Revitalize Your Church

Morning glory, starlit sky, soaring music, scholar’s truth, flight of swallows, autumn leaves, memory’s treasure, grace of youth: Open are the gifts of God, gifts of love to mind and sense; hidden is love’s agony, love’s endeavor, love’s expense. Love that gives, gives ever more, gives with zeal, with eager hands, spares not, keeps not, all out-pours, ventures all its all expends. Drained is love in making full, bound in setting others free, poor in making many rich, weak in giving power to be. Therefore he who shows us God helpless hangs upon the tree; and the nails and crown of thorns tell of what God’s love must be. Here is God: no monarch he, throned in easy state to reign; here is God, whose arms of love aching, spent, the world sustain. (W. H. Vanstone)

29 years ago today, God did a beautiful work in my heart that changed my life.  I call this turning point my "Sanctuary Experience".  Allow me to share a chapter from my book, Purple Fish, which tells the story: Something was missing. I was a professional Christian, raised in a parsonage, went to church three times a week, spent summers at camp, attended a Christian college, married a Christian girl, graduated from seminary, and landed a youth pastor job; but my spiritual life fell woefully short. There’s a big difference between serving God and loving him. I was dry and lukewarm with exterior religion: self-serving at the core with an outer glaze of holiness. Though attempting to cover my soul anemia through busy church activity, Isaiah’s lament echoed in my honest moments. “My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me!” (Isa. 24:16 kjv). I was one of those rule-bound Christians who had just enough religion to make myself respectable and miserable. I actually got away with h...

Father in heaven! You have loved us first, help us never to forget that You are love so that this sure conviction might triumph in our hearts over the seduction of the world, over the inquietude of the soul, over the anxiety for the future, over the fright of the past, over the distress of the moment. But grant also that this conviction might discipline our soul so that our heart might remain faithful and sincere in the love which we bear to all those whom You have commanded us to love as we love ourselves. You have loved us first, O God, alas! We speak of it in terms of history as if You have only loved us first but a single time, rather than that without ceasing You have loved us first many times and every day and our whole life through. When we wake up in the morning and turn our soul toward You – You are the first – You have loved us first; if I rise at dawn and at the same second turn my soul toward You in prayer, You are there ahead of me, You have loved me first. When...

God is love—love lived out through the power of the Holy Spirit in a community of gifted individuals playing one musical piece in different parts, a holy symphony.   Holiness is life lived by people in the fullness of the Holy Spirit who are empowered to offer a drastic alternative to the world around them. Love is the melody running through the community, underneath the community, and all around the community.   The Christian community is not a place of jarring instruments singing different songs, or a place of gossip, conflict, rejection, pain, strife, and hatred. It is a place where the Spirit’s fruit is present in abundance, so much so that the world around the Christian community can’t help but join the melody. It is a community that is so unified, so melodious, so beautiful that it stops others in their tracks. Those on the outside can’t help but peer in, and watch with awe and wonder, and notice the unity of the symphony.   Instead of...

"We are not called primarily to create new structures for the church in this age; we are not called primarily to a program of service, or to dream dreams or have visions. We are called first of all to belong to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord , and to keep our lives warmed at the hearth of His life. It is there the fire will be lit which will create new structures and programs of service that will draw others into the circle to dream dreams and have visions."   -- Elizabeth O'Connor

Wesleyan Publishing House recently reprinted the works of  Samuel Brengle, the great Salvation  Army leader and holiness evangelist.  Brengle's writings have inspired and impacted greatly me since my teenage years when my youth  camp counselor, Larry introduced them to me.  My prayer is that this new publication of holiness classics will bring this beautiful message to today's  generation -- as it did so powerfully in years past.  This excerpt from the Introduction to Helps to Holiness , which describes when Samuel Brengle experienced the fullness of the Holy Spirit, resonates deeply with my heart:   He gave me such a blessing as I never had dreamed a man could have this side of heaven: a            heaven  of love in my heart.  I walked out over Boston Common before breakfast weeping for joy and  praising God.  Oh, how I loved!  In that hour I knew Jesus and loved Him till it seem...

A tattered book on my library shelf, Deeper Experiences of Famous Christians , by James Gilchrist Lawson, has been a tremendous blessing and spiritual benefit to me down through the years.  The stories of these godly men and women from the past inspire me to plunge in to the deep end of the prayer pool -- and live in the overflow of holy love. A digital copy is available here for free.

A beautiful thought expressed by 18th Century Methodist leader, John Fletcher, in a letter to his dear friend, Charles Wesley: "I have the impression that we can never have too much compassion for sinners, nor overemphasize for them the love of Jesus, when he himself became incarnate and declared redemption and salvation to tax gatherers and evildoers.  I have also the impression that faith shows itself gradually in many hearts, and that it is our task to nourish the weakest spark, the faintest signs."    ( Reluctant Saint , Patrick Streiff, p. 82)

"I walked out over Boston Common before breakfast, weeping for joy and praising God. Oh, how I loved! In that hour I knew Jesus, and I loved Him till it seemed my heart would break with love. I was filled with love for all His creatures. I heard the little sparrows chattering; I loved them. I saw a little worm wriggling across my path; I stepped over it; I didn’t want to hurt any living thing. I loved the dogs, I loved the horses, I loved the little urchins on the street, I loved the strangers who hurried past me, I loved the heathen, I loved the whole world."    --  Samuel Brengle, Salvation Army leader and evangelist, sharing about his personal immersion in Holy Love  

Uncle Buddy Robinson, the great Nazarene evangelist from the early 20th Century, was a man who walked in holy love.  Once, according to Robinson's friend C H Jack Linn, an angry man attacked him terribly for something he said in a sermon: "When the man was finished with his cursing and swearing and abuse, Bud said, 'Will you go home to dinner with me?'  'What?' the man cried, 'would you invite a man who has insulted you home to dinner?'  'Oh, did you insult me?' Bud replied. Uncle Buddy was practicing what he preached.   "A sanctified man has a shining face, an easy conscience, and a light heart, and is as bold as a lion, as patient as an ox, as swift as an eagle, as wise as a serpent, as harmless as a dove, as gentle as a lamb, and as sweet as honey.  If you were to slap his jaw you would get honey all over your hand, and as you walked away you will feel something sticky on your hand.  Lick it off and get under conviction, and come b...