The vast majority of Christians are living a sub-normal Christian life. The New Testament characteristics of power invincible, joy unspeakable, glory immeasurable, and peace incomprehensible, are strangely lacking in their lives. The Christian experience of the Church isn't deep, intense or vital enough to meet her own needs, let alone the needs of the world." A grasshopper Church can never become an effective witness to the strength and majesty of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah." 

We are so sickly and feeble that we're not able to discharge the functions for which we exist. We're as powerless as a burnt-out volcano; as useless as a deserted ship swinging at anchor, covered with barnacles, awaiting destruction; or an old locomotive rusting on the sidings. We have adopted a policy of self-pity. The result is, we have the invalid's groan instead of the warrior's shout. We are absolutely powerless before the appalling conditions of the world today. 

The Church must herself be saved or she can't save the world. This is a law corroborated by every genuine movement of God in the past. The Church can't give what she doesn't possess. The measure of the outward must always be a measure of the inward. It's the Church that is unbelieving, apathetic and worldly. The currents of divine magnetism can't flow through her to a needy world, except in the smallest quantities. 

She has lost, to an alarming extent, her absorbing and conductive power. Her absorbing faculty is her faith, but what an exhausted energy it has become! Her prayer, which is her faith expressing itself in words, instead of being the cry of a spiritual giant, is but the wail of an infant in the night. Her visible life is far more a profession, an outward respectability, than a holy, attractive, world-conquering, Christ-reproducing reality. Before the world can be made a better world, the Church must be made a better Church. How can she be "terrible as an army with banners," when many of her soldiers are either in sick beds or sitting by the campfires or holding parleys with the enemy? 

We must never enter a crusade against the growing worldliness of the Church. This is robbing the Church of its purity and power and placing it in an embarrassing position, so that she can't proclaim the whole counsel of God. Worldliness only requires one condition for its success, and that is that we don't fear it. The Church never had so much power over the world as when she had nothing to do with it. 

What hurts me most is that the world doesn't oppose us. We're so feeble that it just ignores us. In the eyes of our sworn foes, we simply don't count. The world couldn't ignore the first disciples. It might imprison them, beat them, stone them, slay them, but one thing it couldn't do - it couldn't leave them alone. Why is it that the world is on such good terms with is that it can gaily pass us by? Is it not because we have signed an armistice with the devil, compromising instead of contending; fraternizing instead of antagonizing; surrendering our principles and suppressing our convictions? 

Furthermore, the demons don't fear us. You remember the incident in the 19th chapter of Acts, where the man who was demon-possessed overcame the seven sons of Sceva, so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded. The demons still say to us, "Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye?" The Church has flung a smoke-screen around her true spiritual condition by building enormous church edifices and by spending vast sums of money promotion and popularizing her conventions and campaigns. Her leaders bask in the spotlight of Hollywood glare. The noise of the machinery of propaganda is louder than the still small voice of the Spirit. The fame of men and movements is greater than the fame of the Redeemer. 

Again, there is so little spontaneity in our life and labor. Much of the results are those of sound advertising and magnificent organization. When the structure of organization is taken down, often times the results are very meager and disappointing. The glory of Pentecost was its spontaneity. The revival at Pentecost was a spontaneous, evangelistic effort. There was no advertising of Peter and the apostles as special speakers. There was no planned method of evangelism. The supreme fact of that first and purest revival was the reception of the Holy Spirit by a waiting Church. The inevitable consequence was expressed in one line, "And in the same day there were added unto them three thousand souls." Hallelujah! The fire of God fell. Fire can always be relied upon to bring a crowd. Sensational methods and startling advertisement are unnecessary to announce a fire; it announces itself! 

It's not the special spurts of the Church that count, but the steady, vital ministry of the Church in her everyday life. As holy Jowett has so beautifully said, "It's not the new birth which initially arrests the world, but the new and glorified life. It's not, therefore, by spasmodic revivals, however grace-blessed they may be, that we shall excite the wonder of the multitudes, but by the abiding miracle of a God-filled and glorious Church. What we need, above all things, is the continuous marvel of an elevated Church, set on high by the King, having her home in the heavenly places in Christ, approaching all things from above, and triumphantly resisting the subtle gravitation of the world, the flesh and the devil. 

This is copyrighted material from James Stewart's book Come O Breath, available from Revival Literature, PO Box 6068, Asheville, NC 28816.