What’s Missing?
Exerpted from ChrsitianPost.com –
“I’m afraid that in a number of our (Christian) churches around America, we’re preaching an oxymoron of an Old Testament Christianity,” Jim Cymbala, senior pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York, told summit attendants in Springfield, Mo. “We’re preaching Jesus and we’re preaching laws, but we’re missing the dynamic element of the one who is able to make you … what God wants you to be.”
“How sad to travel around the country and world and see churches trying to have a Christianity that represents the New Testament without an understanding and an emphasis on the ministry of the Holy Spirit,” he said.
Pentecostal preaching is supposed to penetrate into people’s hearts and not be clever or showy; music is supposed to penetrate and not just entertain churchgoers; sinners are supposed to feel uncomfortable; and the power of the Holy Spirit is not “user-friendly and seeker-sensitive. It says ‘get in or get out'”.
With all that, “when fire (Holy Spirit) comes, there are changes in people’s lives,” Cymbala said. “This is what makes Christianity unique – God Almighty dwelling in a man or a woman.”
from my notebook 