Much More

The Christian life is an event followed by a process. It is an experience followed by a relationship. It is a step followed by a walk. It is an act followed by an appropriation. Many a believer has stopped with the event, the experience, the step, the act, and has never gone on to maturity. He has lived a life of spiritual poverty and spiritual defeat, always under the suspicion that there was MORE.

Now, it seems, that around the world there is a contagion of desperate searching, of ravenous hunger, and of intense investigation. The waters are troubled and thousands scramble to be the first to be made whole. Many report new lives, new homes, new churches in the wake of the stirrings of the Holy Spirit. That the Spirit of God is at work is a declaration which cannot be refuted. Something is going on! In the midst of it the theologians theorize, the historians analyze, the complacent rationalize. and the suspicious criticize.

The controversy rages! Issues develop. Terminology separates. "Extremism and wildfire'" contends one school. "Deficiency and deadness" replies another. The devil delights to divide. If we are not careful our differences in approach will cause a disturbance which will dull the point of the whole matter, namely, that any person can be BORN OF THE SPIRIT, FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT, and WALK IN THE SPIRIT!

Yielding to His Lordship is like standing at the entrance of a gigantic treasure house, overwhelmed at the MUCH MORE of it all. Knowing the fullness of the Spirit is akin to the experience of standing on the shore of a boundless ocean with its waves licking at our feet. On beyond, there's more!

I am not now content to believe (nor have I ever been) that it was the plan of God that the church should begin in a flame of fire and end up in a fizzle of faithlessness. Jesus Christ is the same today! Only His earthly body has changed. It is now made up of the saved everywhere. Let that body discover the fullness of Him Who is the Head and you have the MUCH MORE of the New Testament church throbbing with the Life of her Lord.

I am delightfully aware that after the last word said and after a thousand others are written, we can still say, "Ah, but on beyond there's more ... MUCH MORE!"