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Repent
and Do The Things You Did At First
Part 3 of a 3 part
series
by Major Howard Webber
William
Booth said, “I do not want another ecclesiastical corps
cumbering the earth. When The Salvation Army ceases to be a
militant body of red hot men and women whose business is the
saving of souls, I hope it will vanish utterly.” What a word!
A message for the Army today
The Founder’s words
reflect Christ’s message to the Church at Ephesus in Revelation. It is a timeless
message – a message for today’s Salvation Army:
“I know your deeds, your
hard work and your
perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men…You
have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and
have not grown weary.
Yet this
I hold against you: You have forsaken your first love.
Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do
the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come
to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” (Revelation
2:2-5)
What has been lost
Has
our movement’s erosion over the past decades been God
gradually removing our lampstand from where he once placed it?
Certainly we work hard and are doing much that Christ would
commend, but we are not doing what once we did. We may well
have acknowledged the height from which we have fallen, yet
tragically, so much of our response to that knowledge has been
about saving ourselves from extinction, restoring our numbers,
climbing back.
Over
twenty years of church growth principles, conferences and
councils, seminars and studies has done little to stop our
terminal decline. None of these things will save us. None of
these things will end the drought, the all-consuming locust or
the plague that threatens to destroy us. God alone can save
us, but we have yet to reach the point of utter helplessness
and humility where we acknowledge that God and God alone can
save us.
“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or
command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my
people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble
themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their
wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their
sin and will heal their land.” 2 Chron 7: 13-15
We have
yet to be troubled enough, anxious enough, burdened enough to
pray as we ought. Our prayers have yet to reach an intensity,
a passion, a fervency, where:
-
we
ache for God and what he desires;
-
we
see the lost as he sees them;
-
we
ache for the lost with the longing he has; and
-
we
get rid of everything that gets in the way of our hunger
after him and our longing after them.
Send the fire
Fire came
down supernaturally upon Moses’ offering Lev 9:24, David’s
offering 1 Chron 21:26, Solomon’s offering 2 Chron 7:1,
Elijah’s offering, 1 Kings 18:38. It was fire coming down
supernaturally from heaven in the self-same way that ‘lit up’
those early day apostles (Acts 2: 3-4), and has revived God’s
people and refocused their attention and energies on the
eternal issues, and drawn countless masses to Christ and his
cross through the ages since.
‘Tis fire we want, ‘tis
fire we need, send the fire.’ SASB 203; we readily sing it,
but is it true? How much do we want God’s Holy Spirit power?
We have yet to reach the desperation and despair of men like
John Knox who wept before the Lord, “Give me
Scotland
or I die.”
What we need from God is
his burden for the lost. Listen to
St Paul, “I have great sorrow and
unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself
were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my
brothers, those of my own race.” (Romans 9: 2-3). It isn’t
about being an evangelist, but rather, having a burden that
causes us to plead and pray relentlessly to God to do
something until he does, with the attitude, “If sinners be
damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. If
they perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees.
Let no one go there unwarned and unprayed for.” Charles H
Spurgeon.
Where, today, are there
people anxious for the lost, weeping for the lost, pleading
for the lost? Who
truly cares?
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