Ritual Observances, External Morality, Emotional Experiences...

So many people (both inside the visible church and outside) are confused about what Christianity is.  This is so helpful in clarifying things for so many:

What does the Lord require of you?
 To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:8

Simplicity and comprehensiveness mark the requirements of my God. He can abbreviate His demands into the fewest words; but they are words which embrace . . .
  the inward and outward,
  the present and future,
  the earthly and the heavenly.

I may fall into serious error regarding His will for me:

It is not a religion of ritual observances which He requires. How easily I attach an undue importance to ceremonies and forms, rites and penances and fasts!

Nor does He solicit primarily a religion of external moralities. God looks on my heart.

Nor is it a religion of emotions of which He is in quest. I must not put excitement and tears, in the place of saving grace and childlike obedience.

But see, my soul, God asks us to act justly. I cannot be His, unless I do justly. Everything that takes an improper advantage of another, and all that departs from the straightest line of absolute rectitude--I must hate and abjure. It is a demand which pierces deeper than it seems. For the integrity of conduct He desires--is the outcome only of a conscience He has quickened, and a will He has bent into submission to His law. The ethics of the Gospel are preceded and rendered possible, by the redemption and regeneration of the Gospel.

And God asks tenderness. He counsels me to love mercy. The world is full of sorrow, and I am to move through it as a good physician, befriending and uplifting those in need.

It is what He does Himself. Every glorious quality has its fountain in Him--but pre-eminently the quality of mercy. He is the great Forgiver and the great Helper--no earthly father loves like Him, and no mother is half so mild. So my feeble torch is but kindled at His altar. My charities and philanthropies must be learned in His school, who pardons my ten thousand transgressions!

And God asks humility. He commands me to lay my hand in His, and to walk humbly in His company. 

Nothing is so essential as poverty of spirit. It is the source and spring from which alone runs the fertilizing river of a holy life. The humble heart is where the flowers of Heaven find their congenial soil, and grow into beauty and fragrance.

 I only begin to be a disciple, when my proud heart is brought low--and my Savior is lifted high.

Now, my Father, if these are to be the features of my soul--then it is manifest that none but You can create them, and can nurture them, and can lead them to their perfection. Do the work Lord, and have the glory!

   ~  ~  ~  ~ 

(Alexander Smellie, "On the Secret Place" 1907)

"...sensed that God was saying to him, “Preach on, great preacher, without me.”

“Preach on, great preacher, without me.”

The task of true biblical preaching is not essentially intellectual or psychological or rhetorical; it is essentially spiritual. I have followed the preaching ministry of more men than I can count and have discovered that many fall into a great trap. I was truly blessed to discover that my concerns are shared with many others and have been so wonderfully articulated in this excerpt from "What is Biblical Preaching" by Eric J. Alexander, P&R, 2008:

"Left to ourselves, we may do many things with a congregation. We may move them emotionally. We may attract them to ourselves personally, producing great loyalty. We may persuade them intellectually. We may educate them in a broad spectrum of Christian truth. But the one thing we can never do, left to ourselves, is to regenerate them spiritually and change them into the image of Jesus Christ, to bear his moral glory in their character. While that is the great calling of the church of Christ, it is essentially God’s work and not ours.

So it is possible to be homiletically brilliant, verbally fluent, theologically profound, biblically accurate and orthodox, and spiritually useless. That frightens me. I hope it frightens you, too. I think it is of this that Paul is speaking when he says, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow” (I Cor. 3:6-7). It is very possible for us to be deeply concerned about homiletical ability and fluency and theological profundity and biblical orthodoxy, but to know nothing of the life – giving power of God with the burning anointing of the Holy Spirit upon our ministry. Campbell Morgan (Lloyd-Jones’s predecessor at the Westminster Chapel) divulged that at one crucial stage in his ministry he was in precisely this position, and sensed that God was saying to him, “Preach on, great preacher, without me.” Alan Redpath used to say that the most penetrating question you could ask about any church situation was, “What is happening in this place that cannot be explained in merely human terms?”

So there is a world of difference between true biblical preaching and an academic lecture or a rhetorical performance. We are utterly dependent on the grace and power of the Holy Spirit. Thank God, he uses the weak things of this world to confound the mighty, and the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are (1 Cor. 1 :2,8). This is why it is absolutely essential to marry prayer to the ministry of the Word. In our ministries prayer is not supplemental; it is fundamental. Of course we subscribe to the principal that “this work is God’s work, not ours.” We subscribe to that because we are biblical Evangelicals, but the logical corollary of that statement is that prayer is a fundamental issue in the ministry of the Word, as in every part of our labor, and not, as we tend to make it, a supplemental matter."

Living in the Presence of Christ

I am convinced that the one thing needed that would mortify sinful behavior in the life of a true believer is the acknowledging of the reality of the presence of Christ at all times.  You say, "That is not possible".  I say, that it is.  And it is much easier to think upon Him and His presence with us by His spirit than to resolve to practice all the other behavior modification techniques that most Christian counselors advise.  When tempted, acknowledge His presence with you; and,  I tell you, that alone will squelch any and all desires to act upon the temptation.  The truth is--You are never alone, whether you acknowledge it or not.

When David Livingstone returned to England for a brief visit towards the end of his life, he was honored by Queen Victoria. The cities and universities held him in high esteem. During his short stay he was asked to address the students at Cambridge University. Very simply and very quietly he said to those students: “Gentlemen, shall I tell you what it was that kept me true to my resolve through all those years in the Dark Continent of Africa? It was the words of a Gentlemen: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.' " David Livingstone was never alone!

Charles Hadden Spurgeon, great English preacher of past years, once gave a remarkable testimony that throws light upon the truth I am trying to get across. Quoting Spurgeon when he said: “I cannot recollect fifteen minutes when I was not conscious of the presence of Christ.” Charles Spurgeon was never alone!

My husband recently was blessed with the opportunity to preach at our local church.  The title of his sermon was, "Living in the Presence of Christ".  How we all need to hear this truth, over and over again, until we actually believe it and live in it.  You can listen to it here:

http://www.sermonaudio.com/search.asp?SpeakerOnly=true&currSection=sermonsspeaker&keyword=Michael%5EWood