Romans 12:2 (KJV)
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
In this text the Apostle Paul describes the inner workings of true salvation or regeneration. Paul is declaring that once one has been translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God's dear Son there comes new nature or a metamorphose. This change in nature translates one out of the world into a new dimension in Christ Jesus. A dimension where all things have become new and all old things have passed away!
Yet, what we are seeing in today's Christendom is not this new dimension of the spiritual man but a mirror of the old man resurrected from the dead and alive and well in post-modern converts. There is a distinct and horrifying likeness between the world and the church today. The exciting hope and purity of the realities of the new-creation have somehow been stained and degraded with a compromise of worldliness and mingled standards.
Our churches have become so worldly and carnal it is hard to find even a trace of Christ-likeness. The leaders therein are living by two sets of standards and holy, righteous living has I-chabod with the glory. Spirit begets Spirit and flesh begets flesh and we wonder why the converts leaving our altars are yet carnal. We wonder why divorce is rampant in the church, alcohol common place in our homes and drug abuse plaguing our children: we are a carnal people filled with earthly desires, loving the world and the things therein but devoid of the power of God.
Reader, aren't you hungry for the day to return when men and women left the altar truly converted to Christ? Converted from death to life with a love for righteousness and a hatred for sin! Cleansed from impurity and the root therein, fueled with a holy passion and desire to live uprightly and righteously and empowered from on high to see it through! It will never happen until we open our eyes to see the subnormal conditions we are living in. It seems that the American people have slipped into a Laodicean mindset saying, we are rich and increased with good and having need of nothing. (Rev. 3:17)
Yet, Christ sees us as poor, wretched, blind, miserable and naked! Just as Laodicea was counseled by Jesus to buy eye salve and anoint their eyes, we too must heed this call. We are truly blind to our own conditions and we cannot see our own wretchedness. The American church has back-slidden into a lethargic stupor and we need a sovereign move of God to reinstate and to revive the wonderful attributes that once made the church beautiful.
Our hearts should lone for the day when our altars will once again be filled with weeping, convicted inquirers seeking relief from their burdened hearts. Altars filled with men and women working out their own salvation with fear and trembling! Men and women changed by the awesome power of God, regenerated from the likeness of Adam to the likeness of Christ! Holy, righteous men and women made clean by the blood of Jesus and the Word of Truth!
It will take an ordinary work by an extraordinary God to see this take place in our churches and it all begins with prayer! Prayer is the key element that we have forsaken that has led to our demise. The prayer closet has been the most forsaken exercise in modern Christendom. We exercise our bodies and they are fit but we have forsaken our spirits and thus they are fat! Isaiah 66 tells us: no travail, no birth! If we do not intercede for a reformation in the American church we will only continue to weaken. Revival is a must and prayer is the catalyst to bring it to fruition. Will you pray?
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