© 2008 Faiths Foundations. All rights reserved. This Web Site and all it's content are protected under Federal and State laws.
Devotional
It seems the messages coming from so many pulpits today are about what the word of God can do for us "the body of Christ", not what God can do for the multitudes. The body of Christ has fallen far short of where we need to be in the times in which we live. We are so focused on what we can get because we are God’s children rather than what we can give to the world because we are God’s children. The word of God says in Matthew 10:8 “freely you received, freely give.” We are still stuck on the part that says “freely you have received”. The Church in a sense has become just as the world in our attitude that it is “all about me”. That is not nor has it ever been the message of Christ. For Christ it was all about the multitudes not all about Him. If it were all about Him in the garden of Gethsemane He would have gotten up and walked away from what lay before Him. But He proved to the multitudes then and for all eternity that it was all about them when He said, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will”.
Yes the Churches are reaching out to the multitudes through missions and programs such as these, but what are we really showing the man on the street? The word says that God will confirm the truth of His word through signs, wonders and miracles. We see very little of these following the preaching of God’s word today. We hear of it but what have we really seen? Have we seen those crippled from birth made whole rise up and run and leap and praise God? Have we seen limbs grow where there were no limbs? Have we seen tumors disappear from peoples bodies? Are we seeing little children with Downs Syndrome and Cerebral Palsy healed and coming up out of those wheel chairs running and laughing and playing as other children do.
While I do not deny this happens at times it is the exception not the rule. The word of God says in Acts 4:31,
“And after they made supplication, the place in which they were gathering was shaken, and they were all saturated with the Holy Spirit and they were speaking the Word of God with boldness.” (The Power New Testament) It says here that the Apostles were saturated with the power of the Holy Spirit. We know this is a truth not only because they spoke the Gospel message boldly but because of the evidence of the Power of God, through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, so overflowing in their very being that healing flowed even in their very shadow such as was the case with Peter. The people came from near and far bringing the sick, the lame, and the dying and laid them in the streets so that Peters shadow might fall upon them and they would be healed.
Yes I believe in the message of prosperity. Yes I believe we are to walk in the full blessings of God. But more than this I believe we are to walk a life of holiness before our God and we are to walk in the dominion and authority He gave to us through the works of His Son on the cross. Salvation is so much more than "being saved". SOZO is a completeness in spirit, soul, and body. Nothing missing, nothing broken. No lack, no want… spiritually, emotionally, physically, and financially. Salvation (SOZO) is also walking in the dominion and authority that is ours through and in Christ Jesus. It is taking what we have freely received and freely giving it to the man on the street who is lost and hurting and comes looking to us and says, “show me what you got”.
There is a voice crying even now in the wilderness. Calling the Church to repentance. Calling the Church to be all that God called her to be. Who will listen. Who will hear the voice of the Lord?
While I do believe the world is becoming more desensitized as time moves on, such as the things that are now being allowed to be seen and heard in programs people watch on TV and in movies, things such as nudity, vulgar words and violence. I believe it is more a problem of the body of Christ becoming desensitized than the world. We already know the world follows after their "father". That is nothing new, the world has been doing that with increasing intensity since the fall of Adam. Yet I feel we will not reach them by shoving “their desensitization’s” in their faces. The word says that we (the body of Christ) are living epistles read of all men. And what have we shown the man on the street but a lethargic church who has fallen asleep at the wheel. A Church that has hunkered down and settled for what little is or for that matter, is not, happening in our Churches.
The Church (body of Christ) today comes no where near this kind of anointing. We have become desensitized to this kind of anointing. We have settled for the sporadic healings we see and hear mostly at revivals in other nations. We have regressed in our walk of faith since the time of the Apostles, not progressed as we should have and as God intended for us to do. And I believe God is sending voices who are crying out in the wilderness for the body of Christ to repent of her lethargy and once again become men and women of God who walk in all dominion and authority and in the power provided to us in the person of the Holy Spirit through the works of Christ Jesus at the cross.
The Desensitization of the Body of Christ
By: Deborah Bahmer 2008