Withstanding Persecution 7/1 Wednesday Wisdom

It is certain that at present we could not stand bitter or prolonged persecution.  The church today would crack.  It is only a revived, strong church that could be entrusted to withstand this fiery ordeal.  Let us not hoodwink ourselves by thinking that it will never come to us  -- many of God's saints are going through it right now in countries under totalitarian rule.

... In that hour we will need all the grace an depth of life and all the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit that God is willing to give.

-- Frank Bartleman

What the Church Must Prepare For 6/30 Tuesday Truth

I will be concluding the Frank Bartleman quotes this week and proceeding to Smith Wigglesworth quotes for up to a year.  I last quoted him four years ago.

What does the future hold?  We know it holds the blessed hope and glorious consummation of the age and the return of the Savior from heaven.  But before that, the church should be prepared for two things:  revival and persecution.  As in apostolic times these two went together, so surely it will be in these end times.  And to the prayerful and watchful, there are significant signs that both are on the way.

-- Frank Bartleman

Hope for Revival 6/29 Monday Meditation

God wants to restore to the church all that she knew in New Testament times of His grace and His power.  What we see in the New Testament is surely available to us.  But are we open for it?
We may be interested in revival.  We may believe that revival is the only hope of the church today.  We may even be praying for it.  But are we ready for what God may be about to do?

-- Frank Bartleman

Willing to Pay the Price 6/26 Friday Faith

Will God visit His people again?  Why not?  As surely as He has done it in the past, He will do it again.  God's skies are full of Pentecosts.  He only waits for us to claim them.  Do we not need one?  Then we can have it, when we are willing to pay the price of obedient faith.

-- Frank Bartleman

Limiting the Holy One 6/25 Thursday Thoughts

Most meetings can only be kept alive now by continuous entertainment, professional evangelism, and a strong social spirit.  And this is all too true in Pentecostal, Holiness, and interdenominational circles, as well as in the older denominations.  Where is the Life itself to draw the people and bring God to them as in the beginning?  This is not New Testament.  It is abnormal, grieving and limiting the Holy One of Israel in our midst.

-- Frank Bartleman

Fleshly Substitutes for the Spirit 6/24 Wednesday Wisdom

The exterior shell of every movement with which it loads itself and in which it later becomes buried, falls to lusting for "flesh."  One can usually judge the progress of this process by the things the movement comes to demand.  Instead of delight in the pure Word, prayer and worship, a love for souls, and zeal for good works, there come entertainment, programs, musicals, sensationalism, and oratory.  These things have no place in essential, true Christianity, but are professionalism -- flesh!  O God, deliver us from fleshly substitutes for the Spirit.

-- Frank Bartleman

Seek Only God 6/23 Tuesday Truth

We must keep our eyes on God, not on a party [denomination].  Keep free from a party spirit.  This is indicative of a respect of persons.  Seek only God and His plan as a whole, His church as a whole.

-- Frank Bartleman

When We Stop Going Forward 6/22 Monday Meditation

Beloved, whenever we stop going forward, we go to milling around.  When an individual stops going forward for God, he begins to go in a circle, just as a man when lost in a forest ceases to go straight forward but wanders in a circle.
So it was with the early church.  When they ceased to go forward, they started wandering in a circle and became lost in the Dark Ages.  The Devil... removed the cross, offering them titles, positions, honor, salaries, profits of every kind -- and they fell for it.
They no longer needed to look for God for their protection and support...  And so it is with our great church bodies of today.  History repeats itself in every movement through human weakness and failure.

-- Frank Bartleman

Criticism Stops the Flow 6/19 Friday Faith

The best preacher in the land cannot preach with liberty when his message is not desired or received.  The oil ceases to flow as soon as there are no more empty vessels to be filled.  This will often explain why good preachers sometimes have liberty and at other times have no anointing.  Criticism will stop the flow of oil through any preacher.  Oil will not flow when frozen.

-- Frank Bartleman

We Tie God's Hands 6/18 Thursday Thoughts

"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8)!  God never changes.  We have changed.  We are not waiting for God.  God is waiting for us.  The Holy Spirit is given; we are still in the dispensation opened on the Day of Pentecost.  But God can only work when we are willing, yielded, and obedient.  We tie God's hands.

-- Frank Bartleman

100% for God 6/17 Wednesday Wisdom

The early church came forth from the Upper Room fresh in her "first love" (Revelation 2:5), baptized with the Holy Spirit, filled with God, possessing both the graces and gifts of the Spirit, and with a 100 percent consecration for God.  This was the secret of her power.  She was all for God, and God was all for her.  This principle will apply in all ages, both individually and collectively... The greater the sacrifice, the more the fire.

-- Frank Bartleman

Lazy Toward God 6/16 Tuesday Truth

The human soul is ever lazy toward God, and no one generation has seemed to be able to travel very far on its way back to God and His standard from which the early church fell.  It is true that human error or understanding continually satisfies itself with a part instead of the whole, but the real fact is that men are not willing to pay the price to come back fully to God's standard, to be all the Lord's. 

-- Frank Bartleman

One Family 6/12 Friday Faith

I will not be posting for Monday.

We should be as one family, which we are, at home in God's house anywhere.

We belong to the whole body of Christ, both in heaven and on earth.  God's church is one.  It is a terrible thing to go about dismembering the body of Christ.  How foolish and wicked the petty differences between Christians will appear in the light of eternity.  

-- Frank Bartleman

Christ the Foundation 6/11 Thursday Thoughts

God's people can never get together on human creeds and disciplines.  They are too narrow and changeable.  We have a foundation that is broad enough to hold all.  Christ Himself is this foundation.  In Christ, all God's people are one, irrespective of race, color, social standing, or creed.

-- Frank Bartleman

When God Can Use a Man 6/10 Wednesday Wisdom

The fact is when a man gets to the place where he really loves obscurity, where he does not care to preach, and where he would rather sit in the backseat than on the platform, then God can lift him up and use him, and not very much before.

--Frank Bartleman

Seek Him in True Humility 6/9 Tuesday Truth

Let God's people everywhere begin to seek in deep, true humility.  Then He will reveal Himself and His plan to them.  One man with the real power of God upon him can do more than a thousand who go on their own account.  Only those who are true and loyal to God and His present-day message will share in this great victory.  The people who really humble themselves and stand the test, God will use to do His work.

-- Frank Bartleman

Run Ahead of Him and Fail in the End? 6/8 Monday Meditation

The call of God to His people now is to humble themselves, to recognize their weakness and lack of power, to get down before Him and wait till His power is restored.  The great question, is, Will men see the plan of God and yield to it?  Will men get down in humility at Jesus' feet and pray and wait till He restores His full Pentecostal power/  Or will they continue to run ahead of Him and fail in the end?

-- Frank Bartleman

Everything Centers About Jesus 6/5 Friday Faith

Everything centers around Jesus.  We may not put the power, gifts, the Holy Spirit, or in fact anything ahead of Jesus.  Any mission that exalts even the Holy Spirit above the Lord Jesus Christ is bound for the rocks of error and fanaticism.

-- Frank Bartleman

Hindrance to God's Working 6/4 Thursday Thoughts

The natural strength and ability of man are always the greatest hindrance to the work of God, and to God's working.

-- Frank Bartleman

The Same Consecration 6/3 Wednesday Wisdom

Is the church working, with all her resources, for this one purpose and to this one end?  That certainly does not mean the selfish heaping up of property and riches, more than we really need.  It does not mean getting all we want for ourselves and then tossing the Lord a dollar we do not need.  We have had the order totally reversed since the early church's fall.  God requires of everyone exactly the same consecration.

-- Frank Bartleman

The Church's Mistaken Idea 6/2 Tuesday Truth

The church, since her fall in the early centuries, has had an altogether mistaken idea of her calling and salvation.  All believers are called to a 100 percent consecration.  God doesn't have two standards of consecration -- one for the foreign missionary, and another for the Christian at home.  We cannot find it in the Bible.  One is called to consecrate his all as well as the other, as God's stewards in their own places and callings.  It takes three to make a missionary.  One goes, one prays, and one gives.

-- Frank Bartleman

Pentecost 6/1 Monday Meditation

Sunday, May 31 was Pentecost.  I am going to post my Facebook / Blogspot post here.

Pentecost is called "the birthday of the church". It is the day that the Holy Spirit came to be with us and in us. Jesus told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came upon them. Since Old Testament times, every male Jew was required to come to Jerusalem for Pentecost (Feast of Weeks, Shavuot - Leviticus 23).

The Old Testament Pentecost celebrated God giving the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai. According to non-Biblical tradition, the soul of every Jew who would ever be born was present at Mount Sinai to hear God give the Law, each in his own language.

On the New Testament Pentecost, every male Jew from the known world heard the Gospel in his own language.

On the Old Testament Pentecost, 3000 who had worshipped the golden calf were put to death.

On the New Testament Pentecost, 3000 who heard the Gospel received new life.

Quoting Pastor Robert Morris: When the Law was given to Israel through Moses, no one could keep it. The Law gave the Israelites an understanding of what pleased God, but it couldn't give them the internal ability to live it.

However, when the Holy Spirit fills a person's life, amazing things happen. A dead human spirit is regenerated by the Holy Spirit, who writes a new law on the heart of the believer. This law isn't the Ten Commandments; rather, it's the "Law of Love."

We receive the empowerment to walk in love. In other words, we can't walk righteously without the power of the Holy Spirit.

Before that day, the disciples were timid and afraid -- hiding in locked rooms and dreading the knock at the door. After Pentecost, the disciples were filled with boldness and confidence. They proclaimed Jesus in public squares and synagogues. The transformation brought by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost was astounding.

I encourage you to read the story of Pentecost in Acts 2.