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A Threat To Any Church

A Threat To Any Church

The following is an excerpt from a book called, “Surprised By The Power Of The Spirit.” by Jack Deere. It resounded in my heart and I just had to share it.

greatest threat

“There is another way that traditions can work against us. A friend of mine, Dr Ralph Neighbor Jr., wrote a book with one of the best titles I ever heard- “The Seven Last Words of the Church: “We’ve Never Done It That Way Before.” What Dr Neighbor was saying was that our enslavement to tradition can cause us to miss out on the present leading of the Holy Spirit. If God was really serious when he said, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (Isa 55:8), then we miss God’s leading by constantly relying on our reasoning, our interpretations, and our traditions.

So much of the church is afraid to try anything new or different from their traditions. They are afraid of being deceived. They are afraid of New Age infiltration. In fact, they are afraid of anything that does not agree almost perfectly with the way they have been doing things for the last fifty years. Too much of the church has more confidence in Satan’s ability to deceive us than in Jesus Christ’s ability to lead us.

Don’t get me wrong – I do think that occult practices and New Age movements constitute a serious threat to the church. But there is a far greater threat to the life and power of the church than the New Age. Legalism, pharisaism, and enslavement to tradition are far greater threats within the church than anything that could attack us from without. This blind traditionalism sucks the very life out of the church and persecutes any new work the Holy Spirit wants to establish among us.

It is absolutely imperative, therefore, that we put our confidence in the Lord’s ability to lead us, not in Satan’s ability to deceive us. And we must put our confidence in the power of the blood of Christ, not in our godliness or our traditions.

Jack Deere. “Surprised By The Power Of The Spirit.” Zodervan Publishing House. c. 1993. p. 170-171.




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