Dear Friends of “Dial Daily Bread,”
After 2000+ years, how much progress have "we" made as God's people? Think of them then: expecting their Messiah to come “almost any time,” just as we are expecting the same Messiah to return "almost any time now." At least, "soon." They knew 2000 years ago, just as we know now, that there must come a great reformatory movement among God's people in order to be ready for the Messiah.
There was an atmosphere of expectancy among God's people then, as there is now. And uppermost in their minds was a question that, frankly speaking, is in ours today: "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?" (John 6:28).
Today there are seminars and sermons presented in the churches that are variations of that question. "What program, what duty, what plan, shall we do that we might have that great reformatory movement of revival in preparation for the return of our Messiah?"
There is diligent study in the Bible and inspired writings that yield a multitude of quotations about duties to "do"--about health reform, diet, good works, tithes, offerings, witnessing, devotionals--ad infinitum. And some sincere people are brilliant and have re-phrased the question, so it reads: "What shall we not do, to work the works of God?" "What worldly habit must we give up in order to have that great reformation?”
Each "expert" has a new program that this time will "work," if only we will "do" it, or give up doing this or that which is "worldly." There must be something we can "do" (or not do) to cure the worldwide disease of lukewarmness that everybody agrees afflicts the church. We long for some program, some new idea, some plan from some fertile minds.
Could it be that Jesus had the solution 2000 years ago? "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom [God] sent" (vs. 29). The solution is not doing something, but seeing something.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: February 1, 2001.
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