Standing on Our Heads an E a Johnston Classic — E.A. Johnston

Repentance and Responsibility for Reaching Our Generation

I believe God is throwing down a lance to this church in the present and you can either bend your heart to God and repent and seek his face or you can go cold hearted and he will move so far away from you it will be like night and day.

It's up to you. It's up to you. The community that you live in is dependent upon you. What are you doing for Christ and your generation while you're here with your life? It's all we have is this generation to reach.

Intercession for the Persecuted and God's Heart

Are we reaching it? Or are we self-focused, self-absorbed when you praise it all about me and bless me Lord and bless us Lord and bless my this and my family and my job? Or do you pray, oh God? I want to lift up to you the missionaries in India that are being butchered, being butchered oh God because they're sharing Jesus Christ.

Are we, do we have on our hearts what God has on his heart? Let me share something with you and then I'll close. How we occupy our time is of critical importance in these days that we're living in. Leonard Ravenhill told a story.

Spiritual Distraction and the Loss of Passion for Christ

He had a good friend and this good friend every time he got with this dear brother he made you think of Christ. He was like salt. Every time you got together with this guy he made you thirsty for Christ.

He always wanted to talk about eternity. He wanted to talk about witnessing the lost. He wanted to talk about world missions. You know people like that every time you get around they just make you feel like you want to go out and do something great for Jesus.

Well he said, well one day this dear brother started to collect stamps, a simple thing. And after a while he called up Leonard Ravenhill and he said, come on brother, come on over to my house. I just bought some British Colonials.

I spent $50 ,000 for them. Will you come over and look at them? $50 ,000 for a book of stamps. And Leonard Ravenhill said that it wasn't long, soon this brother didn't want to talk about Jesus and spiritual things anymore.

He just wanted to talk about stamps. That happened to me with the game of golf. I used to play golf five times a week. I've played Pebble Beach twice. I've played Riviera. I've played Hilton Head. I've played many of the top courses.

Holding Worldly Interests with Open Hands

Golf was an idol in my life as a Christian. And God tore it away from me. Have I stopped playing golf? I've played a few times a year. I've played it this week when I came down. But you know what? I don't hang on to it anymore.

We've got to hold things with open hands in this world. He has to be the priority. He has to have the supremacy. He has to have the preeminence. Jesus Christ today wants to establish his preeminence and prominence in the church of his, his bride.

Apostolic Christianity Against Worldly Conformity

We're like Martha. We're preoccupied with many things. Look at the difference between Christianity and the book of Acts, that apostolic Christianity. There was a clash when the church, the infant church went one way.

They came against the world and there was a clash. They smashed against that pagan society. Now we're going in the same direction and there's no clash. There's not even a rub because we look just like the world.

I don't blame people that don't want to be Christians. I wouldn't want to be a Christian looking at the church today. It was said of those Old Testament, those New Testament Christians, these who came here have turned the world upside down.

Brokenness, Weeping, and Repentance in the Church

If that was said of us worldly Christians today, we'd all be standing on our heads. Where's our brokenness? Where's our weeping? Where's our repentance?