Our Present Needs Part 2: The Need for Increased Persevering Faith...

...of Scripture as the Word of God.

Iaian Murry says: "It used to be simple in church. You had a minister, a few deacons, a simple service, and it changed the world. Today we have "ministers of this or staff of that" and we have all this apparatus on Sundays and to what effect? All the apparatus is to make up for a lack of confidence in the Scriptures."

This is the best-kept secret of a successful and fulfilling ministry. I can't tell you how revolutionary it was for me to not simply recite that the gospel is "the power of God for salvation" (Romans 1:16) and that "neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth" (1 Cor. 3:7) but to have faith that these things are true.

....in the Goodness of God. God is friendly minded and our spiritual happiness depends on our understanding this. We must be burdened with a sense of God's goodness. This is a recovery of orthodox faith.

We need to have faith in these things- and there is a difference between knowledge and faith.

I "knew" that these things were true, but my faith in them was severely lacking. Why? Because while I knew what the Scriptures said, I had faith that what the church growth books said must be true because they were written from "experience in today's world." There was sense in which I thought, "well, in an ideal world, it would work like the Bible says, but the reality is...." I would never have articulated it like that or even admitted that is how I felt, but I must confess that my heart said otherwise.

One of my problems was that I "studied" but I didn't "meditate" on these things.

We must meditate on these truths. Don't just inform yourself, meditate upon them, seek to have faith in them.

"Study is like the winter sun. It shines brightly but it does not warm you. Meditation is like a burning fire." - Martin

M.Lloyd Jones used to tell his interns that they studied like "grammaphones of the Puritans." In other words, they repeated the truth but there was no fire.

That is all too often the truth. I don't want to be a record (or Ipod for you youngsters), I want to be a preacher on fire with the truth of God's Word, trusting in Him for all things good. "Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God." Wow, far from being depressing, this is a glorious truth that enables me to rest in God's plans and not fret over mine.