How to Have a Home Church (Part 4) – Recovering New Testament Church Life

I’ve told you before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t make myself available to the sick or the dying. I would much prefer them to come to me. You must know now that my answer will be, “I will pray for you to be healed, but only if you do what I tell you to do.” Most people will not do that, and I think that exposes the heart. “I came to be healed.” Oh, I have to do something? “I don’t think I’ll do that. I just wanted to get healed.”

I’ll give you an illustration of the man next door, who recently died of lung cancer. I was asked if I would pray for him, and I said, “Has he given up his cigarettes?” The answer was no. I’m not going to pray for somebody who hasn’t given up their cigarettes and has lung cancer. You may hate me if you wish, but I will not do that. There is something of the heart here.

Now, listen to me. We’re not a church full of health nuts. I find it interesting that, in many cases, people whose health is experiential also don’t like the institutional church. They sometimes seem correlated, but you don’t talk about it. You don’t push it off on somebody else. You keep it to yourselves. But if somebody wants or needs help and they ask for it, then you give it to them. I’m going to put it in one sentence: A healing church. Okay.

Evangelism. I have… This I can do really short. I’m speaking of door-to-door evangelism. I’ve had two volunteers. We’ll go door to door. We’ll lead some people to the Lord, and probably most of them will just take the fire insurance and be happy with it. Go on their way. But some will end up in this room.

I will talk to you, too, about some very, very simple things. I told you the other day I met someone who was paid to be an evangelist in a particular city, and I asked him if he knew how to close. That’s a very simple question. It’s a secular word, but it makes a lot of sense. Now you’ve got to do, and Jesus, and He died, and this verse says, and that verse says, and they stop like that. Well, this guy’s getting ready to get saved, and he doesn’t know what to do. What you do is you lead him to the Lord, but very few people can or will do that. He did not know how to close. He had no idea how to lead someone to the Lord. There’s nothing to it. All you have to do is load up on about 100 tranquilizers, fall on your face, and pray and fast for a month, and have somebody hold you up while you go to the door. Other than that, it’s really simple. It’s terrifying.

I have led some people to the Lord completely relaxed, but in most cases, I have been just as tense as I can be. And I have done an awful lot of talking to little people about the Lord Jesus Christ. But it should be part of our lives. Saints, just like you love the Lord, be proud of Him. You love this church, be proud of her. It’s not a, you know, I meet down here. It’s, listen, we’ve got the greatest thing in this world going. Amen. And you’re not going to get anybody in this room without a great deal of enthusiasm. So, there’s winning people to the Lord. A meeting must be enthusiastic.

If you’ve got new converts and you’ve got visitors, and you start announcing some dirge, and how to meet, somebody’s got to stop that song. You’re being foolish to do this, and you’re not thinking about other people’s needs. You just like this song you’re singing now. I believe the definition of enthusiasm is “God-possessed.”

I think I’ll end this meeting with a story. It turns out that this man was a salesman, and I want you to remember this story, and I’m telling you, you’ve got to be enthusiastic. He was so enthusiastic about what he sold; he had a machine that separated cream from milk. So he went to this farmer and talked to him about his cream separator, and the farmer had one cow. But he believed in that cream separator so much, and he was so enthusiastic about it, that when he got through talking to that farmer, that farmer bought that cream separator and took the cow as the down payment. I want you to remember this story, Saints. Enthusiasm does a great deal. I don’t know why some sort of shame runs through us about who we are and what we are; we ought to be the proudest people in the world, and enthusiastic about it; as enthusiastic as that cream separator salesman.

I’ll bring up the subject of our limitations once more: we do not intrude on someone else’s life. Alright, let’s get real specific. Do we attempt to stop a divorce of a marriage that is falling apart? I’m telling you, saints. I am and always have been ambivalent, and I’m going to stay ambivalent. If you don’t know what that means, I’m wishy-washy. I don’t know which way to take a stand. Now, let me answer that very quickly. So, we got a couple of people in a marriage situation. Go see if you can get them to the counselor. I don’t care if they took a vow on a stack of Bibles that high.

There needs to be, and should be, an atmosphere in a whole, W-H-O-L-E, church that allows people to face their weaknesses. Say it again. Every person in this room is pathological in some area. The blindness to our own personal needs and problems is beyond understanding. I’m going to identify you, sir, lady. If you look down anybody’s nose, you’re a self-righteous cad. That’s who you are. There’s no wiggle room in this business. We’re all pathetic, including those who sit upon the high hills of life and look down on us poor, benighted, ordinary, sinful, weak human beings.

It’s the most interesting thing of all. No matter how judgmental you are, you, out of other people’s frailties and weaknesses, there is one sin that is greater than all of them. It’s called self-righteousness. Amen.