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I have already reflected here on revivals, particularly the difference between a revival and “revivalism” (Ian Murray’s very helpful term). The first is produced by God; the second is produced by humans. The first is unplanned and unpredictable; the second is planned and often very predictable. The first yields lasting fruit; the latter fruit that appears suddenly and falls rotten to the ground after a short period of time. Yet, the presence of “revivalism” does not mean that we throw out the baby with the bathwater. We pray fervently and seek God to send a revival to His church and through His church bring an awakening to the land. We do pray for God to come as a “mighty rushing wind” to His church to refresh and renew us. But the truth historically is that we often see the fruits of real revival that brings real awakening only months or years after the revival has passed. We do not really see it as clearly to define it for what it is when it is taking place right before our eyes.

We have all followed with great interest what happened last year on the campus of Asbury that then seemed to spread to other places in our country. Was/Is it real? I just read with great interest of a great movement of God in a chapel service on the campus of a school I love deeply. Hundreds of students in the aisles weeping before God and seeking HIs face. Praise God! Is this a part of a revival that is going on in our land? Well, every child of God should hope and pray so. But we will not know until we see what are the lasting fruits that come out of this movement of God–when we begin to hear testimonies two to five to ten years from now of real and lasting life-change that took place on college campuses in 2022- whenever this move of God passes. And it will pass. This work of the Wind of God brings real change when it is real, but it does not last. Why? I don’t know. I just know that historically, revivals come and revivals go. But real revival leaves behind real change. One other thing. Those who are moved by God toward real repentance and real change so not know that they are in the midst of revival, they just know that they have been and are in the presence of God.

Let me talk to you about how I know that. I have read recently, partially due to the feature film The Jesus Revolution, about this phenomenon of revival among students in the last sixties and early seventies. Well, I was saved in 1969 and called of God to preach in 1970. This is what I know now and knew then: Three of my friends were called of God to preach during that same time frame, three of us out of one rather mid-sized church and the other out of another church in our county. Three of us were either in high school or college, the fourth serving at the time of his call in the Navy. We were all ordained within the same time frame in the same year, three by one church. Three of us had been a part of a Spirit-driven and directed gathering of students on Monday nights at our local church. Lots of students came. We were hungry for God. We worshipped. The three of us who were called to preach often led the “preaching” time. We had to get adults to come in just to help us because we had so many coming. We had no pizza! We played no games! We sang. We preached and prayed. We really prayed. We were pouring out our hearts to God. It was real. And there was some real fruit from it not only in four preachers coming out of our small town in one year, but in men and women who are still faithfully loving and serving Jesus as a part of local churches in that town and in other towns. We were a part of what came to be known as the “Jesus Revolution,” but we did not know it. That is how revival works. Those often in the midst of real revival are just riding the wonderful wave of what God is doing.

One final note: real revivals historically come out of and are accompanied by the practice of the ordinary means of grace: the faithful preaching of the Word of God and fervent prayer offered to God as we cry out to Him to send revival. Real revivals produce extraordinary results through very ordinary means. Revivalism does the opposite: it produces very ordinary results through the use of extraordinary means. Revivalism focuses on the means of the “revival;” Revival looks to and longs for God as we preach the Word and pray for God to send the Wind. Blow Wind of God; Blow today.

A really clear and necessary distinction between groups of people became more vivid to me this morning while listening to one of the podcasts that I listen to every day during my workout. It is the distinction between “conservative” and “conservative evangelical.” Clarity came in light of what Donald Trump is saying that is showing clearly where he now stands on the issue of killing babies.. I am paraphrasing here what he said but the substance of what he said is unchanged. He was attacking Ron DeSantis and his position on killing babies. He was arguing that he would get together groups on all sides of this issue and arrive at a place where we could all be happy. Now I know this is “political” speech from a man without a real moral compass. And I know that there are conservatives who say they do not support killing babies, but they are not against limits on killing babies. We have seen that in state after state where measures to support life from womb to tomb have failed to pass. Much of the failure can be blamed on conservatives who are not conservative evangelicals. So, what is the real difference?

The real difference in my modest opinion became more clear to me this morning. It may have been clear to you for a long time. That’s wonderful. It just means that I am slower to see it and to get it than you are. A conservative by definition is one who seeks to conserve traditions that have been profitable for a people to produce human flourishing. The conservatives gather around certain traditions that produced for them a way of life that was deemed to be a good life. They want that life back. That life often included attending a church or synagogue on Saturday or Sunday but it could have also included maintaining racial segregation at all costs, even being in a KKK rally on a Saturday night and teaching a Sunday School Class on Sunday morning. It meant in short defining “Christian” by their tradition rather than by the truth of God. One the other hand, a Christian is one who is committed to the absolute Truth of God that is His Word, the Bible. To belong to God is to seek to live under the Lordship of Jesus as our lives are directed by the Spirit of God through the Word of God. We desire and are deeply devoted to obeying God. What makes the most people happy is not on our agenda. We don’t want to make people mad, but if their animosity comes at the expense of our adoration of and obedience to Jesus, then that is a small price to pay for seeking to love and to serve Him.

Many conservatives attend church or synagogue services routinely but their lives do not reflect a real and radical devotion to Jesus. They are political and economic conservatives but not conservative evangelicals. We do not have to look hard to find many of this sort in our churches. The lifestyle of true conservative evangelicals, however, is driven by the “evangel.” We are in love with the Bible and we want to live under its authority because we are in love with and deeply loved by Jesus who gave His life for us. We have responded to His call for us to come to Him and that is reflected in us and through us in our desire to live in devotion to His Word. Nobody would ever find us at a KKK meeting or any derivative of that woefully sinful group, nor would they find us at a Qanon meeting. And they would surely not find us agreeing with Trump that we must simply find a way to make everybody happy on the issue of when to kill babies. We are absolutely sure about that one because our conservatism bows the knee before the One who is the source of the “evangel” from which we get our name.

So, let’s be careful. Not every conservative is a real friend of conserving. Many conservatives who by the teachings of their tradition may call themselves “Christians,” but by the standards of the Bible reveal clearly that they are not Christians as defined by the Word of God. And Trump who is a conservative but by no means a Christian is helping us see and know the distinction between conservative and conservative evangelical. I hope you are one of these and not the other.

I love the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. I do not think it is possible for a person to be a Christian and not be connected with and committed to a local church of the Lord Jesus Christ. A Christian professing to know Christ and yet seldom if ever being a participant in the life of a local church is simply someone who does not know what it means to be a Christian. He or she is a body without a head which is not only a biblically accurate picture but a clear image of what is going on with such a person. I love the church, but there have been more than a few times through the years that I have seriously considered trying to walk away from the local church and never look back. And it has always been for the same reason: issues in the church that are adiaphora.

Adiaphora is defined in the Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms as “elements of faith regarded as neither commanded nor forbidden in Scripture and thus on which liberty of conscience must be expressed.” Paul addresses such issues in at least three of his letters (Romans 14:17, 1 Corinthians 6:12, 8:8 and Galatians 5:6). The big issue in his day was whether or not Christians could or should eat meat that was being sold in the marketplace that had arrived there in the meat market after being used in rituals related to the worship at the altars of “other gods.” Here was the question: “can we eat this meat in good conscience that we know has been used in the worship of idols?” The question related to stewardship, theology proper, and ecclesiology.

The meat was most likely sold at a price that was cheaper than meat where the exterior had not been seared by the fire. But the theological question was about it being an offense to God; the ecclesiological question was about it being offense to immature or young believers. Paul made it an issue of “indifference.” It was a matter of conscience. It was not an offense to God except in its being an impediment to young believers as they were growing toward maturity. Paul simply used an example. If you are going with a young believer to enjoy a meal and you all know that the meat you will eat has been a part of the ritual of the pagans in their practices and you know that your eating it offends the young believer, because you love them enough to have had this conversation, then don’t eat the meat. But when you are with others who are not offended by your eating this meat, and if this is something that you also do in the privacy of your own home, eat the meat. It is a matter of personal conscience that cannot and must not be imposed as a standard one way or the other for all believers in the church. This is so simple. This very clear. Yet, through the years I have watched people in every church I have been in take matters that in the Bible are adiaphora and treat them as if they are the “law of the Medes and Persians.” It is particularly true in the deep south related to the issue of drinking alcohol. The Bible clearly forbids drunkenness; it does not forbid the use of alcohol as a beverage except as a warning of its real danger for some. It can be and is addictive for some. But to make it absolutely forbidden as a test of faith for fellowship is to make the Bible say what it simply does not say. Some go here and thus make the issue a biblically mandated issue. This is a very bad and a very unbiblical step to take.

Here is what is worse. People are notorious when offended by a matter that is adiaphorous to talk about their offense to others without ever going to the person or persons who are the cause of the offense. In other words they violate a crystal clear teaching of Scripture found in multiple places in Scripture that even a child in the faith should know in order to air their grievances before others in a matter about which the Scripture does not speak either clearly or definitively. They “gossip” to others while never going to the brother or sister who is the cause of their offense. They do as declared believers what the Bible is clear that only true unbelievers would do. They often are swollen up with a pompous pride over their being offended while clearly violating in their speech and actions a very simple and straightforward teaching of Scripture.

i have seen this take place hundred of times through the years. I have thought of walking away and staying away. Then I remember how sinful I am and how gracious God has been to me. And I also remember that Jesus died for His church to purchase a people who are sinners like me. It is then I know that I cannot and will not walk away. i’ll just go eat some meat that was prepared by a group whose rituals are indeed pagan, and give praise to God for the good food while praying for those who are a part of such a group. Maybe these last lines will give you some food for thought as you ponder adiaphora issues that frankly all around us.

The most prevalent and popular form of Christianity in the part of the world in which I live is what I call decisional Christianity. It is Christianity defined by decision. It is usually tied closely to an altar call at the end of a time of worship where people who do not know Jesus are called to make a decision for Jesus by “coming to the front of the church and speaking with the preacher about the decision that they need to be make.” So, you ask, what is wrong with that? I want in the rest of what is here to address that question not so much in terms of what is wrong with it but what it has come to represent in too many of our churches.

Let’s begin with a short statement about what the Gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord. We are all born into a deep and deadly spiritual crisis that we cannot resolve on our own. We are born under the holy and perfect standard of the law of God as the way of being right with God. God has so made us that we instinctively know that we cannot meet this standard. We fall woefully short of this standard. And along the way whether at age 10 or 50 we hear the Gospel of what God has done in and through Jesus Christ in His coming to keep the law for us, to be for us the only acceptable sacrifice for our sin to satisfy God’s just requirement for us and so to take our place on the cross to receive from God the punishment that we deserve that pays the price for our sins. We hear. We believe. And in deep conviction of our sin we turn from our sin to God to believe this good news and to give our lives to Jesus as Lord. We are saved by this grace that comes from God in and through the gift given to us in Jesus Christ. We express what God has done for us by connecting with a local church in baptism as we begin to learn what it means through the teachings of the Bible in and through the church to follow Jesus. We have taken the first “decisive/decision” step in being a Christian. BUT we are not saved by the decision; we are saved by the decisive act of God on our behalf that brings into our lives the very presence of God in His Spirit who begins and continues to change us to conform us more and more into the image of Jesus. No decision can save us. Only the declaration of God about us based on what He has done for us in Christ can save us.

Here is my great fear in far too many of our churches: we have come to believe that anyone and everyone who responds to the call to come to the front or to speak with the preacher at the front is truly and biblically saved. We have no biblical evidence that such a thing is true. My own sense is that it has been used of the devil to deceive thousands of people who sincerely believe that they are saved when they are not. I heard a preacher in the area in which I live who gives a public invitation at the end of every service of worship that those who come forward are simply taking the first small step in a life-long commitment to learn and to live out what it means to follow Jesus as a part of the church. Amen! May his tribe increase.

I did not give an “altar call” the last five or so years of serving as a pastor in a local church. I became deeply burdened over the number of people I knew who had “walked the aisle” whom I had baptized whose lives over time showed no real fruit. Some of that is on me, I am sure; for failing in putting together a genuine discipleship process. I grieve even still over that. But so much of it is that we have developed an “atmosphere” in too many of our churches where “coming to the front” is the guarantee of being saved regardless of the kind of life that follows.

A man met the great doctor Lloyd-Jones at the end of one of his services and said, “if you had given an altar call tonight, I would have come forward and been saved, but the time has passed now.” Lloyd-Jones responded, my dear chap, if the presence and power of God was not powerful enough to trouble you for days and compel you to surrender your life, then I am glad that I did not; it would have put you in a far worse predicament than you are even now.

I have no axe to grind with those who plead for an altar call. My plea is that if we would employ it, we understand that it is extra-biblical and that we use it biblically. As the preacher that I quoted above says, “it is a first small step in a lifetime of learning and living out what it means to follow Jesus.” It is not our decision that saves us. It is God’s decisive action in our behalf through the life, death, and resurrection of HIs Son that we receive by grace through faith. And that faith that itself is a gift of God sets all that we are on all that He is as we seek to be and to become more and more HIS. He gives us as His children all that we need to become more and more His. Nobody can decide for Jesus and then decide at some point later to walk away from His Way, His Word, and His people believing that at least they are going to heaven because of some decision they made when they were ten. That is worse than heresy. That is hell.

Messy Church is a term that was in use some years ago to describe a church gathering where the focus was using fun and games to bring in people who would not ordinarily come to church. I am quite sure although I could be wrong about this that it originated in England. The church for the English of almost every theological and denominational persuasion is not a place for fun and games. But when many in the British bunch began to see the decline in the gathering of people for worship on the Lord’s Day, they began to look for ways to get people in. Messy Church was one alternative.

I went once to serve with some people from our church in a church in England where they were exploring this alternative. I do not know whether they went far with it or whether it had a good outcome. My take on such things is that they never work long term because the church is using “bait” to get people in the church and when they get them in they “switch” to what they would normally do when they gather which is exactly what those they “baited” do not want, so they “switch” to whatever they were doing on the Lord’s Day before they attended messy church.

Messy church in the form that I described above does no great harm except that it is not at all what the church is called to be. But messy church can be done in a way that causes great harm not only to the church but to the Kingdom of God. Paul was addressing this kind of messy church when he wrote to the church in Colossae. I have been reading through and reflecting on Colossians recently. There are verses in this letter that have been so mysterious to me for a long time, most of them in chapter two. So, I settled down in the Greek text there for a week or so to seek to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit as He helped me to see what is here. What I began to see was messy church or what a church looks like when she is either headed toward a mess or in a mess.

Paul lays down a solid foundation in 2:6. To receive Jesus Christ as Lord leads us to live under His rule. We live with gratitude to Him for HIs grace and we grow and change as we learn more and more of what it means to love Him and to obey Him. But the process of growing and changing for them then and us now is met with threats. Paul identifies three of them, each of them found within the church in Colossae.

The first threat is TRADITIONALISM, 2:8. Traditionalism happens when a church is captured by the culture and not controlled by the Spirit of God through the Word of God. The church begins to conduct herself in a way that is similar to the way the world in which she lives conducts itself. The church begins to be governed in a way that looks like the business down the street more than by what the Bible teaches which is the Truth of God. The church increasingly becomes compatible with the world around her and comfortable with that world. This is messy church which will in time if not confronted and corrected lead to a mess for the church. The second threat is LEGALISM, 2:16-17. Traditionalists can be legalists but often simply exploit them for their own gain. Legalists are those whose way of relating to God is by a certain set of rules that may or may not be biblical, but that is not their concern. Their concern is the way things are done in the church that keeps the church on course in keeping with what the church has always believed and how the church has always behaved. Issues can range all over the map, but they never change. The church is defined by what has always been done in a certain way and must always be done in a certain way or the church is not the church. What the Bible teaches is not the issue at all. That is of little or no concern to the legalist. Such thinking when combined with traditionalism creates a mess for the church. The third threat is SENSATIONALISM, 2:18. The sensationalists are not legalists or traditionalists. What they share in common with them is that their way of seeing and shaping life is driven by something extra-biblical, and for them it is the the direct leading of the Spirit. They say only what the Spirit tells them to say and they do only what the Spirit tells them to do. This is not wrong as long as the Spirit is speaking to them in and through the Bible. But for people like this, the Bible is one source for direction but not the only source. And it is certainly not the ultimate source. It is helpful to them but not essential. They go and do, they speak and act as they are in their view “directly” directed by the Spirit. Such people without being confronted create a mess in a church.

Paul spends his time and energy from Colossians 2:19-3:17 addressing this mess. He shows us what a clean church looks like and how a clean church confronts her mess. Read it. I have been for a couple of weeks now. Messy church as my British friends practiced it was basically harmless. And I pray it opened a door for some unbelievers to try the real thing. But what Paul is addressing is a mess that can in time if not confronted bring ruin to a local church It almost did in Colossae. It can anywhere these three things that Paul identifies are present and given a voice. Each of them represent a real threat to the life of the church. Together they can take down a church anywhere at any time. Those who are called to serve the church in leadership should be aware of these threats, see them for what they are and speak to them biblically with a clear and compassionate voice.

The first letter of three that the apostle John wrote to the church ends in what seems at first glance a very strange way. His last words are these, “Little Children, keep yourselves from idols,” 5:21. Got it. Check that box. I have done a thorough search of my home and my heart and have nothing of stone, metal or wood to which I am bowing down in worship. I am good. On to 2 John.

Idolatry would be a simple issue to resolve if it were only about bowing down to material objects that we called “gods” or we used them as iconographic ways of worshipping the “true” God. But identifying idols in our western world where we do not worry so much about animistic spirits is not so simple.

I have been pondering this issue for the last few weeks. How do we identity idols in our kind of culture? Well, I think we begin with how we identify philosophically and practically what we mean by “God” in relationship to our lives. One early twentieth century theologian defined “God” as whatever in our lives is our “ultimate concern.” To express this in practical language might be to say something like, “what we think about the most,” or what consumes our time, energy, and resources. We might could say that our “God” is what we love talking about with others even when we are not asked.

As I continued to think along those lines four areas in my life and in the lives or others I know began to be areas in which idols might appear. The first is EDUCATION. What parent does not see getting and possessing an education as a matter of ultimate concern. To live where I live is to be proud when you or your child or someone else close to you has become a “bulldog” or a “yellow jacket” or an “eagle.” Parents often can spend hours talking about the college the child is attending, what courses the child is taking, and the child making the right Deans’ List. We can often act as if getting a good education is a matter of ultimate concern. The second is VOCATION. What we do with our lives is not unimportant but it can become all-consuming. A man who becomes a pastor or a mechanic can be so committed to that vocation bringing meaning to life that the vocation becomes all-consuming. We begin to see working all the time as a virtue to be celebrated rather than a concern to be addressed.

Two more. I believe that REPUTATION is a significant candidate for a false god. Where we live. What size and shape of house we live in. What kind of cars or trucks we drive etc. By the way, we can know how much these things are idols when we lose any of them or when we think of living without them. Reputation can also include living to please people who are so important to us that we will do anything and everything to please them. And RECREATION can be and may well be in our day the most dangerous and deadly idol. Ask any travel ball parent if their missing multiple Sundays at church to follow their child around a baseball diamond or a football (soccer) field could be idolatry (I would recommend backing up when you ask the question, because a verbal volcano is about to erupt)! We do what we love. We expend energy on what we love. We give our money to what we love. And Jesus stands before us today and asks, “Do you love me more than these?” Whatever that is in my life and your life is a prime candidate for idolatry.

One of the leading pastors of our day has said that what God speaks to us in Jonah 2:9 could well be one of the most important verses in the Bible,” . . salvation belongs to the Lord.” It is God who saves sinners. It is God alone who saves sinners. Sinners do not save themselves and sinners are not in charge of coming to salvation. Salvation does belong to the Lord.

I was reading the other day in Acts 16. Paul had his plans for where he wanted to go with the Gospel. God interrupted his plans and called him to go to what is modern day Europe. So, according to Acts 16 Paul and his missionary team “set sail from Troas and made a direct voyage to Samothrace and the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi . . . ” (Acts 16:11-12). They arrived in this leading city of the region on the day before the Sabbath. They knew that there were no believers in the city so they sought on the Sabbath a synagogue or a group of God-fearers. They found the latter gathered for worship outside the city gates. It seems they were all women. One of them who was a leading business person in the town was sincerely seeking to know God more fully. So, when Paul and his team began to speak to them, “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul,” (16:14). The word translated by the words “pay attention” points to someone who is doing more than listening. It points to intense listening. It paints a picture of someone who is hearing and heeding what is said. We would say in good biblical language that God is at work here to call her to repentance and faith. God is work in her life because God opened her heart. She responds in faith with her whole household. She is baptized.

According to this text, it is only after she repents and is baptized that she speaks. She desires that Paul and his team come to her home if in fact they have found her to be faithful. She opens herself to the examination of the validity of her response and is immediately desiring to learn more. This willingness to be tested and this desire to learn more are the simple evidences in her life that God has saved her. These elements in her life to not save her. They simply bear witness to her being saved. Salvation belongs to the Lord.

Many of my tribe get hives when they read in the Apostles Creed, “I believe in one holy, catholic church.” They take their refusal to recite these words as a sign of deep devotion to Jesus. They make out as if they have joined the long line of martyrs who refused to make the wrong confession. They really have no idea of what they are really saying about themselves when they refuse to recite these words. Maybe they need a little help in understanding what the words really mean.

The truth is biblically and historically that there is only one holy catholic church. The word “catholic” means “universal.” The one true or holy church consists of all those who have been chosen by God from before the foundation of the world as His, who by the power of the Holy Spirit are brought under conviction of sin and commitment to Jesus and HIs church when their eyes and ears are opened to see and to hear the life-changing and world-reorienting truth of the Gospel. Everyone who hears, repents and thus receives and believes the Gospel is brought into the one holy catholic church. This one holy catholic church is found throughout the world in all the varieties of local churches in which we gather to worship and from which we go to witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Every local church is a corpus mixtum, a mixed body of believers and unbelievers. The Bible says that the Lord knows who are His and He will sort it all out on the last day (2 Timothy 2:19). And we will leave that issue right there. I want to address an experience I had recently in a Roman Catholic Church.

The church was in Spain. The occasion was a family wedding. My wife and I went to take her 91 year old, never been on a plane, mother to attend the wedding of her grandson. It was a great trip. It was the kind of trip that I will remember and in which I will rejoice for years to come. The wedding was held in a massive and majestic cathedral. What I want to address is simply what I experienced that caused me to give thanks to God and at the same time caused me to grieve.

I begin with what I experienced that caused me to give thanks to God. First, all and any who enter this cathedral are confronted first by two realities: the grandeur of the building and the command at the entrance to be silent. It was clear upon entry that we were crossing a threshold. We were moving from the common world into another, from the secular into the sacred. The greatness of God was on visible display. Second, the wedding ceremony was not the focus, nor was the focus on the bride or the groom. The focus was on God. It was clear that we were there to worship God. Third, the purpose of marriage as defined biblically was made very plain: partnership for mutual blessing and benefit out of which procreation is to happen. Only those not listening or not interested could have missed it: marriage is for a man and a woman serving God in a mutually beneficial relationship that sees the birthing and raising of children in a two parent home as one of God’s richest blessings. Fourth, the Bible was read often and the “Gospel” was made plain from the Scripture readings. Fifth, God was exalted above all and submission to Christ and His church was presented as the key to a fulfilling marriage. I give thanks to God for these things and more.

But I was also aware of the historical and theological context in which I was worshipping. I sat there through the entire one hour long mass and wondered if there would be any accommodation to the Protestants in the room. And I knew that if the officiant was faithful to the tradition of the church, I would be a witness to what would cause me to grieve. He was. I did. So, I was not surprised that when the homily was given based on Jesus’ words about our being the salt of the earth and the light of the world that it was interpreted by the officiant as being a call to do good deeds, participate in acts of kindness, show care and concern for each other so as to earn the favor of God while being a witness to others. This understanding of the text conforms completely to the understanding of the Roman Catholic Church but misses almost entirely the core of the Gospel. We do not do anything to earn the grace of God but because we have received the grace of God in Christ we want to do all that we do to show kindness and love to all people as a way of displaying what the Gospel has done in our lives with the hope and prayer that we can declare the Gospel to all who need to hear. Secondly, I can understand intellectually through the philosophical categories borrowed from Aristotle how the RCC gets to transubstantiation, but it is so far from what I read in the Bible and so foreign to what is reality in the world, I have to wonder if anyone really believes that it is really real. Thirdly, one of the first acts of the married couple was to present a gift to Mary in order to seek a blessing on their marriage and family. All of these things and more were fully faithful to the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. But they are not biblical, thus; the source of my grief.

There was so much for me in the service that was such a blessing, particularly the palpable awareness that we were in a building designed to shout the magnificence of God. But there was also the very vivid awareness of being present in a place where the ultimate authority is not Scripture but the long-held and much loved traditions of the church. And at this point as I end this post, I am supposed to say something noble like, “I am glad that as a Baptist I belong to a church that treasures the truth of the Word of God without paying any attention to the traditions of the church: hallelujah and amen.” But I have been a Baptist preacher far too long to say such nonsense. What we as Baptists often proclaim so loudly about our love for and loyalty to Scripture gets shouted down by our deeper devotion to our traditions. So I will just say that what I know is that “The Lord does know who are His,” and “His” were among those sitting in that cathedral in Spain as well as among those sitting in Baptist churches every Sunday.

P.S I will be out of the blogging business for a few days. I am having hip-replacement surgery. So, I will be going silent for a few days. Thanks for reading and commenting. Thanks for your prayers if you think of me tomorrow.

George Verwer died over the weekend. He was small in physical stature, but bigger than a giant in his spiritual influence. If in fact the Kingdom of God is already in the world but not yet in all of its glorious fullness, and that is a fact; then George Verwer was one in whom the Kingdom of God was more fully present than in most of the rest of us. One proof of this truth is that there are those, maybe even many, who read these posts and have never heard of him–who he was and what he did.

I was in that group until 1991. I had moved to Waynesboro, Georgia where shortly after arriving I heard of a Christian Literature Distribution ministry that was one arm of a larger body known as Operation Mobilization that was located here in our town. My ears perked and my heart raced when I heard, “they sell really good Christian books at really good prices.” Sold. I made my way there. I met a man that day I found a little odd but we became and still are good friends. His name was Don who was clearly Dutch when he told me that his last name was “Veldboom.” I heard of George first from him. And I knew without asking the kind of influence that George had had on Don.

Don would call some months later to tell me that George would be in town and he wanted me to meet him. I asked if George might speak in our church. I met him. He was small physically, all over the map in his conversation, dressed in a jacket on which the map of the world covered front and back. He was as we say in the south, “nothing to look at,” and different in so many ways. I had read his personal history before he came, was eager to meet him, and was anticipating with genuine interest what he would say. What he said was not spectacular, no earth-shaking sermon with one exception: the One who formed and fashioned the earth had poured out His Spirit upon this man and into this man. It was so real and radical for me. I had never at that point been anywhere to do anything at all related to missions. I had no interest beyond giving money, offering prayers, and wondering why anybody with a good life here in the good ole USA would even dare to think about it. He was used of God to cause me to begin to think about it.

What made George so unique? What it was for me was simply that he could have acted as the special man he was as seen by others. He never did. He occupied a position of powerful influence, but to be around him would be never to know that simple fact. He walked in humility. Such humility that he was very open about the sins he battled and the struggles he faced. He was the epitome of what it means to be one who is pursuing holiness in the Lord, without which according to the writer of Hebrews no one will see the Lord. He was an extraordinarily anointed man of God who sought to live an ordinary life consumed by a passion for Jesus and an equal passion for those who needed Jesus. He trusted God fully. Until the end of this life. He is now home. His last video blog post was not about him, but about the need to reach the world with the Gospel until all have heard and have been given the opportunity to come to Jesus.

One more thing. This happened more than once, but I am going to end by telling you about one. I was going through a tough patch as a pastor. I showed up one Sunday morning at church not really wanting to be there. The phone rang. One of our men who had arrived before me answered. He turned to me and said, “some guy is on the phone and insists on talking to Pastor Al.” I took the phone, “Hello,” The response, “Hello Pastor Al, this is George. I was praying early this morning and God laid you on my heart with a heaviness so I called you just to pray for you for today,” and he prayed, wished me a good day and hung up. “Who was that?” my friend asked as he saw the tears in my eyes; “what’s wrong?” “Nothing,” I said; “it was George Verwer, but it sounded to me like the voice of Jesus.” That happened more than a few times. That is George. And that is how closely he walked with Jesus. He now walks with Him side by side. But I just wonder, from my times with George, if Jesus can even get a word in the conversation. I know the truth. He can, between the awe that George would sense in the majesty of the grace of God that would save a sinner like him. That is how he saw himself. He never got over the greatness and the grandeur of the grace of God in Jesus Christ that caused him to receive the gift of the daily indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. He lived every day “almost home.” He is now home. Praise be to God.