Pastor Tony Jeffrey
We have been discussing an article by Dr. Jim Dension, founder of Denison ministries entitled, “Our Greatest Threat Is Our Greatest Opportunity. He states, “Our greatest threat comes not from finite and frail humans but from an infinite and omnipotent God. If our nation faces His wrathful judgment, our future is over, however, God’s people operating in the power of God’s Spirit can fulfill God’s purpose and advance God’s kingdom in the world.” This was evidenced in the early church recorded in the Book of Acts. “God’s people were filled and empowered by God’s Spirit and became the catalysts for the greatest spiritual movement the world has ever seen…if we settle for the transactional religion of cultural Christianity rather than seeking a transformational relationship with the living Lord Jesus, we lose our capacity to be used by God to bring our sinful culture to repentance and divine favor, and our national future is in doubt. This is the greatest threat we face. But it is at the same time the greatest opportunity we can embrace.”
How do we take advantage of this opportunity?
Romans 12:1-2 provides the answer. We must first “present our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God.” Dr. Dension comments, “the problem is, we refuse to do this! We are quite happy to be followers of Jesus until He calls us to stop doing something we want to do.” The second thing the Apostle Paul tells us to do is we must be “transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we may prove what is the good and acceptable will of God.” At salvation, the Holy Spirit saves our spirit and we are born again. But what is God doing now? He is doing the work of saving our souls, that is our mind, will, and emotions. He wants to transform our souls so that we think like Jesus, choose like Jesus, and live like Jesus. It’s as we feed on the word of God that the Holy Spirit can renew our mind—The Spirit of God, using the Word of God, in and through the man and woman of God.
Bottomline: If we want to take advantage of our greatest opportunity, we must allow ourselves to be changed by the Word of God. Our problem is because we do not know the Word of God, we do not know the ways of God. We must give the Holy Spirit something to work with and when we do, as Dr. Dension said earlier, “God’s people operating in the power of the Holy Spirit, can fulfill God’s purposes and advance God’s kingdom in the world.” He adds, “In the Bible, Christ is our King but sadly, in our culture, Christ is our hobby. Imagine a world in which every Christian thought with the mind of Christ, spoke with the wisdom of Christ, lived with the character of Christ, and loved with the compassion of Christ. This is the world Jesus wants to create in you and me today.
Come join us in this Greatest of Opportunities at Fellowship at the Ranch Church!