Built by the Whole Counsel of God

A church built on only the message of God’s love and grace will not produce spiritual growth and development in their people. A steady diet of messages of God’s love and grace will and can only produces babes in God who have no understanding of how God works in their lives.

I have seen this for years in churches all over the world. Their understandings of God’s ways are strange and foreign and thus they reject God and His ways with no desire for spiritual growth. Aversion to pain and suffering is the number one obstacle to spiritual growth in our lives. It hurts when God begins to work in our lives. The message of only love and grace rejects the pain God brings to our understanding and the need for God to be able to judge us in areas that need Him to shine His holy light. To really be saved, I feel we must be brought to an awareness to what sin has wrought in our lives and the world. And, for this to happen we must be devastated. Saying the sinner’s prayer is not enough. The church is full of people who have never really been saved, because of the sinner’s prayer. Understanding the damage that sin does in our lives, will kill us, but that is okay this God’s plan too.

There must be a desire built in us for the things of God or we will never possess them. God must be able to work in our lives beyond our emotions and feelings. My friend, it is in troubles, great adversaries, and difficulties our hearts are settled allowing conviction, endurance, and perseverance, “. . . as a good soldier (sailor for me) of Jesus Christ.” (2 Timothy 2:3), to be developed in us. This is why there is no dedication or commitment to the house of God and His people in most churches in America . The message and thinking is: no matter what I do or say, God loves me (this is true), He will forgive me (and this also is true), and there is no consequences for my words and actions (now this is not true). True salvation comes from our awareness for our need for God and repentance, turning from our sin. As wonderful as it is, just loving God and Him loving us will not do it without repentance. The message of only love and grace will not build in us a place to hold God’s glory and character. These are built in us as we experience loss to our selfish desires, motives and intentions that are not of God. And as we endure His refining fire and as our infirmities are pruned there is built within us a place to behold God’s glory. And if we can allow this to happen there will be a “place by Him” (Exodus33:21) we can stand, a place where we are established out from a steadfast heart, a place where God can build in us His character and nature. This, my friend, reflects one that is functioning and operating in God out from an established heart in spite of adversities and sorrows in their lives. When troubles arise, those being raised on messages of only God’s love and grace, cannot stand because they do not have the strength that is worked in them from the whole counsel of God (please see Luke 7:30, Acts 2:21, especially Acts 20:27, and Hebrews 6:17) to lean on. The counsel of God is (Strong’s #1012 to #1014) to have a deliberate purpose, to be mindful, or a willing affection or desire to endure pain and suffering to see something come to pass. It is a total message that lacks nothing; which enables the hearer to come to completion or reach their purpose. It is comprised with all of God’s nature and character and not just His love and grace. God’s wisdom, His mercy, His judgment, His wrath, His longsuffering, and so much more. Oh my friend please do not misunderstand me. I know the elements of love and grace is critical to the wonderful message of the Gospel of our precious Savior Jesus Christ, but one part of the total message is not greater then another, and no part of the message must be sacrificed over another. It must be the death, burial, and resurrection of the cross of Christ for it to be the message of the cross, the glorious Gospel. It must be the whole counsel of God and not just love and grace. God’s judgment and wrath must be apart of the message as His love and grace is. If not, maturity will not happen in a Believer’s life and they will continue to stumble and fall out of the way God has for them.

Now my message which is the message of the cross, ( “For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. 18For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:17-18)), does not provide me many speaking opportunities in the United States, it is not the message the church in the United States wants to hear, but the message of the cross does extremely well outside the borders. And why, the church outside America knows the truth. The church, outside the shorelines of America , is really serious about the word of God for they use it daily to survive. They cannot afford to play around at church for their very life often is on the line. That is okay with me if my message is not received by the masses, why even the message of Jesus, the disciples, and so many other godly men through the ages have had their message ignored and shunned. That is okay with me for I am not trying to please you, but God; “For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10)

We must come to a place in God were we desire to grow spiritually. This is a willful choice we must make. I have many Christian friends who have no desire for the deeper things of God, for the whole counsel of God. They attend church, sing songs, even pay tithes, and then go home feeling good, but never once allowing the Holy Spirit to reach deep into their heart (a call deep unto deep, Psalms 42:7) and touch their inner man. We must willfully choose to separate ourselves from the world and its ways, and from the desires and affections of this world. Paul teaches us, “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. 13For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. 14But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.” (Hebrews 5:12-14) All of Paul’s letters to the churches he wrote and visited had a central theme, a critical need for spiritual growth and development. For this to happen God must be allowed to reveal our innermost thoughts and our heart condition to us. I am always amazed this theme is so easily over looked, but when you think about it we really do not want God to show us our heart as it really is. We do not want God to reveal how much we are not like Jesus Christ. After all it is easier to work for God then to become like Him.

We will never grow spiritually if we are built on music, church activities, and programs that do not have direct application to the Gospel message. Pew after pew is dotted with hymnals now collecting dust. Why, because most churches have gone to a worldly, contemporary, self-seeking beat that stirs our emotions and feelings. Gone are the traditional hymns that the church was built and founded on. Now it is all feel good music; Vineyard, Maratha, etc. songs that move our feet, hands, emotions, and feelings trying to feel God. God come and make me feel good, well . . . this my friend is not the way God operates, but we still go through the motions every time we go to church. We sing songs with words like, “make me and break me” and “purify my heart.” Unless we are strengthened in the inward man God cannot do this, it would destroy us. Our words reflect our presumption, just how far we really are from God, and how much we really do not know about Him. We really do not want God to have to break us and purify our hearts it is a horrible and fearful thing. You can ask Job, Abraham, Moses, Joseph, Paul, even Jesus Christ. We must have the ability in God to judge ourselves, to discern spiritually, and see the great need to change and move towards righteousness and holiness. I am afraid we have confused worshiping God “in spirit and truth” with our feelings and emotions. One thing for sure; if the world and the masses in churches go after this ungodly style of music, God is not involved with it. It often seems like we are trying to pump ourselves up or seek for a feeling that we believe will take us to God. If I can just hear my favorite song I can make my approach to God, well . . . this can never be. We make our approach to God not in words or songs, but by our spirit connecting with His Spirit, in our truth, and through our obedience. Always remember if the world likes it, God does not. In Corinthians Paul shares, “ Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.”(1 Corinthians 13:1-2) Paul said that in the sight of God, their words sounded like sounding of brass or a tinkling cymbal. This was not what they were hearing, but what God was hearing. God was hearing confusion and noise. But please notice that “I am nothing.” It is not that the gift is nothing, rather “I” am nothing. What a wonderful place in God when we see ourselves as nothing. We may have all of the gifts, properly motivated by the love of God, but if there is not a disciplined spirit to go along with them, they will not be able to accomplish their purposes. What is a disciplined spirit? This is a military term. Paul often used military terms people he spoke to could relate to them. The word here is used in connection with a General who has been disciplined in order to give discipline. He himself is under discipline so that the authority he now exercises will have a credibility and authority not of his own making. One may have both power and love, but unless there is a disciplined spirit behind them, they will accomplish little. And this disciplined spirit is developed in us when we hear and receive the whole counsel of God and allow God to work in our lives.

It takes more then love and grace to become mature, to become “ of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. ” Most Christian today do not know good from evil, their senses have not been exercised. They do not have a spiritual ability within themselves to judge themselves or spiritual matters. How do we exercise our senses? We do not, God does. It is not a trial and error process as many would say. Oh no, it is God working in our lives through His dealings, judgments, while bringing us into very narrow restrictions and limitations so that we will be able to function and operate with Him. For us to endure “His workmanship” (Ephesians 2:10 ) we must be built on the whole counsel of God. His purpose is for us to grow spiritually to move from milk to meat, to grow from a babe to “full age” and this will happen when we develop a disciplined spirit and desire to answer the call from the depths of our spirit.