A Call to Spiritual Renewal

I promised in the last post that I would address the issue of spiritual renewal that I sermonized a week or so ago. The text for that message was Revelation 2:4-5, 7a
Of course the entire letter to the church at Ephesus is appropriate, I just did not want to get bogged down in the other portions.
Two or three factors came to mind as the Holy Spirit led me to develop this message. The are: 1) For the past 50-60 years Southern Baptists have devised and developed every kind of program, event, learning kit, book, booklet,or magazine aimed all at helping Christians live the Christ-like life. These seem to be built upon the strong supposition that we fail to live that life because we lack the right information. Our people are trained to the gills with all kinds of awards and certificates, but we are not impacting our world. 2)The city where I reside, Montgomery, Alabama, is more "lost," to use standard SBC lingo, that it was 20,30, or 40 years ago, despite all our programs and activities. A smaller percentage of the population is classified as "born again" or "evangelical" that during the earlier decades. 3) We have become self-focused consumers of religious activity rather than disciples of Jesus. What we truly need is spiritual renewal.

The problem with calling for spiritual renewal is that we have heard that call before, only in most cases those issuing the call could describe what the renewal would look like (Sounds somewhat presumptuous toward God, doesn't it?). Let me give a disclaimer here. I do not pretend to know what it would look like, except to say that it would be in keeping with the character of God and what is revealed in Scripture.

Here are the points of the message I delivered:
1. The road to renewal begins with repentance. The church at Ephesus is called to repentance. We are called to acknowledge that our ways have failed, and that our self-focus had led us off course. We must turn away from these selfish ways and toward Christ.

2) The second step is self-denial. Oops, there is a second scripture here, Luke 9:23 where Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me."
Have you seen churches practicing self-denial? I must admit it is not a common trait. My Illinois friend says it is because so few pastor's are practicing self-denial. Rick Warren said it best in the opening to his best selling The Purpose Driven Life when he said, "It's not about you!
3) The Third step is to follow Christ. That means getting off my agenda and getting on his. What is his agenda? Helping people.
4) We must practice listening to God. Too often our prayer lives have focused on telling God what we need. "Anyone who has ears to hear should listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.