At first these passages were mysteries. Then I found what may be the most important statement in the whole Bible. Paul makes it in his letter to the Colossians. He says he was appointed by God a minister to teach the gentiles the “mystery of the gospel” which is: Christ in us the hope of Glory.
    What is this? Christ in me? Nobody taught such a thing before. I’d been told what I must do to inherit eternal life. I’d been warned what I must never do or run the risk of damnation. But no one offered me hope as the result of Jesus living in me, doing work I was too weak to perform!
    Yet, that’s what our Bible says.
    I began to put the pieces together. Power to do good does not derive from our own strength or wisdom but from the love of Christ within us, a mystery of wisdom, strength, and beauty such as none of us can ever manifest by an exercise of our own will.
    First we pray for faith to believe and receive this indwelling truth and its power to change us from corruptible to incorruptible. Next we must confess with our mouths that it’s real, that it is He who is working in us both to desire to do and to do God’s will, not ourselves.
    This, in a nutshell, is the path to salvation. All other paths are counterfeit and lead only to destruction.
    With the heart man believes unto righteousness. With the mouth man confesses unto salvation.
    But there’s more. Much more.
    We aren’t called to confess only once. We are called to confess the mystery of the gospel as often as life’s situations require, giving honor to Him who lives in us to do God’s will, instead of taking the glory for ourselves. It’s not a one-time thing we say when an invitation is given (though it may begin there for many). It is an ongoing confession by which we honor him who died for us, receive power unto righteousness we had no way to manufacture on our own, and bear witness to others of the power we are powerless to produce, power freely offered also to them.
    If we won’t admit this is true, we are not in Christ. If we refuse to confess it to others we hinder the gospel and bring shame upon our own souls.
    This is our hope and the hope of all the world. It is the power of the gospel.
    Turn not to the right. Turn not to the left. This is the path. Walk in it.

Perfection

    If any man among you wishes to be perfect, let him tame his tongue.
    It’s so easy to say, “I love you.” It’s so easy to say, “I care.” It’s so easy to say, “I’ll never leave you nor forsake you,” or, “Be comforted. Be of good cheer.” It is so easy to say, “I will try to do better.”
    It is more difficult to say, “Forgive me.” It is much harder to say, “Goodbye.” It is dreadfully painful to say, “We’ll never meet again. If only I’d known sooner.”
    Where are the souls you once knew? Where are loved ones of long, long ago? Where are they now? Where have they gone? Are they safe? Do you know?
    Many are called but few are chosen. The way to destruction is wide and the path to eternal joy is narrow. Our souls are eternal but the life of our bodies is temporary like the air in a party balloon. Tomorrow has no guarantees. Our future in eternity depends on this present moment and decisions we make right now. We will be called to give account of every idle word we speak.
    How many souls could we have saved from their destruction if only we’d opened our mouths sooner and confessed the miracle that is ours?
    Perhaps we are too content with a few sentences spoken softly long ago when our heart was broken by sin and confession was dragged out of us by guilt at an altar where we begged God for salvation.
    How often have we spoken of that day to others?
    Have we failed by being silent or believing we are saved by grace but now kept secure by our own strength?
    Are we misleading others to believe a lie because we will not confess the truth?
    Can our single confession save us for all time?
    Will water baptism secure us forever from the consequence of careless speech and a lifetime of thoughtless excuses?
    What will we say to God at Judgment about souls we confused by our uncertain trumpet. How will we excuse the confusion of our message. How will we comfort the eternal pain of those who suffered by our refusal to discern between the falsehood of this world’s religiosity and the freedom-giving truth we hid by our self-seeking refusal to speak out?
    How can we win souls while refusing to do as our Savior Christ commanded?
    “Be perfect,” he tells us from the pages of my Bible. What does your Bible say?
    “Be perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” That’s not unclear, is it? We don’t need to diagram the sentence to see its meaning, do we? Be perfect.
    So the world howls against Jesus, as it did 2000 years ago, “Give us Barrabas! We’ll have nothing to do with this Jesus! Crucify him! Crucify him!”
    Have you ever asked why they crucified him? Was it not because he spoke truth and commanded the same of us? The world doesn’t like truth. The world doesn’t want to pay for truth. The world won’t contribute to your building fund if you hold up Jesus as the truth and tell them, “Be perfect!”
    “No!” they’ll shout. “We cannot be perfect! We are merely imperfect humans. We need mercy. We need forgiveness. We want a god who will save us no matter what and preachers who will scratch our itching ears! We want freedom. We want to do what we want when we want and be forgiven when it’s done. We cannot be perfect. No one can be perfect. What sort of madmen would command us to be perfect? Do away with them! Crucify them. Crucify them.”
    And so it has been for generations and generations upon generations.
    Is it because we do not know truth or because we refuse to confess it in words?

Knowledge

    All things are lawful, but all things are not good for you.
    The knowledge that leads to perfection is found in many places throughout your Bible but, perhaps, nowhere so plainly as in the words of James who writes, “If any man wishes to be perfect, let him tame his tongue.”
    Jesus said, “Your salvation is near – even in your own mouth.”
    Satan laughs at such a foolish-sounding solution to our troubles and taunts us with old teachings, “Touch not. Taste not.” The tyranny of our self-doubt terrifies us at the thought of our inability to obey. Even though we try our best, still we fall into temptation … all of us. Our Bible says if we say we have no sin the Holy Spirit is not in us, and we make God a liar. Satan scores victories in our lives by reminding us of past misdeeds much more effectively than by dragging us into new ones. We are weak.
    Then knowledge makes us strong (if we surrender instead of exalting our pride). Greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world. We are not victims of our passions, nor are we condemned by our failures. We are condemned by things we say, for it is by our words we bind things in heaven and on earth. It is by words we condemn ourselves. We are not condemned by God nor by the devil. We are condemned by our own unwillingness to let God be our life, to believe in that life, and to profess it with our mouths before a world that needs to learn the truth we hide.
    Let me give a few examples.
    Consider the license plate, “God is my Co-Pilot”. Who is in charge? Who is getting the glory? Do you see how subtle our enemy works? Even in such a simple thing that appears at first glance to honor God, there is a hidden message that works against the gospel this dying world so desperately needs. If God is our co-pilot, we are in serious trouble. Yet, perhaps half of Christendom believes this way. It is our manner of speech. It is how we allow ourselves to talk among ourselves and, therefore, it is how we think and appear to the world around us. If I were a lost person seeking to fellowship with someone who knew how to get safely from this place of trouble to a better place of peace, I’d choose as my friend a man or woman who said, “God is in control,” not one who claimed God is his helper or his sidekick.
    Consider the friendliness of Christian men so terrified of expressing affection for each other that they say the opposite of what they mean. For example, one may say to his friend of many years, “You are the ugliest man alive,” or ask, “Are you still beating your wife?” The variations are endless. None edifies the body. None could win the confidence of a lost person seeking Christ for the first time. None are in the light as Jesus is in the light, yet such practices are so routine among us that many who read these words may be offended. The old saw comes out, “Was I not in jest? Surely you aren’t going to be stuffy about something so innocent as this!” Notwithstanding the retorts of traditional Christian fellowship that tends to hold such practices as acceptable expressions of male affection, these “friendly” chides are not based in truth and have no place in Jesus’ church.
    Consider a disgruntled wife washing dishes for the umpteenth time while her husband, who hasn’t helped with the dishes for weeks, reads a newspaper or flips channels on TV. “You never wash the dishes,” she complains. Or the aging wife worried about losing a romance she once cherished with her husband who brings flowers only once each month. “You never bring flowers,” she whines. Neither statement is true. They are not, therefore, of God. They are lies. They cause problems and cannot bring peace. They are part of a love-destroying plot of satan who is father of lies. Those who say such things do not serve Jesus.
    Every lie is of the devil.
    Every lie … big, small, tiny, or in jest!
    There is no life in a lie (not even in little ones). Every lie we speak works death in our own souls and separates us from the love of God in others.
    No lie is of God.
    A young boy was attending church supper some years ago when the pastor unwittingly patted the boy on the head and said to a deacon standing nearby, “Billy is a little devil. Aren’t you Billy?” The boy nodded sheepish agreement. What was intended as an innocent expression of affection was in fact a fiery dart that struck its mark in that boy’s soul. Who but God will ever know what damage was done?
    What’s that? You say this teaching is too strict? What then of the admonition of Jesus himself who said, “You will give account of every idle word!”
    An angry father shouts at his son, “You’ll never amount to anything!” Who but God will ever know the harm such careless speech may cause. Who but God will ever know what greatness that boy may miss because the devil in dad diminished him with false accusations.
    We can control our speech. First, however, we must make up our minds to do so. We must purpose in our hearts not to listen to lying spirits that tell us it cannot be done. We must trust the power of truth and be submitted to it. Then God will gladly give us the ability to do what we could never do alone. The glory goes to him.
    If we give in to lying spirits that say we cannot do this or that, we sin, for with God all things are possible. It’s what comes out of our mouths that destroys us, not what goes in. The things coming out of the mouths of our denominations are failing to lift Jesus so all the world can see. The world is not dying because darkness is taking over the earth. The world is in peril of destruction because the Light of the World is not being lifted higher. We covet tradition too much. We refuse to be changed. We want our spiritual leaders to comfort us, to scratch our ears, to tell us what we want to hear – then we wonder why others are not drawn to and transformed by the gospel we preach.
    Why are we so careless with our tongues? Can we blame people of the world for being careless with theirs? Perhaps it’s time we asked our leaders to give us an example, teaching us to walk uprightly by exercising righteousness of speech along with all the other practices we’re admonished to observe … charity, industry, honesty, zeal.
    Dare we continue a moment longer believing the lie that we’re incapable of doing what our Lord commanded us to do?

Wisdom

    The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.
    Perhaps the hardest of lessons to learn is the life-changing teaching God applies to our souls when we see too late that our failures caused injury to those we most love. God is just. Therefore, when we insist we can skate by and ignore the difficult teachings of our Bibles, saying to ourselves, “It’s ok. God loves me and forgives sin,” we are in for a rude awakening.
    God is just.
    Sin has a consequence.
    God isn’t kidding around.
    When I first found the doctrine of grace I was so relieved of my fear that for years I rejoiced in the knowledge that God was working in me to love others, to obey his commandments, to direct me in my walk of faith and understanding. People who once disliked me invited me for dinner. People who once distrusted me asked my advice. Little children were no longer afraid of me. Even household pets that once scurried away at my approach now nuzzled at my feet or climbed into my lap. A change was taking place, and I acknowledged it was Christ within me.
    But I fell into a trap. I thought it was ok to venture as near as I dared to the edge of grace. My newfound wisdom told me all things were permitted that were not expressly forbidden. Reason told me what I wanted to hear, “If the Bible does not forbid it, then you are free.” Paul writes about this in his letters to the churches of his day. I embraced God’s grace with gladness and ignored God’s judgment. Like everyone I knew in church, I stopped reading 1^st Corinthians chapter 9 halfway through verse 12. There is a more excellent way, and I failed to see it.
    Like many I was grace-found and destruction-bound. I confused eternal salvation with the power to live a victorious life. Being convinced God had begun a good work in me, I was convinced God’s work was being accomplished in me while I was on auto-pilot, enjoying the liberty wherewith this grace had set me free.
    I forgot the fear of the Lord. I forgot the reason I’d been snatched from the fire in the first place. It was not for my salvation alone that I’d been chosen but for the salvation of others, and in this I fell shamefully short. I used grace as an occasion to sin (as have you, if you are truly honest before God). I missed the mark but I learned a new truth I could not otherwise discover. Our liberty in Christ is not found by walking as near to the edge as we dare but in seeking the narrow path as closely as we can … lest we hinder the gospel.
    Nowhere is this more true than in our speech.
    What if you knew that the very next time you allowed a falsehood to escape from your lips, even a tiny one that your friends would dismiss as commonplace or even cute, that a soul would perish forever?
    What if you knew that the next time you prayed, “God help me,” instead of asking God to do the work in you by a miracle of grace in which he and not you would receive the glory, that a child would die alone with no love and no hope.
    What if you knew the next time your speech was not graced with Christ’s mercy, but shot out a judgmental barb against others for their failure to be what you are only by God’s indwelling presence, that a single mom would take her own life by suicide?
    What if you knew the next time you critically demanded that others comply with your private concept of morality, when in your heart you harbor secret desires of an equally sinister nature, that another church in some drug-ridden inner city would close its doors forever?
    What if the evil in this world was released by every half-truth you allowed to escape from your own lips?
    What if your eternal destiny depended on things you say and how you say them?
    What if you could not count on God to mercifully forgive each breach of faith you make by saying things that injure and mislead, things that undermine instead of building up, things that honor man instead of bringing glory to our God?
    What if the fear of God were placed on your tongue like the coal of fire placed on Isaiah’s lips and like the prophet you could see the Glory of the Lord filling the temple of your own body, waiting for you to speak to others of him?
    Would you speak as you do now? Would you teach in the same way?
    Would you insist that this or that be permitted because, after all, “God forgives”?
    What if the fear of God became your wisdom, instead of the teachings you insist on promoting because they allow you to live a more casual life without answering to the consequence of your secret thoughts?
    What if you were required to give account of every idle word you speak?
    Would that change the way you talk? Would it change what you tell others about Christ and his church? Would it make a difference in the world if others also submitted their speech to God’s authority?
    Would the church grow? Would its message deepen?
    Would God expand its ministry?
    Are we wise to sell religion’s warm fuzzies to promote a more generous tithe?
    Are we leading souls to eternal salvation while condemning them to a life of bitter failure because we will not direct them on the narrow path nor call their attention to the difficult commandments of Christ?
    What do people need? Our wisdom or God’s wisdom? Fuzzies or facts?
    What do people need? Their own power or God’s power working within them?

Understanding

    Above all things seek wisdom, but also seek understanding.
    I recently learned that the Greek word for understanding quite literally means to “stand under”. This being the case, one may conclude we are not merely to seek wisdom but to stand under it once found, i.e., not merely to know truth but to be obedient to what it teaches. Unfortunately, as the old Pennsylvania Dutch adage reminds us, “We get too soon old – too late smart.”
    Time is the great teacher. Time and God’s counsel in our hearts.
    Perhaps too many are external learners taught by external teachers, gathering facts like avid field workers plucking strawberries to be proudly displayed in their baskets of spiritual wisdom to be judged in competition at their church bazaar. Never actually eating the fruit. Merely gathering it to show to others, as if by storing it in external baskets we could possess its power and be made wise.
    The Bible says we should gather wisdom, but we are also told to stand under its covering. Thus, in the case of the gospel’s teaching that we should be perfect by bridling our tongues, we should not only give lip service to our knowledge of this principle but also apply it daily … not just in church services but in all our interactions with others.
    We should not merely know. We should under-stand.
    Understanding implies obedience. Wisdom implies only knowing.
    Many people know wisdom and teach it to others without coming remotely near to understanding. They are blind teachers leading blind followers, and all of them are headed for the ditch. Wisdom without practice is like feeling love for someone without giving it. Where is the power? Where is the victory?
    Wisdom may be difficult to find and costly to obtain, but understanding requires much more of us.  We must put what we know into practice. We must be changed by what we learn.
    For example, knowing it is wrong to teach people that salvation depends on works is useless if we continue to lift our private moral code as the bright light in our constellation of teachings, instead of telling the old, old story of Jesus and his love … and the priests and judges who plotted his murder. We get the cart before the horse. If the law of Moses had been able to save men’s souls, then Jesus need not have died. Yet even in the most fundamental of denominations we hear teachers admonishing their congregations for falling short of the law, instead of giving them the power by which law can be fulfilled in love. There may be wisdom in promoting morality among the people but, until we lead them to accept God’s power by which they can fulfill the commandments, we are wasting our time and putting the cart before the horse … kicking at the wagon of weight we continue to pull behind us!
    How long will we struggle with this truth and still refuse to see it?
    The Israelites wandered in the desert 40 years before crossing over into the promised land. It’s less than 300 miles from Cairo to Jerusalem. Walking at a leisurely 3 miles per hour for only 2 hours in the cool of the morning and 2 hours in the cool of the late afternoon, it would require less than a month to traverse the distance from pharaoh’s throne to the mount on which the Holy City stands today. Why did it take them 40 years?
    Why has it taken us 2,000 years to stop wandering in the desert of our indecision about Christ and his church? Why do we suffer so much division among us?
    Where is the error? Is it in our mouths as Jesus says it is?
    Are we stiff-necked like the Israelites, insisting that God forgive us and make room for our errors instead of encouraging each other to strive more dutifully for the mark of our high calling? Are we grumbling and murmuring among ourselves because God wants us to be perfect, while we want to be forgiven in our sins and have become so committed to our cause that we’ve distorted the gospel to our own purposes?
    This may be hard for some to hear, yet where is the evidence of power that should mark our denominations with the victory of souls saved, marriages preserved, communities restored to decency and peaceful living? If some of you wish to complain you are doing all you can, how do you explain the very real failures we see on every hand? Will judgment begin at the house of God, or will we all be judged by the collapse and destruction of everything we hold dear and appear at last before the judgment seat of God with nothing but excuses on our lips?
    Where is the evidence of changed lives? Why is the world waxing worse and worse all around us? Have we all gone mad with our excesses so we must demand that our denominations make room for our errors and scratch our itching ears, while Jesus waits for his bride to prepare herself for the wedding feast? How long will we keep her from him by our traditions of compromise, our old ways of doing things regardless of the consequence, our refusal to change? How long will we stupidly listen to those who proclaim there is nothing we can do to make things better in this world?
    Will we make God a liar?
    Have we no fear?
    Will we refuse understanding and yet claim to be wise?

Souls

    God breathed into Adam, and he became a living soul.
    At stake in this battle is a treasure God prepared for himself, the eternal fellowship of souls. God made souls for his eternal fellowship. Souls are more precious to God than any gem we might desire to give us pleasure. It is for souls Christ gave himself for his church. Souls are the reason for creation. Souls who seek to be ready for the bridegroom are the bride of Christ. Jesus wishes all of us to be ready. Jesus loves us all.
    Not all love Jesus, however, because he is not lifted up for them to see.
    God wants all of us to choose Jesus as Lord, but denominations fail. They fail by offering wisdom without understanding. They fail by blaming the world for its sorrows instead of judging themselves. And they fail by sounding an uncertain trumpet, not taming their tongues so the lost can see Jesus clearly without the confusions of psychologies, moralities, trivialities, and outright falsehoods too often presented by our leaders in the name of Christianity.
    Souls don’t need Christianity. They need Christ alive within their hearts, the power unto salvation and hope of life eternal. There is no other way, yet denominations offer alternatives they hope will appeal to the public masses rather than confessing truth that alone can save souls. Christianity never saved a single soul. Only the truth in Christ Jesus saves souls. Too often the truth of Christ is adulterated by teachers more intent on winning followers and earning a steady income from their pulpits than on empowering other souls to be fellow conquerors and teachers on their own.
    Rather than training others how to handle the word of truth so they, too, can win souls, too many leading our denominations today are more anxious to increase attendance, to fill great auditoriums with swelling numbers who throng to hear each word of ear-scratching wisdom fall from their leaders’ lips. They may speak of Christ, but what they say is not of Christ, for Jesus trained disciples and sent them into the world to seek and save those that were lost. The church today should be training teachers, equipping the saints as Jesus equipped his disciples to do the work we all are called to do.
    Souls are perishing while denominations argue over non-essentials. Lives are shattered while organizations of Christendom struggle to obtain political control over a world that is quite literally dying for lack of Jesus’ love and truth in our midst. Local assemblies fight over the color of carpet or who is going to lead the choir, while children perish in a world of drugs, girls give themselves to prostitution, and hopeless adults seek answers in witchcraft and enticements of ancient occult practices that take them into a prison of darkness from which only the love of Christ can draw them safely out again.
    How will they hear unless we tell them?
    How will we tell them if our speech is not submitted to the Rule of Christ?
    If the power to live victoriously is the life of Jesus living in us by his grace, is our victory a consequence of our deciding to be good, or is it a response of our hearts to the love of him who alone is good? Is our wisdom in things we know or in the person of him who knows us completely? Is our strength the effort of our wills or the recognition of our weakness and complete reliance on the inner working of his power to transform us?
    Should we be making these aspects of the gospel clearer with our speech?
    Why is there so much confusion? Why do so many still rely on the power of self? Why do so many hold to the mirage that they themselves manifest faith instead of being submitted to the truth that we are nothing but for God’s grace that saves us from the dust?
    How long must creation groan for truth before we speak it more clearly?
    How long before we are forced by some tragedy to hate our shortcomings, as Job did when God finally revealed to him the truth? For all his so-called patience and ability to speak wisdom he did not quite understand. Job confessed at last when God revealed the self-love we are too often reluctant to admit. “Behold,” he finally admitted after using words to defend himself against the arguments of his friends, “I’ve said things too wonderful for me. Things I knew not. Now I see more clearly what I did not see before, I abhor what I have been and repent in sorrow.” It was only then that God restored Job’s life … and not a moment sooner.
    How long will we endure the sufferings of Job because we will not see that we, too, have uttered things too wonderful for us, things we understood not?
    How long will we continue to play church while souls are perishing, children are weeping, lives are being thrown away, and joy is being crushed … all for the lack of Jesus’ love and our failure to speak the truth we’ve been holding back?
    Souls are at stake. Let this be the fiery coal on your tongue. Let this be the judgment by which you judge yourself, and do not fail to judge yourself, for only by so doing can you possibly escape the judgment of God.
    Souls need Jesus … not a clambake or music program and certainly not a watered-down version of the gospel that removes the blood and the cross lest some be offended. God made Christ a stumblingblock for those who would be offended. Each of us stumbles now and then. If we will be honest before God and confess our sin, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sin … and we are changed.
    We cannot be saved, however, so long as we refuse to be changed.
    The church cannot serve Christ better in the world today if it refuses to change.
    Change cannot begin where truth is resisted and judgment denied.
    When we care for souls as much as God cares for souls we will allow the judgment to begin in our churches and in ourselves. Then God’s Day of Jubilee will dawn and the righteousness of Christ will stand eternal in the temple of our God, our savior and redeemer in truth.
    So long as our goal is to create a moral society through the admonition of Christian teachings so-called, we will continue to fail in our calling, for the lost who most need the truth in Christ will turn aside. They seek Jesus, not self-righteous proclamations of what’s right and wrong. Only by the power of Christ within them can they ever turn to the truth and be saved.
    How long will we halt between two opinions? Either Christ is author and finisher of our faith, or our denominations are. It cannot be both. The world is not blind to our sin, howevermuch we ourselves turn from knowledge rather than judge what we have been so we can be changed for the sake of Christ’s glory.
    God loves the very souls we condemn because they are drunkards. God loves the very souls we abandon because they practice the occult. God loves the very souls we openly despise because they abuse little children. God loves the very souls we were before we were told of the life of Christ that is transforming us from death unto life.
    How long will we wait before we lift Jesus higher and put ourselves under him where we belong?
    Only then will the truth be triumphant … and it all begins in our mouths.
    If you want to lead souls to salvation in Jesus, tame your tongue.

Victory

    The battle belongs to the Lord.
    God’s plan is so perfect none of us can comprehend its workings, but we can see certain things and uphold them for others. We can adapt to the principles of Christ and avoid the tendency to fall into our old way of seeing things.
    But, where is the power to do this? Haven’t we been teaching that the power is not in us, that we are powerless on our own to make any lasting change in our own lives?
    How shall we accomplish what can only be performed by the power of God?
    The answer, dear saints and sinners, is the church.
    I foolishly left the church many years ago when its leadership refused to help me stand. They would not abide in the truth I’d found, so I wandered in darkness. I wandered alone. I was angry and frightened. I was abused and I abused others. I sought light where there was none and misled others who needed what I might have shared … all because I did not understand God’s purpose for the church. Now I have begun to return. I see things differently. I seek Christ’s approval in the church today, not the approval of men. I need a place of fellowship. I need a place of prayer. I need the counsel of souls in order to grow.
    We need each other.
    Where two or more are gathered in his Name, there he is in the midst.
    We are all of us like sheep who have gone astray. We wander away from the flock, and the wolves single us out for slaughter. We are none of us perfect. We are none of us wise. We are none of us good. We are none of us able, no matter how much armor we put on, to stand alone against the fiery darts of our enemy. The collapse of public ministries invariably results from the ego-driven refusal of leaders to submit to the counsel of others. God simply will not share his glory with a man nor with a woman who is alone. It is a hard lesson, and you may learn it the hard way or accept it from the teachings of your Bible and spare yourself and loved ones the agony that comes from attempting to climb up some other way. God will not honor individuals who refuse to be submitted to the counsel of his church.
    Please note, however, counsel is of Christ’s church … not some denominational authority. It is not organizational hierarchy that creates the wisdom we need to move in confidence on Christ’s behalf. It is the love of friends who will stand with us, both admonishing and encouraging us to continue growing in grace instead of getting stuck in vain imaginings that too easily entice us all with promises of greatness. Jesus didn’t send his disciples into the world as individuals to lead great movements or to found crusades. He sent them two-by-two in his name so the world would love him as Lord of Glory. He knows our weakness. He knows how we cover up what we don’t want others to see. That’s why we need others, for none of us sees perfectly. None has a flawless view. None is without the tendency to elevate self, instead of lifting Jesus higher, and we may do this in such insidious ways even we don’t see ourselves doing it. The love of others in Christ keeps us on track.
    Here, then, is victory. In a multitude of counselors there is wisdom.
    Where two or more are gathered together in his Name, there the Lord is in the midst. It is Christ’s counsel we most need, so the devil who wishes us to fail will insist we can only receive counsel directly from God alone, setting us up for wolves to trap us away from the flock where we are vulnerable … as I was for too many years.
    Of course, if the counsel we receive from others does not agree with the counsel we have of the Christ who dwells within us, we should turn away. Indeed, we should run so fast we shake the dust from our shoes. If the counsel we receive from others is contrary to the counsel we receive from Jesus in our hearts, we must not listen nor submit to it … no matter what those counselors might promise or how “the church” treats us.
    Learn this, if you learn nothing else from me. You don’t know all you need to know. This fact is central to the gospel message. The only way to overcome your adversaries when they challenge you is to admit at once, “I know but in part. Christ Jesus knows all.” In this way you cannot be tricked into standing on your own, for once you are on your own you are vulnerable. We all fall short in wisdom and knowledge. When two or more agree, however, we have power that is not our own.
    Until we are willing to tame our tongues and listen for the words of Christ within us, we remain children unable to find truth. Therefore, this discipline of speech is critical not only for us individually but for the effectiveness of the church, for only where truth is fully honored can counsel be completely trusted.
    The victory, therefore, belongs to Christ who is all and all in all.
    When we are submitted first to his truth in us and then to his truth in others by the will of God, then we are made powerful as a body, and miracles are bound to happen, revivals will flourish that could never result from the efforts of a single man acting alone.
    The wisdom of truth is pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. When we admit we are nothing on our own, therefore, we leave no room for partiality and hypocrisy. When these things are taken out of our assemblies, those who need Jesus find him in our midst.
    The victory of Christ is spread by the gospel of truth conveyed by the counsel of many witnesses. We can either walk in the cloak of this world’s maliciousness and call it good, or we can stand together in the peace of true discipleship proclaiming the truth of Christ with conviction, refusing to compromise with the slightest tincture of error or the excuse-making practices of men’s long-standing social traditions.
    Onward to victory, always ready to give account of the hope that lies within us, peaceably abiding our time with patience.
    Let us bridle our tongues lest we cause others to stumble or turn their backs on the flock and be lost in the wilderness of separation.

Promise

    I am with you always.
    The joy of the Lord is that he’s always near, closer than hands and feet, as intimate as thought, more certain than life itself. Whatever happens, whatever transpires, the Lord of Truth is changeless. He is as available to the lost as to those who are saved by his grace, though he may not be so well understood, and his blessings may be hindered by ignorance we all are heir to.
    We may not have prayers answered as we wish, yet the truth of God never fails. It is the same today, yesterday, and forever. It is changeless. 
    We have, therefore, a choice. We can serve truth or we can hide in darkness.
    There is for us no other alternative. Forever in the light or eternally in the night. Love that is real or a momentary encounter for the sake of self-satisfaction, fading surely as our lives lack power to hold on but by that strength we were freely given and can never possess as our own.
    The choice is this: truth or falsehood. We make this choice with our mouths.
    The purpose of this writing is to challenge you as a member of Christ’s church. Will you surrender your speech to God? Will you encourage others to do likewise for the sake of leading souls to his kingdom that has no end? Will you agree among yourselves that other things have distracted you from service that promotes God’s truth to the exclusion of all falsehood (even little lies we choose to believe are innocent)?
    There are many promises with God, but none so exciting perhaps as that which assures us that his life in us will increase as we allow ourselves to decrease. As we let go of our preconceptions, Christ fills us with new vision. As we give up our petty tyrannies of self-control, Christ empowers us with a life force we could never exercise by the energy of our own human wills alone. As we acknowledge that God abides in us only as we abide in the truth and that just as he inhabits our praise so he also inhabits our confessions of fault and our willingness to acknowledge that all goodness and power of righteousness in us is only by his grace through the indwelling Lordship of Christ in our hearts by love, we are transformed into his image and the purpose of his church is fulfilled as others are drawn to him in us.
    The lost are not drawn to him because of our efforts to emulate (attempt to be like) Christ. They are drawn to him because they see him in us as we confess it is not us that performs the miracles they see! This is the sweet surrender that moves mountains. This is the power of God that draws the lost to repentance. This is the confession of our mouths that saves us and offers redemption to a lost and dying world.
    We are not the answer. Jesus is!
    Will you hate the lies of our enemy as Christ hates the sorrows they cause?
    Will you confess the falsehoods you have clung to so Jesus can fill you with a new power for pulling down satan’s strongholds?
    Will you work to overcome deception in all its forms, seeing it is a deadly demon of our adversary that you can easily destroy by the power of Christ’s truth in your own mouth?
    Will you help your friends correct their speech, counseling lovingly as one also tempted, and will you invite them to do the same for you?
    Will you submit to be perfected by the renewing of your mind in this way so you may know what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God for your life?
    Will you encourage your church to be triumphant in its war of truth against the liar who cheats and steals to rob us of all life’s precious joy and eternity’s blessed peace?
    Will you study your Bible so you may be approved, a workman rightly dividing the word of truth, needing not that men should teach you, but being guided by the Spirit of Truth whom God gives to all who believe in their hearts and confess with their mouths that Christ alone is Lord of all?
    Will you work for your local congregation to make peace where there is discord, to embrace those who are without hope, and above all to promote the truth that alone overcomes the soul-destroying devices of our enemy the liar, deceiver, and false accuser?
    Will you publicly support those who promote peace by publishing this message of hope to as many as will listen?
    Will you share the promise of eternal joy with others by admitting your faults and acknowledging that every good gift is from above and comes down from the Father who created us and seeks to transform us into the image of his Son who is the very embodiment of truth in love and love in truth?
    Will you allow His Truth in Love to tame your tongue?