The Greatest Blessing (Material or Immaterial)
The greatest blessing anywhere is to be brought into God’s presence by the blood of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:13) and to learn to live in the new and living way of continually experiencing and testifying to His presence and power in your day-to-day life. (Hebrews 10:19-25)
Reading the material Bible with an open and surrendered heart while experiencing the immaterial presence of Christ in you (Colossians 1:27) go together. What God has joined together refuse to separate.
Daily absorb the Bible with your heart (Joshua 1:8) as you unceasingly (1 Thessalonians 5:16-17) taste and see that God is good. (Psalm 34:8)) Scripture and God-experiences work together to transform and empower your life. It’s not enough to merely learn information about Jesus, “the light of the world.” (John 8:12) You need to learn to let Him continually shine in your heart. (2 Corinthians 4:6)
God can change the hole
Deep within your soul
Into His fountain
Of living water.
Learn to let Him flow.
Let Him make you whole.
(John 7:38-39)
Step out of the Sunday audience and into the Spirit-led body of Christ. (1 Corinthians 14:26) Make church a circle, not a stage — no spectators, only disciples.
You may not believe it, but I like preaching when it is done in the power and presence of God’s Spirit. My two favorite preachers in my lifetime are Leonard Ravenhill and David Wilkerson. They preached with boldness, passion, and power.
I don’t like dead preaching that has little or no power to supernaturally transform people’s lives and to demonstrate the presence and reality of the risen Jesus. I think one of the greatest sins is to bore people with the amazing truths of the Bible. The dazed look that people have and the nodding off that they do in Sunday sermons show that boring people with God’s good news is far too common!
I like preaching the way Jesus commanded. He wants all of His born again (John 3:3) followers to “Go and preach the Gospel.” (Mark 16:15) I don’t like preaching where the same person preaches to the same people week after week. If the people don’t wake up and go after Jesus after several sermons, it’s time to go and find other listeners. Go preach. Don’t stay and bore the same people over and over.
Don’t make people dependent on you and your preaching. Train them to go preach to the people that they encounter throughout the week. Jesus says: “Go preach.” The best way to train people to go preach is to free them up in church to listen to God’s Spirit and then say what he prompts them to say. As people are experiencing God speaking in and through them in the congregation, they gradually grow the confidence to “go preach” and testify to the people they encounter in their daily life.
