The Power of the Word: By Jerry Wragg

This was an excellent post by Jerry Wragg:

"Here's the bottom line---Preachers who regularly taste the grace of God's word in their personal sanctification (including failure and renewal) could never have so little trust in its power. These self-styled champions of relevance betray some level of personal weakness for which the solution has not been scripture, repentance, and a new holy zeal, but rather a re-casting of God's commands in more culture-friendly tones (which of course eases the tension or guilt they may have over stubborn sin-patterns in their own life).

The result is a new "church" environment where the lowest common spiritual character is deemed "normal" for believers (a clear violation of Phil. 3:17; 1 Cor. 4:16; 11:1; Eph. 5:1, etc.).

Anyone striving to "be holy [themselves] in all [their] behavior" (1 Pet.1:15) is quickly labeled "irrelevant", then marginalized because, after all, "no real Christian today can live like that"! And, who could argue with this thinking since every true believer feels the weight of failure, weakness, and stubborn sins? No one can claim to have “obtained it, or…become perfect”.

Yet, the sanctifying grace of God is found in a relentless pursuit of Christ's glory fully formed in us (Phil. 3:12-16). Paul clearly says to "keep following in line" in the standard of maturity we've already reached...then "press on" again.

The church growth movement, while filled with many sincere but undiscerning followers of Christ, is really a movement of those who are losing their resolve to biblically strive, and have adopted secular ideas about “normal” Christian morality. We could say that it’s not really a “growth” movement at all---It’s a “stunted growth” movement…an atrophied church…a group made up of numerous undiscerning bandwagonites, a fair amount of discouraged, withering saints, and a majority of moral unbelievers.

When we come along and speak of the power, sufficiency, and relevance of holy scripture…it is an increasingly strange sound in their ears!"

Preaching to the choir,