When did everything change?
It wasn't like it was a sudden thing where we suddenly woke up and we didn't recognize where we were or what was going on.
But when did change sneak in?
I was listening to some mp3's I had downloaded last night.
There were sermons from A.W. Tozer and Duncan Campbell.
Leonard Ravenhill and Vance Havner.
All through out the messages, I found a word kept coming up over and over.
They repeated it with great passion and fire as each man spoke the truth of God.
What word you may ask?
CONVICTION!
You don't really hear much from the pulpit or the television about conviction any more.
I even went and looked up the definition of conviction.
Webster's defines conviction as judgement or guilt against a criminal defendant.
That's pretty harsh language there especially when you tie it to a message being given in church.
Yet in John 16:8 we read these words:
And when he (The Holy Spirit) comes, he will CONVICT the world of its sin. and of God' righteousness, and the coming judgment.
When the Holy Spirit is sent (He came on the day of Pentecost- Acts Chapter 2), He will come with a mission. His first work will be to convict the world. Using the definition of Conviction...that means the Holy Spirit will come to reveal to man kind the judgment or guilt that they stand under. In other words, the Holy Spirit will open our spiritual eyes and ears up to the fact we are condemned. We carry around a sentence of death, that being the 2nd death or eternal separation from God. The Holy Spirit's purpose is to make us aware of our need of being saved.
Today it seems that the church merely wants to woo people in and not offend them or hurt their feelings and hope that they have some sort of experience with God. It's like the church wants to set the stage and make everything comfortable where people can come and meet God. None of that "Fire on the Mountain, thunder and lightning, God is in the house stuff". When in reality, the only way people can truly be brought into awareness of God is through the work of the Holy Spirit.
Coming to God is not a mental exercise.
Coming to God is not a choice made by a heart that is not broken.
Coming to God is not an appeal to the flesh to turn....
Coming to God is a direct movement as a result of being broken by the Holy Spirit.
Broken by realizing that without God you are doomed.
Broken by realizing that without God you are destined to Hell. Hell is your reward for a life live in rejection of God.
"Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of God!"
God's favor rests on those who look within themselves and find nothing by emptiness and loneliness. Coming to the realization that they are spiritually bankrupt and in poverty. When you reach that point, the Holy Spirit will direct your heart to the glorious truth that now, for spiritual poverty, you can enter in and possess the Kingdom of God's rule. That your life can be lifted from the ash heap of humanity and seated in the heavens with Jesus Christ.
Conviction! What a beautiful word.
May conviction fall upon the church of Jesus Christ.
May conviction fall hard and heavy and the aisles run wet with the tears of those who are broken, crying out, "What must I do to be saved!"
Let it be so Lord...
God on you....
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