The Journey continues.

John MacArthur's teaching voice delivered on my small kitchen radio with a more than implied imperative energy, louder than was comfortable, mixed with my mornings while cajoling my little girls into their chosen dress code for pre-school, get them to eat and leave  ... so I could get ready to go to work and ... I burned the toast alotalot.

It pained me that his talks were on so early. I missed most of it even though the radio was louder than comfortable.  It irked my family, but I would not, could not turn it down. My family still remembers him.  Sadly none of us remember what he said, exactly, only that it was, for me, imperative.

If we had listened properly to John MacArthur we would not have gone where we have gone, not could we have been misled. The royal We, that is. We would not have become disenchanted with the church and left it, eventually, knowing that something was wrong, but quite vague about what.

Many of us not only left the church, but left our faith in Jesus Christ at the doors of those churches.

Many young kids I know went along to charismatic churches.  Their lives were less than ideal and they hoped to find Jesus and angels there to help them cope.  After a season with no fruits of this promise they reasoned that the Jesus stuff was a lot like Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny.  They walked away. Perhaps forever.  And it is this phenomena that John MacArthur addresses.

You can't sugar coat the word of G-d, pretend that the Word means this or that, when it clearly doesn't.  All that accomplishes is that it leaves the young and the young in Christ confused and disenchanted.  

You choose Christ, since they tell you this is the only way to be "saved" (from the fires of hell, no less) and they say that if you get baptised, wallah-bang-boom, you are in the Kingdom, sanctified, saved and delivered, and destined to be lifted up at the rapture, which everyone looks forward to.

Now, here's the thing.  I have met, personally, and know these people well, only these few would be in the running, on the short list, for rapturing, as far as I can judge.  And I am not judging.  My cake is small and one assumes that there are many more that I don't know equally in the same spiritual zone of my few friends.

A Man, back in the seventies, dying of cancer, was miraculously healed in a charismatic church. He not only accepted his healing, but his whole life changed.  He lived in the Word daily.  His family joined him in the work of a truly saved man.  God's work. He not only had no more cancer after being at death's door, but became so involved in the ministry that every time you went to his house there they all were, siting in a circle, noses in the bible.

I was an ardent atheist at the time.  It seemed bizarre to me.  There are other books! I thought.

A special young lady I have known for a few years is another.  No major miracles required. She just is completely devoted to the Word and lives by it and in it.  Her church is the centre of her existence and there isn't a day that I can say she let go of G-d's hand for a minute, troubles and all. And though one may say, as some do, that the church befuddles the mind and and and, her soul is pure and her heart so good that even the most cynical among us recognise that she is one of those precious souls that means it, lives it, and nothing is going to shake her off this path.

Another I have known most of my life, even though I haven't kept in touch over the years, is another.  Also no great visible miracles, no getting up from death beds, but certainly facing a few obstacles, as we all do, has the countenance, as do the aforementioned, that is aglow with inner peace and exudes a joy that is not of this world.  He's so real in his belief that he makes me cry regularly.

Even some serious preachers/teachers I have met have not manifested this glow.

If one's life doesn't change dramatically and one isn't glowing with peace, love and understanding, and one isn't demonstrating the joy of one's conversion, one's sanctification, and one is still doing things that do not conform to what the bible calls a new creation, then one hasn't got it.  Not to say one cannot get it, but one hasn't, yet, got it.

One may have a form of G-dliness, but that is all.  Dipping one's head into the rivers of baptism and accepting Christ as one's personal saviour, attending services and doing good stuff doesn't quite cut it; if there is no visible change, a change that is perceptible to the heathens, such as I was when I met these holy souls, then one is still a wannabe.

"Fake it till you make it," was the advice I was given when I had gone through the motions with a willing heart and all, I wasn't feeling the glow that I have witnessed in others who were, to my mind, born again.   If that is the right word.

I am still not glowing with that knowing that comes from supernatural baptism.  Faking it doesn't help me a bit.  I want it all.

The Holy Spirit is with me. Angels are with me.  But I have a very clear sense of not being rapture ready.  I fear I shall be left behind.

I shall be left behind, perhaps, not because of my sins, but because I haven't reached the point, like the first of my glowing friends, when everything I do is inspired by The Word.   The easy-peasy offer isn't doing it.  I think John MacArthur's teaching is more likely to move one into alignment.

John MacArthur doesn't apologise for the Word or sugar coat it for the not so strong, not so committed, not so willing to forsake things that are untoward in world. The word is what it is. Take it or leave.

Heaven forbid Christ should come and he should say to me, "I never knew you."

And, although I pray without ceasing, have seen miracles and angels, have done good works and been kind and and and, I still have to bathe in the Word and get to the moment when the Holy Spirit descends on me with a tangible fire which will change me forever.  Forever does seem to be the effect of the baptism of fire.

Reminding you all that this blog is a document of a journey to Newness.  

I have found a church that I didn't feel the urgency to run from.  John MacArthur is all over the tube if anyone is interested.

The journey continues.

Love and Blessings, My lovelies.