting everyone else> I do appreciate the speeches, the preaching of tthe gospel by such a disparate group of people, all that , but it's just not moving me at all. And I assume that's my afault. Lord, what's wrong with me. All these wonderful people are finding YOu there in that huge stadium, what's wrong with me? If I wre actually there would I have a differeing reaction?
It was wonderfully organized. The Turing Point team pulled off a program that seemed to flow just about seamlessly, having had only a short while to accomplish it. Quite a feat I think. They are a well organized group of people and hard workers and I'm oimpressed. And I'm certainly not doubting the importance of the gospel's being so front and cetnter from beginning to eld. But shouldn't I be happier about all that? hat is the matter with me?
I'd listening to the Charlie Kirk show every evening since his murder allnd that was very inpspiring. They had some great conversations with people who knew Charlie well, good stuff. They are a deply committed Christian group of people, that comes across clearly. I should have been happy with the memorial service. I'd been saying how I think Charlie's death could be the impetus for a great revival, and for the most part I haven't lost that idea. I still think it will be a vrevival to some extent but I'm not sure to what extent. It seemed to many that the memorial was jut the beginning of something big as far as spreading the gospel through the culture. I hope it is. But I wasn't feeling it as I thought I should during the memorial.
Well, nobody wants to be a party pooper. It took me a few days to consolidate the impressions that put a damper fo r me on the revival claims, that I kept dismissing at the time and for a couple days safterward. It took a while to begin to take them seriously and think about what they mean.
Not that I didn't think these things at the time, I just kept teling metyslef no, I must be missing somethig. But for instance, I thought, Oh no, too much trying to drum up ane n emotional reaction in the audience by the worship music, too much repeating of short lines, too much engagihjng the drowed in the repetitive strinas. Emotion is not the Holy Spirit. ANd emotion hcan be very powerful in its own right, can move croweds of people. But we want the Holy Spirit, we on't want emotion. Unfortunately Christians are just not able to appreciate the difference. It is very easy to confuse emotions that center around God and beautiful things of the ChristiaN FAITH FOR THE WORK OF THE sPIRIT.
i KEPT FEELING, THE sPIRIT IS OT HERE NO MATTER WHAT THEY ALL ARE SAYING, hE JUST IS NOT. nOT THE WAY hE COMES IN REVIVAL ANYWAY. i'M SURE hE'S HERE BECAUSE hE'S ALWAYS WITH hIS PEOPLE, BUT h'ES NOT HERE THE WAY hE COMES IN REVIVAL.tHAT'S THE THOUGHT i KEPT THROWING OUT, TELLING MYSELF THERE'S SOEMEHITNG WRONG WITH ME FOR THINKING THIS WAY. bUT AFTER A FEW DAYS OF WORKING THGROUGH MY THOUGHTS i'M MORE CONVINCED THAT i WAS RIGHT. i'M VERY CONVINCED THAT THOSE FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS WERE RIGHT, THAT LACK OF FEELING.i DIDN'T WANT TO THINK IT, i WANTED IT TO BE A POWERFUL REVIVAL EVENT. iT WAS CERTAINLY A VENUE FOR THE GOSPEL TO BE PREACHED, BUT IF THE GOSPEL WASN'T CARRIED BY THE hOLY sPIRIT, HOW LONG WILL ITS EFFECTS LAST?
lAST NIGHT i FINALLY GOT AROUBND TO LISTENING AGAIN TO THE BOOK BY wATCHMAN nEE, THE lATENT pOWER OF THE sOUL, IN WHICH HE VERY CAREFULLY DISCRIMINATES BETWEEN SOUL AND SPIRIT TO MAKE THE MAIN POINT THAT SOUL CAN BE MMADE TO COUNTERFEIT THE WORKING OF THE hOLY spiRIT TO THE DETRIMENT OF THE cHURCH AND THE cHRISTIAN'S SPIRITUAL LIFE.
There is more I want to write bbut I'm going to stop here and come back to it later.
Oh no, how long as the caps lock kep been on? Oh no. self at the
Later:
Nees little book is a little strange compared to his wother writings and I'm not sure he's right about his picture of the soul power possessed by Adam and Eve before the Fall. It just sounds odd to me. I do thionk he's right that they must have had great powers that were lost, cetrtainly at least strengths that have been lost bit by bit over the millennia at least, geneitc protections for instance. And I don't necessarily doubt Nee's view of their having powers that seem supernatural by our standards, I just don't see clear evidence of it in the scripture. He's a lot more spiritually advanced than most Christians, however, do I'm not going to argue with him behoyound saying this much.
Also, since he's writing in the early part of the twentieth century hgis references to the sciences of parapsychologigy and mesmerism sound very sdated. ARE dated. We hear little or nothing of these things today and the terminology is just not something we would use today. In the fifties when I was in my teens I got interested in the work of J B Rhine on telepathy and clairvoyance and pscyhokenesis and that sort of things but Nee had written this book some years before Rhine, so that although Rhine is certainly dated today, Nee's references are even more dated.
Nevertheless I think his general point is likely true, that is, that we do have powers that are not availbe to us in our fallen condition, perhaps hidden in our flesh as he describes it, and only occasionally accessibly to individuals here and there over the millennia since the Fall. I think the general idea must be right and it accounts for things that are otherwise very hard to explain. Such as the strange powers described by some Hindu adepts, such as Paramahansa Yogananada. I read his book when I was on my way to becoming a Christian. I took a lot of strang sdetraous like that. Yogananda desdcbribes being able to project your consciosness to great distances and see and hear things there, even manifest in a body gthat looks like us in order to talk to people who knows us at such distances. And of course telepathy and seeing things without being transported, and being able to move objects with the mind and those Hindou feat of lying on a bed of nails or walking on hot coals and so on. When I read that book I had no idea what to think aof aoll that. It doesn't sound very holy, very worshipful, just strange. Yogananda's organization which he founded in California is called the Self Realization Fellowship and that's very approrpaite in the litght of Nee's presentation. It is the Self, or Soul, that is produscing all these strange phenomena and can even produce miraculous seeming things that deceive people into accpeting them as the Holy Spirit. It is ot the Spirit.
Fallen manm sodoes not have he Spirit. I'beve heard people in the last few weeks who are certainly reliegious people in a way, often Catholics, who clearly have no idea what the Holy Spirit is because they are not born again, so they impute religious feelings of many sorts to the Spirit. But you do not have the Holy Spirit unless you are born again, and you aren't born again if you sear like a sailor as one person does, and probably ot if you use the rosary which is a pagan instrument having nothing whatever to do with Christianity, ask Mary to pray for us which they all do in one of their repetitituve rosary recitations. Nohje of that is compatible with being born agaIN. i SUPPOSE IT'S POSSIBLE TO GET BORN AGAIN AND STILL HOLD ONTO SOME OF THAT BUT i CAN ONLY SAY POSSIBLE BECAUSE IT SEEMS HIGHLY UNLIKLELY TO ME AND i REALLY DON'T KNOW HOW FAR OFF TRACK YOU CAN GO AND STILL BE BORN AGAIN.
jJust noticed I managed to kick on the caps logk again. I wish the light were brighter so I'd know when it happenes.
My guess is that the church needs a lot of cleaning up and throwing out of such pagan thigs among other problems before we can have a real Holy Spirit revival. How I yearn for such a revival, but the Church is in bad cshape. I'm certainly glad that many seem to be coming to the Lord in the last days since Charlie was murderered, and I'm sure some of that will hold, but I'm worried now that becaue the Church is not wary of the many subtle counterfiets the devil can pull off, thogugh our soul power and other means, that it could unfortunatley fizzle out way too soon.
Need Nee advises praying that the Lord will keep us alert to such things, protect us against them, that we need to be very serious about the armor of God, and the main thing is dying to self. If we are always carefully putting down the self so that the spirit can take charge we will be better prepared for a real Holy Spirit revival. TWhich would take the Church to a new level of spiritual power. And oterhwise the devil will have succeeded in keeping us in his control.
All the religious of the world try to release the soul powers according to Nee, and that certainly makes a lot of sense of what they do with their meditations and ascetic practices, which aim to keep the flesh in subjection so that sould can come forth. There is no HOly Spirit in thoe relgions and the devil can't work with the Holy Pirit anyway, only the human sould. That makes sense.
But if we get carried away by emotion, which in itself is no fault of course, but I mean if we get carried away and think it is the Holy Spirit instead, we cannot have true revival, which in most cases begins with a powerful convicion of sin that haaas people crying out for God's forgiveness, or at least that's one way it comes about. The HOly sSpirit convicts of sin first of all and although we supposedly repetn or say we repetn anyway, it's ooften a very superficial thing. If it's real then we'lll be born again if we believe the right things, but it still usually needs to be a lot sdeeper than the first conversion repentance. When the Holy Spirit comes in power He bowls us over, He possesses us, He doesn't just make us emotional, in fact we may not get emotional at all. Or it will be a for a differnet reason.
I want Charlie's death to bring us a real revival, but there'as a lot we need to learn for that to happen I think.
No comments:
Post a Comment