Radical Disciples – A Remnant Revolution

Hebrews 12:8 If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons.

I was thinking about the cheerleader Gospel messages I have witnessed both recently and over the years. You know the rah, rah, rah stuff that pumps people up for a little while, then at the end when they look up at the score board, the hyped up emotional state comes crashing down. I was thinking about this morning and was reminded of an ole Dick Van Dyke show where he boxed with a real boxer. His corner pumped him up to believe he could really win with no training and he went out and gave it all he had and wham, knocked out cold.

I see many preachers out there and other cheerleaders who believe that by simply giving people a cheer-leader message they will now be set to live a victorious life. Yet as I watch, these preacher fall left and right, and the other messengers lives roll on a roller coaster that has so many twist and turns one would get sick just watching it. Now, when I look at the teaching’s of Paul, Peter, John and James and there is no rah, rah messages. Messages such as:

Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.” (1 Cor 6:13-14)

“Be patient and stand firm” (James 5:8)

Stand against him, therefore, being firm in your faith, and know also that sufferings come against your brethren who are in the world. (1 Peter 5:9)

Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father. And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life. “ (1 John 2:24-25)

Jesus never gave such messages.

“All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.” (Matt 10:22)……”But the person who endures to the end will be saved” (Matt 24:13)………I do not think Jesus was talking about hanging His name over our door post and living like the world here. In fact He prophesied exactly what we are dealing with in this day right before verse 24:13 – “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold,” (Matt 24:12)

No where in the teaching of the Lord will a disciples find the right to compromise with the world…So this means most are half heatedly following the Way of the Master……So what “man made gospel” does one believe in order to live a life of compromise? I said Jesus was Lord so I am now saved? Or what Jesus taught…he who endures….he who obeys all my commands…?

Of course the nay sayers, those who believe in a Kingdom with out laws will cry out “legalism” yet what of the author of Romans statement where he writes…”“ To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:” (Rom 2:27)

Doing right, obeying the gospel of Jesus Christ and His commandments has nothing to do with ” legalism.”

You will find that there is much criticism against followers of Jesus who try to please Him within evangelical preaching these days, using the term “ legalism “ against these followers of Jesus who try to obey Jesus’ commands as a copout excuse for condoning living in sin in their own life and in others, while following Jesus Christ.

Now I look back at the men God put in my life when I was younger, men who have weathered the storms of life, weathered to onslaught of doctrines and have stood strong, not wavering in their faith. These men have not wavered and been tossed to and fro with every “new teaching” that has come out. I am reminded of the disciples of the first Church, men and women who were battle hardened and would lay down their lives before they would deny the Lord.

I fear that today we have but house filled with illegitimate children, foster children who have come into the Church with their worldly ways and rather than submit to the order of the House, they have sought ( and successfully in many ways) to right new house rules. What we have ended up with is a batch of dough that have been filled to the core with worldly leaven.

“”Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold,”

Now, one can look at gunpowder and think that it is ugly in it’s blackened form. And believing such one decides to pretty it up and add some color so they mix in some colored baby powder. At first they add a little and the powder still has it power, but over time, as they add a little here and a little there, the gun powder looses its power and before long it is completely powerless. That awesome powder in it’s natural state could send a canon ball ½ mile, yet now it can barely get a B.B. to roll out of its barrel.

And now you have a picture of what the watered down gospel message that has been a defiling, ugly leaven in the Church has produced. A people who long to see the power of God, yet have never learned the process of a disciplined life which renders the Heaven to release such power. Like the fast-food generation we live in, they desire short-cuts and instantaneous results or they will move onto to the next big thing.

The good news is that it is not too late…there is still time to repent, fall upon our faces and turn whole hearted to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us raise up true disciples of Jesus, those who surrender to His Will and follow His teachings and not those of men that we might rid the house of God of false teachers and illegitimate sons and daughters and at the same time not be found as such ourselves.

~Russ Welch