viewoutsidethepew

After we moved to the town we now live in God told me that the town was scheduled for a revival. A little later God told me which congregation would be the centre of it. Still later I preached there for some months while they went through the process to find a new minister.

This minister turned out to be a disaster and declared war on me, and in an official letter banned me from the property. Sin took over early in this ministry. The elders did not love enough to correct and save the wayward soul. I blamed them all, but with deep sadness. As I left the meeting (complete with denominational officials to support the sinful minister) at which I was handed the banishment notice God said, “I have left this group because they lost their first love”. Revival has not come to my town.

But, like so many things that demonstrate my weakness, my need for the Body of Christ and my thick skull, it was only this week that God spoke again about this.

God had sent this minister, as I believed at the time that God made the choice. (That caused some confusion when the whole ministry went down the sewer). What I missed was that this was a test. The minister had to prove humility and spiritual sacrifice. The congregation had to prove tenacious love. They failed.

The lost revival is the issue. And it still breaks my heart.

But I was being tested, too. I took it personally. I thought I had failed. I did not respond well spiritually to being trashed into oblivion by slander and betrayal.

It wasn’t about me, though! My excitement about the revival was flushed into the sewer by my personal feelings. I can say I was justified, and I was. But not for God’s sake!

When I was in a prison made by pernicious propaganda I stayed there, bound by my own chains of self deflation, lost reputation and extinction of my place in the spirituality of my town.

No, I’m not wallowing in it anymore. The whole point of God’s work this week on me was to pull me out. I’m out. I’m glad. I’m blessed.

But again I am humbled at how badly I screwed up. God forgives, but a warning flashes from the forehead of my soul, “It’s all about Creator”.

“We have cause, therefore, because of our frailty and feebleness, to humble ourselves and never think anything great of ourselves. Through neglect we may quickly lose that which by God’s grace we have acquired only through long, hard labor. What, eventually, will become of us who so quickly grow lukewarm? Woe to us if we presume to rest in peace and security when actually there is no true holiness in our lives. It would be beneficial for us, like good novices, to be instructed once more in the principles of a good life, to see if there be hope of amendment and greater spiritual progress in the future” (Thomas à Kempis, “The Imitation of Christ”, Book One, Chapter 22).