I have been running myself ragged the last few days - but my friend Lindsay & I were having fun thinking of how these past few days are like summer camp. You have a crazy schedule, but you just do it because it's camp.. and soon it will be over. :)
The past few days we've been driving over an hour to hear this brother, Paul Washer speak in this small church in the small town of Briar. I have been so blessed by Paul's teachings I got on Sermonindex.net and I have been so blessed, and even changed dramatically, by his teaching. These past few meetings have definetly been some of the best hours of teaching I have ever received... We leave right at 5:00 to drive - and we are usually finished by about midnight (after talking with him) - and get home at 1:30... I haven't cooked or cleaned in so long (it feels like) but all I want to do when I'm home is read the bible... It's just amazing.
Tracy (our friend & Lindsay's husband) has a pretty accurate account of our first messages on Sunday on his blog so I asked him if I could post his blog here:
What Brother Paul shared was a real blessing. The Sunday school hour was good, but the morning and evening messages really stuck with me. The Lord is faithful. He preached in the morning on Jeremiah 31:31-34 and 32:36-41. Praise God for His faithfulness!In the evening he preached on 1 Timothy 4:1-10, and it was also very good. And then a few of us sat around and talked with him for awhile after both services. A few things that stood out (paraphrased from memory):The horrible statistics you hear telling you the church is the same as the world are a lie. Those who are in the church are being conformed to the image of Christ. They are not continually carnal. The reason we think the church is just like the world is that we have a wrong idea of what the church is. Those who profess to be Christians and meet in a building are not the church. Not at all. The church is composed of those who been supernaturally regenerated by Almighty God. Every single one of them is being made more like Christ, becoming holy, being sanctified. Yes, there is sin at times, but if we are truly born again, the Lord will always lead us to repentance. Much of what we call the church is not the church. Similarly, the church is united. We speak of all the division and stuff in the church, but that is again because we have a wrong conception of the church. All who are truly born again have fellowship in Christ. Spiritual warfare is not primarily about angels and demons fighting each other in the air over our heads or casting demons out of our refrigerator. It is primarily about lies. Satan is the father of lies. And he tells lies and gets many to believe his lies. The truth is very, very important.
We must know God's Word so we can tell what is a lie. If you spend 3 hours in God's Word, and then turn your TV on and see one sensual image, you pretty much just canceled out all your time in the Word. You must turn away from the things God hates. If you have a half gallon of sewage, and start filling a container with clean water, that water will always be contaminated, no matter how much clean water you put in. First, you must clean the sewage out. Turn away from these things.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to be a real preacher? Do you have any idea how hard it is to know that night after night, city after city, country after country, many who hear your voice are not listening, and they will rot in hell? Listen to me! You will stand before God very, very soon and you must be prepared. Telling the story of how he came to share the message to the 5,000 Baptist youth in which he shared out of Matthew 7, he shared that it was a stadium event complete with dry ice and Harley Davidsons. The speaker was making crass jokes, etc... When he gave the altar call, 3,000 youth came forward. Brother Paul was scheduled to speak next. The leaders of the event came to him and said, "Get out here, this is a great move of God, we need you to counsel these young people." He responded, "I don't even belong in this building. This is an abomination." He felt like the Lord had given him a message (The Meaning of the Cross) and if he shared it hear, it would be his springboard to do many Baptist events everywhere. He wanted to share that message, but the Lord told him no, that he was to share out of Matthew 7 and what it really means to be saved, knowing he was finished with that group. He was. Youth leaders and everyone was angry. And yet our Father was pleased, and perhaps some were saved from deception and hell. He began the first message and repeated a couple times afterwards: "There are no great men of God; only weak, feeble, faithless men of a great and mighty God." Amen.
He was in much pain last night in his body, but stayed around talking with us until 10:30 PM. When he sees men, he sees them, and not through them. He took notice of people and shared God's Word with them. He challenged all of us to know God's Word, not superficially, but really. I was convicted. I have stopped memorizing the Bible. Such an important thing, and I have been lazy and not doing it. Towards the end, when we were getting ready to go, he came over to say bye to us, and saw Jude. He asked about him, talked a little, and began to pray for him. He prayed exactly what I desire for my son: "Not that this child will be brilliant or athletic or successful or even great, but that He will be yours; that he will do everything for Jesus." Amen. He then spoke to me at some length about family. I will try and relate the gist of it here:"Your greatest calling is to love your wife. Love her more than anything else, including your children. They need to know how you love your wife. You are commanded to lay down your life for your wife. Go in to the office early, so you can come home early. When you get home, the boys are yours. You take them, do everything for them, and let your wife rest. Spend time with your family. If I ever hear you say that you have to sacrifice your family for the ministry, I will slap you. That is a lie. God's will is perfect. You will never have to sacrifice one thing He has asked you to do in order to do another thing He has asked you to do. The greatest joy in my life is to be a husband and a father. When people ask what I do, I tell them I am a husband. When they ask again, I tell them I am a father. They get exasperated, and then I tell them what I do if I have any time left over."I have been blessed by this brother's life and teaching, and my brief interaction with him. I know he isn't perfect and I don't know him well, and yet the Spirit in me testifies that he is a man who knows the Lord, and I've been richly blessed. God is good.
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