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Now this is the part of the message I hate. You that
have listened for 15 years, you know I used to go
through this part real fast. I would quote Dr. Tozer:
“Christianity is a journey, not a destination.” I’d
point out how so much of Christianity aims toward that
one goal—come down to the altar, recite some little
routine speech, you’re safe, slap them on the back, and
send them out. That’s it—eternally secure! “Do
whatever you want! You’ve made it, man! You’ve paid a
one-time premium on your eternal insurance policy—you’re
in! Now get on out of here, till I make room for the
next one. You’re a scalp on my belt!”
The Pentecostals went a little further, and the Second
Definite Work of Grace people went further and they had
a second experience that people had—and when you got it,
man, you waved the rest of them on so that they could
get—and when you got it, you’re better than the rest and
you don’t have anything else to get. I’ve told you I
was a teenager in a Pentecostal Church background, going
to camp meetings madder than hell because the rest of
the kids ‘had it’ and were out playing football and they
were still trying to give it to me there in the sawdust
of the tent. I wanted not God so much, as to get this
thing over with so I could go play football.
Destinations! As Reinhold Niebuhr has said, the tragedy
of the Pentecostal experience and the Second Definite
Work of Grace people—the Nazarenes and those who have
understood there is an experience beyond the starting
point—is that the experience that should have produced a
greater degree of sinlessness became a vehicle for the
worst kind of sin: spiritual pride. And they just
camped there and waved everybody else on. There is no
stopping point. That’s why we are just starting anew
with this Ministry. Everything has been preparation.
Everything has been training. Everything was getting us
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ready to make the world our parish. Truly, as we take
on a new step of Faith, we recognize that we’re pilgrims
down here. We’re on a journey, and this verse,
consistent with that truth, says this blessed man, this
individual who’s separated from the crowd who has a
state of blessing on his life that never leaves, is on a
journey, constantly changing.
The next phrase says “Who passing through the valley of
Baca.” You know what baca means? Let me hear
it! Baca translates ‘weeping.’ Now it’s even
worse than what I said—not only constant change, the
life is that of someone on a journey in that change and
on that trip…. And I remind us this Easter 1991, as we
look forward to another year, part of the trip through
which the blessed man goes is the ‘valley of weeping.’
So often we let the illusion creep into Christianity
that if you’re really in God’s will you won’t have these
valleys of weeping. My Bible says blessed men, while in
the state of blessing, no qualities of which in the
blessing state are changing, go through valleys of
weeping.
I’m right where I was last Sunday when I preached from
Isaiah “Who is among you that feareth the
Lord,
obeyeth the voice of his servant, but walketh in
darkness, and hath no light?” I am tired of this
gingerbread religion that creates, I repeat, the
illusion that when you find yourself smack-dab in the
middle of a valley of weeping it means that you have
somehow forsaken God or God has forsaken you. Part of
the trip! Through the mid-week right now I’m preaching
or teaching on Exodus, that Old Testament congregation
that God led into the Wilderness, Deuteronomy says, to
see what was in their heart and to prove them. And
during this past week we’ve marched them from the
victory of the Red Sea where God had done everything.
All they had to do was “Stand still and see the
salvation of the
Lord.”
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