A Call To The Remnant

“Now I want you to see three paradoxes. To be happily forgiven, and yet wounded with perpetual contrition. To be correct in the finished work of another and yet feel so sympathetic and compassionate as though the burden lay on you heart. And finding God and yet pursuing God, of having Him, yet always wanting Him.” (Tozer)

The above quote describes the Remnant church of God. Who are these Remnant souls? Well, they are those who are genuinely saved and have a hunger and thirst for God Himself. They are scattered to the four winds and the Lord knows who the hungry hearts are. The question is , have you been wounded by Christ? Have you been wounded for Christ? The remnant saint knows the pain of having been wounded at the very core of His heart. Evan Roberts from the Welsh revival used to cry out “Lord, bend me.” The Lord bends His saints. He tries them and He tests them but He never tries and tests the unwilling. The trials and the tests are in response to a heart that longs to be closer and useful to his Lord. The saint is given many glimpses of the glory and the majesty of God. He has a deep longing to be away from this world and to be fully reconciled to the next. Think about the “pain,” of being in love. If you had a child or a husband who went off to war, would not your heart long with the deepest pain, to see your loved one return? Its that kind of longing only its more than that. Its the very seat of our affections.

This love, by virtue of having it, will compel you to walk a lonely path. Most will never understand you. You will see things that those around you do not see. Eze 9:4 “And Jehovah said to him, Go through in the midst of the city, in the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark on the foreheads of the men who are groaning and are mourning because of all the abominations that are done in her midst.”

The people of God that were marked were the remnant. Judgment was coming but the remnant were marked on their foreheads. They groaned and were in mourning for the condition of Jerusalem. Do you groan? Are you in mourning for the state of the church? Does the condition of a sin sick world lay heavy upon your heart? Will you heart be satisfied with anything less than to walk in the presence of the Living God? Have you tasted of the heavenly food and drunk from the waters of life? Has it ruined you for everything? If not, do you desire this kind of longing? Have you left your first love? If you have answered yes to any of these questions then you belong to the Remnant church of God. This church has been known by many names down through the centuries, the Waldenses, Albigenses, Lollards and Hussites and Brethren. Anabaptists and Moravians, the list goes on. God has always had a witness in the land, He has always had His Remnant that would not ”bow the knee to Baal.”

The Remnant man or woman carries their cross. Carrying a cross is a lonely business. Its their very loneliness that compels them to seek an even closer walk with the Lord. The trials of the cross, the narrowness of the path, the desert and wilderness often stretches out before them. There is a lack of fitting in. You often despair at your own walk even although people tell you what a man or woman of God you are. You hear that and it makes you cringe because you know how far you fall short of the God that you have seen high and lifted up. You continually seek Him, you live for the next encounter with Him. You know that it is only a moment but there will come a time when it will be an eternity. You long for everyone to radically encounter the Living God for themselves. You hear people say that they would like your anointing and you wonder. You wonder if they could walk through the refining fires of the living God. Would they really want their whole lives dismantled piece by piece? Would they like to walk through seasons of total despair? Would they like the bread of adversity and the waters of afflictions to be their teachers? God’s Remnant people walk this path.

To encounter God is such a deep and meaningful way is a two edged sword. The deeper you are drawn into the Father’s heart, the less you care for the things of this world. The world has ambition, it awakes them in the morning. The saint of God has no such awakening. His desire is to awake the dawn with the praises of God. The world takes enjoyment in many things as does the people around us, our families our friends, our neighbors. Yet the many pleasures of this world, many of them not in anyway bad in and of themselves, slowly but surely become strangely dim to the remnant saint in the light of the glory and the majesty of their God. The things of this world fall away as our eyes are ever drawn upwards. Our appreciation for His creation grows as we draw ever closer to Him. A mountain or a river or a valley can bring the saint to tears because he or she knows the artist who created such things.

And yet always in the back of the remnant saints mind they know that just as the world hated their Lord and crucified Him, they too will be hated and killed all the day long for His names sake. And just as He arose, they know that they too will arise. As they draw nearer to “the one who was pierced,” and He pours out His Spirit on them and they become more like Him, then the same forces that came against their Jesus, hell and all its fury, will come against them. They know that “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it abides alone, but if it dies it brings forth much fruit.” The remnant know that they have been marked by the ink-horn of the Lord. The more they love the more they will be hated. There is a mighty culmination to all of this and it draws near. You know that in your spirit isn’t that right dear saint? You do not need me to tell you that, the Holy Spirit already has. You know that the Bridegroom cometh. You know there is a call in your heart to arise, to awake fully to His Kingdom and to become unattached to the things of this world. The wise virgins time is at hand and the time of slumbering is at an end. We have been called to light up the path for His return. That which has been invisible for so long is being called out. The wheat will finally be identified and separated from the tare simply because the time of the harvest is at hand. God is separating and calling His saints out of their ease in Babylon. He is calling the remnant, it is a call to the Remnant to arise and trim their lamps.