The Big Diehl

Our first problem is that our attitude toward sin is more self-centered than God-centered. We are more concerned about our own ‘victory’ over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve the heart of God. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success-oriented, not because we know it is offensive to God.

W. S. Plumer said, ‘We never see sin aright until we see it as against God … All sin is against God in this sense: that it is His law that is broken, His authority that is despised, His government that is set at naught … Pharaoh and Balaam, Saul and Judas each said, ‘I have sinned’; but the returning prodigal said, ‘I have sinned against heaven and before thee; and David said, “Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned.”

This is an excerpt from some sermon notes of Dwayne Roberts (from the leadership team of IHOP). This paragraph was a “Goliath moment” for me; it hit me right between the eyeballs.

I consider myself a Creationist because I believe God created the Earth and everything in it. Most Creationists really depend on every word from Genesis. They believe what Genesis says.

But I’m starting to doubt that now.

I mean, Phil Collins isn’t even that good of a drummer.

If you read about the early church in the Book of Acts, you will see a drastic difference between today’s Christianity and the church described in the Book of Acts. Extraordinary events today were ordinary for first century Christians: healing, dead being raised to life, hundreds coming to Christ every day, miracle after miracle after miracle. So I dug into the Book of Acts to answer this question, “What did the early Church do that Christians today are not doing?” This post is a part of a series of posts that aim to answer this question.

They Respected and Feared the Name of Jesus Christ. Here’s Scripture.

In the book of Acts we can see respect for Jesus formed after a great work. Amazing things were happening and it resulted in a Holy Fear for God. That didn’t surprise me, that just makes sense. But compare that to today’s world.

Today the respect for God has been diminished into the ever popular, “Jesus is my Homeboy” campaign. Thousands of T-Shirts with these designs have swept the country. The “Jesus is my Homeboy” design does a great job demonstrating the caring relationship we can have with Him, but it tosses respect and Godly fear right out the window. Jesus is NOT my Homeboy - HE IS GOD!

The natural result of Godly fear is genuine holiness. Revival starts with holiness.

Church, if we’re expecting God to come and do amazing things among us — if we’re hoping for God’s presence to show up powerfully — if we’re hoping for a revival, we must be holy. We must respect and fear Jesus and his commands. We must be obediant. God will come with great power when we’ve prepared a Church that’s worth it.

My second year of college was the busiest year of my life. I was a full time university student studying music (which meant a lot of practice time). I led and directed a midweek evangelistic children’s program at my church. I worked a significant amount empowering the worship teams and choirs to serve more effectively. I took Bible college courses in the evenings. I had never been so stressed in all my life. I actually wrote out my schedule to help me organize my time and realized that I had a grand total of something like 4 hours PER WEEK of non-committed time. That means for every week, I had a grand total of 4 hours to hang with friends, watch T.V., take showers, or just whatever I wanted to do. I was about that busy all four years of college, but my second year was the worst. It nearly killed me.

During that crazy busy time, I grew 3 gray hairs. I knew exactly what they were from: stress.

Yesterday when I was getting ready in the bathroom, I realized that my gray hairs were gone. (Don’t even start with the, “You’re going bald” crap. I’m not going bald - the gray hairs are gone). It was quite cool - I mean do I have less stress? Maybe. But more than that, I think I’m handling the high levels of mental stress much better now that I’m doing a better job at living a LIFE of renewal.

Now of course I’m not equating no gray hairs with good spirituality. That’s not the point. I’m talking about what the gray hairs represented in my life. Good spirituality will eliminate the “gray hairs” (ignored stress). “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” That means if we’re spending time with God, eagerly anticipating Him, our strength will be RENEWED. We’ve heard that scripture in Isiah a million times, but seldom do we live like it.

When crazy busy times come our way, I think we go into a “focus” mode and we only do the things that MUST be done — which ignores our time with God. That thinking is killing Christians! When we have more work to do than ever before, we should pray twice as much! God will make up the difference, he never lies: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.”