My dear sister Fiona asked if she could post this piece and direct folks to her website. I am happy to post this. God bless you sister………………bro Frank

Frank is kindly allowing me to share with you a blog the Lord has had me doing for the past few months. The blog is based upon William Gurnall’s book, “The Christian in Complete Armour”.

The Lord led me to Mr. Gurnall’s book, and laid it on my heart to do a blog that follows the teachings found in Mr. Gurnall’s book. You can find the first chapter of my blog here:

http://gleaningsfromgurnall.blogspot.com/…/06/chapter-one.h….

I strongly recommend that you read the chapters in order as they do build upon one another.

For background on the book itself, please go to my other blog: http://growingasadiscipleofchrist-fionab.blogspot.com/…/a-m….

Thank you, Frank, for allowing me to share this with others. I truly believe that serious-minded believers need to learn how to correctly utilize their armor so that they are able to defend themselves when necessary, and properly engage the enemy when asked to do so by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

There is so much noise in the average persons life, noise and activity and business. Yet, at the beating heart of who we are, is Jesus, the lover of our souls. I dearly wish that a great hush would fall over the church. That all the noise would simply be replaced by a holy quietness. The musicians would put down their instruments, the talkers would stop talking and there we would remain until the Lord came upon us. The cry of our hearts should be audible in the congregation. The longing seeking heart should replace the noisy professionals. Just one cry, crying out the name of Jesus with all the longing of a desperate heart would surely bring heaven down to earth. Rain would fall on a dry and dusty land. Our hands would be open to heaven like a chick’s open mouth in anticipation of being fed.

After 27 years in the States I believe I have encountered most sects of Christendom It has been was very depressing to meet people so sold out to a doctrine, so lacking in love for Jesus Himself and so obsessed with portions of Scripture that are so often taken out of context as to make no sense on any level and on these differences they build divisions. Our grand obsession should be Jesus.

No matter where you go, if you find people whose grand obsession is Jesus you wont go far wrong. I want to meet people who love Jesus with all their hearts and souls and minds and body. I want to meet my brothers and sisters from every background, from ever tribe and from every tongue and from every nation. I want to walk along the pilgrim way a while with my fellow sojourners. It refreshes me and revives me and lifts me up.

I have met so many people who think the church is just fine and everything is the way it has always been and anyone who says anything different is generally castigated. There is a sizable remnant who do see it and I thank God for them. They are, of course, rejected and generally hated because they are in effect, party poopers. They don’t go along with the flow, they disrupt the flow, like a large stone in a flowing river, they cause turbulence and turbulence is uncomfortable and folks don’t want to be uncomfortable. They are for the most part sleeping and they do not want to be woken up. And this remnant are constantly shouting ” wake up you sleepy Christians, wake up, Christ is at the door and the bride must make herself ready to receive her King.”

How many of us can relate to lying in bed, warm, comfortable and cozy. Its winter outside and you are wrapped up in your bed. Then the alarm goes of. Who likes the alarm? It compels us to arise, get up! It is not a pleasant noise, in fact it is designed to be a most unpleasant noise. If it were pleasant we would simply roll over and go back to sleep. The rising remnant of God are His alarm. He is sounding His warning that the time is short. The message is hated. Generations of movements such as the prosperity gospel and the word of faith movement have seeped into Christendom like a contagion. A cancerous contagion that has infected us. The dream of many in the very early church was that they would be counted worthy of martyrdom for the sake of Jesus. How far we have fallen. This notion would almost always be rejected out of hand in our day. False prophets ply their trade in churches across the globe. They come and tell folks that this coming year will be better than the last, God has great things in store for you and breakthroughs will be yours. Now, you can add to that general theme, but it is always some variation of it..

The true prophet of God does not arise to tell folks things they want to hear, the very opposite is true. The prophets of God will always be rejected and despised. God is, in these last day, raising up a generation of prophets. Men and women who can see clearly the true state of things. They see that Jesus is on the horizon and it is a fire that burns in them. They see the approach of gross darkness prior to His return and they sound the alarm. They run from camp to camp and compel people to make sure they have their armor on, because they are going to need it. In most camps they find rejection, because even although it is written, they do not “see,” and they do not see it because they do not want to see it. If you see it, I want to encourage you today. God sees that you see. Yes you are misunderstood but that is part of the price. You find yourself isolated? Another part of the calling. You march to the beat of a different drummer? You speak of things the Lord has “shown,” you and people look at you like you are an alien? Then my friend and brother and sister in Christ you are on the path that the Lord has called you to. It is of course a calling. No one fully volunteers to be unpopular and to be hated and despised and rejected even and especially within their own communities.

The remnant of God are the broken of God. He breaks them by His own hand. Yet He does it in cooperation with His children. It can be traced back to a prayer that might have went something like this. “Oh God please use me, whatever it takes for me to be useful to you, so be it Lord.” Now, when you prayed that prayer you knew you touched heavens throne. What you did not fully realize was just how brutal the breaking would be. What you discovered in the midst of it was that despite the pain of it all God was faithful. You may have had long periods where you cried out “My God my God why has thou forsaken me,” but always in your heart of hearts you knew He was right there and He was your very sanity. You knew that no matter the circumstance or seemingly never-ending series of circumstances that He was shaping you, refining you, cleansing you. You were inevitably heading towards that place Paul found himself in when he said that he had learned to be content in ever situation. He had known what it was to abound in the things of life but he now knew what it was to be abased and still praise God. He knew how to have a full stomach and praise God and he knew how to be hungry and praise God. These are things that he learned, these are the lesson of God. At the start of that chapter in Philippians Paul starts out, and this is the point of the chapter to “stand fast in the Lord.” To the remnant saint who is reading this I say stand fast in the Lord. You are no alone, you are loved and you are called.

The church that can’t worship must be entertained. And men who can’t lead a church to worship must provide the entertainment (A.W.Tozer)
In most of Christendom we are living with the triumph of form over substance and the evidence of that is the depth or lack thereof of Christianity in our society. Now three of four generations into an entertainment driven church we are left with a shallowness of showmanship that merely engages the “audience.” I would argue that all across Christendom we are seeing leaders who lead the people by providing entertainment.

You will hear excuses about staying relevant and keeping up with technology and so on. I personally have nothing against technology but when it becomes an integral part of creating a “show” on a Sunday morning then you know that the plot has been lost. Today we are being driven by the form and not the substance. The cultural winds have simply taken a hold of the church and the church is being driven along by these winds towards what destination? What is the end for such a church? The complete amalgam of the world with the church. This is a tragedy.