A
message to Prison Fellowship from a brother in Christ who loves and supports
your ministry: I know your vision and
history - your small beginnings and growth pains, your financial and legal
trials, when you got off track and how God brought you back, and how you have
touched many lives. Please consider the
following excerpts from a friend.
excerpts
from NO LITTLE PEOPLE, by Francis Schaeffer
No Little People, No
Little Places
Nowhere more
than in
Every Christian,
without exception, is called into the place where Jesus stood…The word minister is not a title of power but a
designation of servanthood…Jesus commands Christians
to seek constantly the lowest room. All
of us - pastors, teachers, professional religious workers and nonprofessional
included - are tempted to say, "I will take the larger place because it
will give me more influence for Jesus Christ." Both individual Christians and Christian
organizations fall prey to the temptation of rationalizing this way as we build bigger and bigger empires. But according to the Scripture this is
backwards: We should consciously take the lowest place unless the Lord extrudes
us into a greater one.
First, we
should seek the lowest place because there it is easier to be quiet before the
face of the Lord…Quietness and peace before God are more important than any influence a position may seem to give, for
we must stay in step with God to have the power of the Holy Spirit. If by taking the bigger place our quietness
with God is lost, then to that extent our fellowship with Him is broken and we
are living in the flesh, and the final result will not be as great, no matter
how important the larger place may look in the eyes of other men or in our own
eyes.
We see this
happen over and over again…Someone whom God has been using marvelously in a
certain place takes it upon himself to move into a larger place and looses his
quietness with God. Ten years later he
may have a huge organization, but the power is gone, and he is no longer a real
part of the battle in his generation.
The final result of not being quiet before God is that less will be
done, not more - no matter how much Christendom may be beating its drums or
playing its trumpets for a particular activity.
The second reason
we should not seek the larger place is that if we deliberately and
egotistically lay hold on leadership, wanting the drums to beat and the
trumpets to blow, then we are not qualified for Christian leadership. Why?
Because we have forgotten that we are brothers and sisters in Christ
with other Christians.
The
Lord's Work in the Lord's Way
Doing
the Lord's work in the Lord's way is not a matter of being saved and then
simply working hard. After Jesus ascended,
the disciples waited quietly in prayer for the coming of His Spirit. Their first motion was not toward activism -
Christ has risen, now let us be busy…The central problem of our age…is
this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually or corporately, tending
to do the Lord's work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of
the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them.
Is
it not amazing: Though we know the power of the Holy Spirit can be ours, we still ape the world's wisdom, trust its
forms of publicity, its noise, and imitate its ways of manipulating men! If we try to influence the world by using its
methods, we are doing the Lord's work in the flesh. If we put activity, even good activity at the
center rather than trusting God, then there may be the power of the world,
but we lack the power of the Holy Spirit…if we fight the world with copies of
its own weapons, we will fail…They may bring some results* - activism does have
its results - but they will not be the ones the Lord wants. Our hands will be empty of honor from God
because He will not be getting the glory.
We must not try to serve the Lord with our own kind of humanism and
egoism.
In
this war if Christians win a battle by using worldly means, they have really lost. On the other hand, when we seem to loose a
battle while waiting on God, in reality we have won…Let us not think that
waiting on the Lord will mean getting less done…by doing the Lord's work in the
Lord's way we will accomplish more, not less…Is not the central problem of our generation that the world looks upon the
church and sees it trying to do the Lord's work in the flesh?
excerpts from TRUE SPIRITUALITY,
by Francis Schaeffer
Substantial Healing in the Church
…Can
faith be taught?...Yes…but only by exhibition. You cannot teach faith only as an
abstraction. There must be an exhibition
of faith, if faith is to be learned.
Each group must operate on the basis of God's individual calling for
them - financially and in other matters - but there is an absolute rule, and that is that if our example does not teach
faith, it is destructive. There can
be many callings but there cannot be a calling to destroy the teaching of
faith. The church or other Christian
group that does not function as a unit in faith can never be a school of
faith. There is only one way to be a
school of faith and that is consciously to function by faith.
Every
Christian group must also teach in words the duty to exhibit that God exists
and that he is personal, and then as a corporate body practice the truth. There is a cost in this, for the church's methods must be chosen with much prayer
and care, and "results" alone will not now be the sole, simple
criterion. It must practice the
choice of means in its work which
will exhibit that God exists…The Church's or Christian group's methods are as important as its
message. It is to deal consciously with
the reality of the supernatural.
Anything that exhibits unfaith is a mistake, or may even be corporate
sin…The simple tragic fact is that in much of the…evangelical Church - there
would be no difference whatsoever [if all that the Bible
teaches concerning prayer and the Holy Spirit were removed].
Throughout
Church history, one is aware that the danger always comes at a time of
emergency. An emergency arises which
causes us to cut off the exhibition of faith, and discount the possibility that
God is guiding through financial matters.
There always seems to be a legitimate reason for reaching out and
steadying the ark…We tend to think of Christ building his invisible Church, and
our building the visible Church…So our building of the visible church becomes
much like any natural business function, using natural means and natural
motives.
excerpts from Chapter 9 of
DEATH IN THE CITY by Francis Schaeffer
The Universe and two Chairs
We
can carry on our church life that way [sitting in the materialist's chair]. We can carry on our evangelism that way…But
let's take note: there are only two chairs, not three. And at this present moment we are either
sitting in one or the other. Unfaith is just the Christian sitting
in the materialist's chair…All of us sometimes find ourselves in the
materialist's chair…But is this…the way we do what we call "the Lord's
work"?
------------------
*
Schaeffer's work at L'Abri,
1When I first came to you, dear brothers and
sisters, I didn’t use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God’s
secret plan 2For I decided that while I was with you
I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified. 3I came to you in weakness—timid and trembling. 4And my message and my preaching were very plain. Rather
than using clever and persuasive speeches, I relied only on the power of the
Holy Spirit. 5I did this so you would trust not in
human wisdom but in the power of God. 1
Cor.2:
These
are all obvious ways to rationalize doing an end run around the supernatural
governance of the Living God in order to keep the ministry going at its current
level. They are compromises of
desperation that the leadership makes as their hearts shift away from
faith. By such means we negate the claim
that God exists and will provide. The
marketing strategy generates the responses with mathematical precision,
it’s just a matter of the balance sheet - advertising expenditures vs.
receipts. The ministry goes on, but the
world wins because God's people have not escaped conformity to this age in
doing the Lord's work. We are not
strengthened in our faith, neither do we learn what
God is telling us through the crisis.
Schaeffer
once commented on this when L'Abri faced times of
economic hardship. He didn't doubt that one
letter requesting financial help would do it.
But that demonstrates nothing about the reality of God. He was asked "What if the money doesn't
come in?" His reply was, "Then
we'll be smaller."
See
“You Never Ask for Money” (p.191) in Future Grace by John Piper; Chap.3
of Prophetic Untimeliness by Os Guinness