The Big Diehl

I am not perfect. There it is. That’s the big announcement. The rumors are true - Adam Diehl indeed is still trying to fully put to death his sinful nature.

If my pastor gave an altar call for people who are struggling with something and need God’s help, every Christian would fit into one of three categories:
1) Christians who are struggling, awknowledge their struggle, and respond to the altar call.
2) Christians who stopped struggling and have started to live complacently with their lousy lives rejecting the power of Christ. These people don’t even realize they stopped struggling and are stuck in a rut.
3) Christians who are struggling, but they lie to themselves and do not respond to the altar call.

Sometimes I feel that if I admit that I am struggling with a sin than that makes me less of a Christian — like people will think I’m a horrible person if I admit a struggle. If someone admits a struggle, Christians should say, “Yahoo! They’re FIGHTING and not giving in!” Struggles are universal and guaranteed, but how you respond to your sinful struggle is another story.

Too many of us are lying, arrogant pigs on the inside (of course it doesn’t look this way from the outside!). C.S. Lewis wrote much on this subject of pride. Our religious pride causes us to become outright liars to ourselves, justifying our own sins, actions, and motives so that we don’t admit we have a problem. We all have a battle of our two natures; struggling with sin is a GIVEN - so why do we hide it?

A great man once wrote, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for each other so that you can be healed” (James 5:16).

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.