Being unaware of a process that upgrades a product certainly eliminates the expense required to improve it. Being aware of the process, but balking at the cost, also eliminates the required expense. The first problem can be corrected through education; the second only by painful costs to the corporation.
The Gillette Corporation continued to stay competitive in the marketplace by studying options available and paying the price to acquire them. Any number of retail giants have seen their market share dip or disappear by either refusing to stay abreast of shopping trends or by relying on past reputation to keep their customers. Now...here is good news for the Church: preachers must not fall into the secular world’s manufacturing and advertising dilemma. We DO NOT modernize to meet the challenges of an evolving society. Liberals continually beat the drum to “bring the church into modern life.” And what do they claim we must do: accept homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle, living together as equal to marriage and the ordination to leadership of those openly homosexual/lesbian. Other ministers refuse to comply with such satanic machinations, but always look for the latest book to give ideas on how to meet human need and evangelize the lost—in essence to give the church the best “possible public face.” A long time ago I read a book by E.M. Bounds called Prayer. He made a single statement I still remember. We keep looking for better methods while God looks for better people. Those who preach can learn that. Pray more, depend on the Holy Spirit’s guidance more, read the Bible more. All this will make better Christians and better ministers of the Gospel. It’s always easier for Christians to mask Christ’s glory from the unsaved than to reveal his glory in OUR lives! While we have a direct order for the latter, we don’t have even a single example of the former II Corinthians 3:7-18, especially verse 18. All the church has to do in any age to relate, to be relevant, to be powerful, is to PREACH GOD’s WORD: simply, if necessary, more deeply if possible. But never to seek Spiritual Power anywhere but in the Holy Spirit working in God’s Word! It isn’t that we don’t know this. It’s simply that we’re still looking for something WE can do to solve the problem of Christians facing a profane, secular, Christ-hating society. God doesn’t care what society does, or doesn’t; what it believes, or disbelieves; what it wants to hear, or doesn’t. God’s command to his preachers is found in II Timothy 4:1-5. Preach the Word, as Dr. Carl Menninger repeated in his book Whatever Became of Sin?. When the time is right and isn’t. When it will be accepted and won’t. We know God’s word. Are we willing to be the few obeying him, regardless, when many seek other ways? Fini
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