Revival Begins in the Household of Faith

Recovering the Lost Doctrine of the Kingdom of God: Moody, Stan, Moody, Barbara: 9798182012638: Amazon.com: Books

We have explored every church-growth scheme imaginable in bulking up the American Church. Through it all, while we joyfully sing of the Lordship of Jesus, His name has publicly been dragged through the mud and the mire of American exceptionalism and marketed as though we, and not He, are the designated movers and shakers in the emerging Kingdom of God.

Before revival can come to America, then, it must come first to the Church!

Jesus warns us in Matt. 24:24 of the win/lose strategies of the world creeping into the Church: False Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect – if that were possible. Has the focus on prosperity, success and political ideology so infected our communities of worship that we have lost trust in God’s sovereign power and grace?

What does a revived Church of Jesus Christ look like, and how do we get there? The Apostle Paul gives us some tools in his letter to the Church at Philippi, written during his first imprisonment in Rome. Paul wanted the Church to be a pulsating, alive lighthouse to a “crooked and perverse generation” (Phil 2:15). In order to get there, however, we must never lose sight of what we have been rescued from when called into this new citizenship in the eternal Kingdom:

…I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things (3:18, 19).

Think of the attributes already ours through citizenship in the Kingdom of God! “We have been raised up with Christ” (Col 3:1); “We have been delivered from the dominion of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s Son” (Col 1:13); “We have been seated with Christ in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 2:6).

Our friends, and even our nation, may honor Jesus. We may pray to God, believe in angels and live good lives. We may finish every speech with “God bless America!” Thank you! You may have made it a bit safer for the rest of us. The question becomes, however, one of how we move from honor to practice. Paul helps us with that in Philippians 3.

He begins by stating his own changed position from religious zealot to apostle: “Whatever was my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ” (v. 7). “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (v.10).

That Kingdom that has Paul dismissing every accomplishment of his prior life when he was a self-righteous enemy of the cross is a transforming force in forward motion: “…forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on; let us live up to what we have already attained!” (vv. 12-16). That is our high calling, as well!  

Pray that revival will come to the Confessing Church in America. We must join together in following the example of Jesus, who, Paul tells us in Gal 1:4:

…gave himself for our sins, to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever, Amen.

The question then hangs in the air, “What is standing in our way of discerning the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God?” Is it American exceptionalism?