Colossians Part 3

It is with me almost constantly. I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, during the daytime, during the evening. In my reflections, I have this incredible burden for the churches. And do you know what my burden is? You’re not going to believe me, that one of the churches…well, let me back that up. When I hear one of the churches is really suffering or they’re going through something hard, and there’s always one that is. I have a fear. F.E.A.R. Gene Edwards, fear. You know what I fear, surely? Do you know what I fear? Shirley, you’re back there agreeing with me, so I thought maybe you had guessed it. Sweetheart, would you like to take a stab at this? I’m afraid the church will dissolve. Now, you wouldn’t believe that, would you? But I know something.

We are the most fragile thing on this earth. There is nothing holding us up but our imagination. There’s nothing holding us together. Saints, we don’t have a great vision, we don’t have a great purpose. Many of us come into the church and have never seen her or understood her, have no revelation of her. They come in, or this person comes in, and they’ve never read any of my books. They just like the meetings, that’s all, this is a great meeting, I just think this is really wonderful. We’re going to do this, too. I’m going to move in here, or why don’t we all just move in together and have some of these great meetings they have, and that brother or that sister can cause so much damage.

Now, let me tell you something. I’ve lost one church. And it struck like lightning. From my viewpoint, it happened so suddenly that I couldn’t believe it. It dissolved in a matter of six weeks. I know how fragile she is. And Paul said, “And daily I carry the burden of the church.”

Now I’m going to get more spooky. Are you ready for me to get more spooky? I’m going to cover one of the other passages in this. He said, “I am not there in body, but I am there in spirit.” And I know you’re thinking, you know, boy, I’m with you in spirit. That’s not what he was talking about; he meant his spirit was there. It is very rare for me, don’t ascribe to me things that are not there. But there are times I can feel a church. There are times when I fear for a church. There are times when I’ll pick up the phone, just call somebody, oh, we’re doing fine, and then a week later, Gene, I didn’t know we were so bad off, and they just hadn’t caught up with my spirit.

I sat down with a couple of people one night in a restaurant in Santa Barbara, California, and I said to the brother, he had his wife there with him, I said, “I’m leaving, and in about 3 to four weeks after I leave, there will be a group of men who will brutally attempt the takeover of the church.” They were absolutely mortified because the church looked absolutely beautiful to them. Within three or four weeks, I was proven to be a prophet. And it lasted until I returned three or four months later, and it was the most brutal thing that any church I’ve ever been associated with has ever passed through. Nothing you have ever gone through will compare with what they went through, and I felt it, and I was in Kentucky, and they were in California.

Sometimes you can feel a church, and brothers and sisters, I don’t mind telling you, sometimes I am fearful that a church will not make it. I remember a time when storm clouds were gathering in a church and it looked so inevitable and there is a verse that says you don’t have because you don’t ask and I said Lord would you please just not let this happen and the brother who was about to cause the whole thing decided not to and he got up and moved and he took about five families with him. And man, I was never so glad to see five families go in my life. The church just edged past. There was another time this happened, and it was much simpler than that. Either one person moved or they repented or something, but I could feel the storm clouds.

Now, I don’t really worry about the existence of the church in Chicago; I don’t think I ever have. But I’ll tell you, if I hear you going through a dry spell, it pains me so deeply. I want to get on the next plane out, and I want to come here and hold you in my arms. I am like a mother to the church, I’m quoting a verse of scripture. Now, folks, I don’t usually get this personal in messages, but I’m doing this so that you can understand some things because there are some really unusual passages of scripture that we are reading and will read. And brothers and sisters, there are times I fear for all of those churches that are made up of WASPs. Y’all know what a WASP is? You don’t know what a wasp is? Have you ever heard of this term? White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. We have five such churches, they’re WASP, they’re not Latin, they are WASP—White Anglo-Saxon, Protestant. And I fear for every one of them that one day they might dissolve underneath the pressures that they sometimes go through.

I fear for an explosion, a volcanic, out of nowhere explosion when a group of people go. Now, if you don’t, if you think that’s stretching a point, let me tell you then that…I would like for you to turn the camera off for a moment.

I just said something you won’t find in any theological book or anything, or sermon, or anything else anywhere, but I live in the fire of the reality of church life, and I know it is possible for a church to disintegrate. Now, I want to ask you to do me a big favor. Don’t do that? Will you please not disintegrate? Will you give me a place to have a nice, pleasant night, not worrying about Chicago? Let me spend my time worrying about one of those white Anglo-Saxon Protestant churches.

I know what it’s like for a church to get hit and hit hard and almost not survive. Brothers and sisters, if you will remain steadfast as a people, not moved about by all the conflations of the things that you are going to face, then these things will remain true of the church. If you don’t, then all these wonderful things we’ve said about the church cease to be.

Now, Paul of Tarsus was writing a young church, three or four years old. And by the way, I get some hints in here that they could very well get swept away. Do you hear what Elba said? What did you read, sister?

Audience Member: Christ, the hope of glory.