“Come to the throne of grace in order to receive mercy and find grace” we are told (Hebrews 4:16). What it doesn’t say, but is self evident, is that if you want to find grace, you must first seek it! This is the reason that Christianity today does not receive grace and has no power or witness to the world; it is not seeking true grace but religious comfort based upon the doctrines of men, because to find grace you must first surrender to the Lord of all grace, the Lord Jesus Christ; but Christianity today stands apart from Christ, refusing to yield to His demands.
This is the pattern revealed in the Holy Scriptures; God prospers a faithful people or nation; in their prosperity they become arrogant and forgetful of God and His blessings; they stand apart from Him and in their apostasy they decline and perish. This is what happened to the Jews; they were God’s “chosen people” and what they were chosen for was to reveal God’s ways to the world. The Church, comprising Jews and gentiles, is the vessel chosen by God to undertake the same work of demonstrating God’s ways to the world in the era of the New Covenant. Whenever and wherever they have done this, the Church has flourished and the nation prospered. But alas, Christianity has followed the path of apostasy, as did Judaism, and thus, the nations once raised up in the name of Christ are in decline. We see this happening in Australia today as the witness of the True Light goes out and the light within God’s people degenerates into darkness. As Jesus said; “If the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:23).
Christianity today is powerless because it is disobedient; it is only complete submission to Christ that can release the husbandly blessings upon those who comprise His bride; it is submission that releases the blessings of true union; so the New Testament teaches.
Within powerless Christianity, there are those few who hear His voice and obey Him; the evidence of their faith is their faithfulness to Him and His Word; they are the true Church, made up of those of the true Body and the true Bride.
But what hinders the receiving of grace and the filling of the Spirit for which so many Christians hunger in vain are the “self sins” – self assurance, self esteem, self indulgence, self righteousness, self justification, self ambition etc. The fact is that we must first empty ourselves of these self sins before we can be filled. The old man cannot be improved; he must be crucified. This is the best kept secret in Christianity!
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