Normal Christianity — Glenn Meldrum

For more messages by Glenn Meldrum and His Presence Ministries, go to www .ihpministry .com. You are welcome to make additional copies of this CD for free distribution.

This morning I want to look at normal Christianity. And I want us to try and understand a little bit what is normal and I want us to have the courage to examine ourselves to see if we are normal. And that's going to be the real issue, whether we have really come to a place to become normal.

I'd like to begin just with a little story. Let's just pretend for a moment that there's this community of people somewhere in the world that nobody else has ever known of and never met. And this closed little community of people is all alone.

And they have been there for generation after generation and all that they understand of life is what they have, what is in the midst of that community. There's been no influence from the outside. There's been no influence from visitors or anything else.

And so this community is kind of different. There are different kind of people. It's an entire community of hunchback people. So they're all hunched over like this, they all walk around like this and their arms and their hands and their legs are kind of deformed and their faces are all kind of twisted.

But everybody's like that, so everybody thinks that's the way it is. And when they talk, they talk with a slur and they kind of all drool. So when they get together and they're all talking, they're sitting there all kind of drooling.

But since everybody does it, they think that's the way that everybody is and that's the way everybody should be. Then one day there's this family that has a baby and the baby is different. This baby isn't hunchback, it's not twisted, none of its limbs are deformed.

Its face is perfect, it's shapely, it's full, it's rich and the hair is beautiful and the child doesn't drool as it grows older, it doesn't slur its speech. And so the moment that child's born and the parents look upon it, they gasp at it just going, oh, what a deformed creature, what an ugly thing that we have here.

Oh, we'll be the laughing stock of the community. What will they think of us with such a child like this? And so as that child grows up and starts playing with the other children and all the children are ridiculing it and teasing it because it looks so strange because it stands up straight rather than hunched over and it can run different than all of them and it throws a ball different than what they do and it doesn't talk like them and so they think this child totally strange and totally weird and just a perversion of nature.

When the reality is, is that it's the entire community that is twisted and deformed and now one perfect has come into their midst. And so the one that is perfect now looks strange, looks weird, looks twisted as a result of it because their concept of normal is so altered, is so twisted, is so perverted.

And I'm going to take some time to try and really show that this illustration is speaking of us. As the church, we are not normal. Now we think we're normal in our closed little community. We pat ourselves on the back as if we're normal.

We look at one another and in our deformed concepts of Christianity, we walk around all twisted and say, oh, you look pretty good, I look pretty good, we all must be good. We've got it all together. Look at, we all look the same, we all act the same.

So we must all be normal because isn't this what normal is? We're just a bunch of normal people. But the reality is, are Christianity really normal? Are we really normal from a biblical standpoint? Not from a cultural standpoint because from a cultural standpoint, we can all look at each other all deformed and twisted and say, wow, you're normal, I'm normal, we're all okay.

But the standard of what is normal is not what we look at one another, whether we think ourselves normal as we examine each other and say, well, I like the way you look and you like the way I look, so we must be okay.

It's whether or not we examine ourselves according to the Word of God because the only standard of what normal is, is Jesus Christ. Now be careful when you say amen. I don't have problems with amens. But usually we like to say amen when it's not, when we're the ones saying I'm normal.

I'm the one, I got it together, yes, I'm like Jesus. Well let's look at this a little bit further. I think the closest thing that we can see to Christianity and to understand what biblical Christianity is, we got to go to the closest thing to the source.

Now Christianity is focused upon Jesus and Jesus is the ultimate perfect standard. He is that perfect one who came into the world and all the rest of the world twisted and perverted. And he was the only normal one.

And if this only normal one went into the world and grabbed a hold of some of these twisted people and started teaching them what normal is, started straightening them out with miracles and transformation in their life, that they started standing up a little bit straighter and their faces coming a little more normal and their limbs starting to straighten out and they didn't talk as much with a slur and didn't drool anymore, if all of a sudden they stopped being what everybody else was, they would start to look abnormal according to the world's standpoint.

And so Jesus was trying to straighten out a crooked people and bring what was truly normal to them and ultimately he was doing that with the apostles and the disciples. So if we want to see what normal Christianity is, what we cannot do, what we should not do, what is absolutely destructive to us is to look at one another.

Because if we look at one another, what we will do is perpetuate the deformities of our Christianity, the perversions of our Christianity as we pat ourselves on the back saying, my, aren't we wonderful people?

The only standard is going to be Jesus Christ and then to look at the church closest to him and see what the church was meant to be and ultimately what the church was meant to be in the book of Acts is what we are meant to be today.

And if my life does not look like the book of Acts, then my life is not normal. Now we don't like looking at it like that because we like our comfortable aspect. It's easy if all my life as a Christian has been some twisted thing and it's comfortable and all of a sudden some crazy preacher comes in and says, you're not normal.

We don't like that. But that's the reality of it. There's not a normal one in this room. But what we have thought for so long that we're normal and as a result, we have not strove to become normal. Let's look at the life of the early church.

Turn with me to Acts, the second chapter. I'm going to highlight these points before I move on to some other thought with this. Acts, the second chapter, the 42nd verse says they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

Everyone was filled with all and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common, selling their possessions and goods they gave to anyone as he had need.

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

I'm just going to highlight there's, you know, this is a sermon in itself to preach this idea of what was normal. And we have to understand at this point, they had walked with Jesus. It's just after Pentecost.

They'd walked with Jesus. The disciples, the apostles knew what it was to be normal. The only perfect normal person was in their midst and was showing them how. And he was straightening out their lives.

He was changing them, transforming them that they might be more like him. Because to be Christ-like means that we are to be like him. And that means that I should be more normal today than when I was when I was first a believer.

And I should be definitely more normal today than when I was when I was lost in the world. If I'm not more normal today than I was a year ago, then something's wrong. Or the idea is that I have no concept of what normal is.

So let's look at what he says here. What was the first thing? He said they devoted themselves to the Word. The idea of devoting themselves is not that they had a little devotion. It's not the idea that they went and picked up their little devotional and read five minutes of it and said, I've done my duty.

The idea is of the abandonment to this. They devoted their entire lives. Everything that they were, everything that they had, everything that they desired, everything came under the authority of the Word.

Their Christianity was not a dimension of their life. Their Christianity was absolutely their life. Totally 100 of every single second, of every single day, every moment, every dimension of their life had come under the place of being devoted to this God and devoted to his Word.

His Word was not a part of their life. His Word was their life. And then what does it say? It says that they devoted themselves to fellowship. We started out in the Phoenix area this year, went up into the Northwest and Oregon and Washington, went over to Maine and to Canada and then down the seacoast and then through Alabama and then back out this way.

So we see a whole lot. And you know what I see going on in the Pentecostal church? We're becoming less normal, not more normal. We don't have time anymore for Sunday night church. We don't have time to worship him.

Those things are a burden to us. Give me Sunday morning. That's all I want. Don't invade my space. What it was, the early church loved the fellowship of the saints. They loved it. You could not keep them away from each other.

It is what defined them. They didn't want the fellowship with the TV. They had no desire to fellowship with the television and to get their concept of television from the world. They wanted to be with one another, to encourage one another, to build up one another.

They were devoted to it. It was not a part of their life, not a little time slot Sunday morning. It was their literal life. It's what they longed to be. It is lost in the church today. We are becoming more worldly and thinking ourselves, okay, that this is normal.

And the problem is our concept of normal is relating to one another, not to the early church and to Christ who founded that church. They devoted themselves to the breaking of bread. The idea of the breaking of bread is probably twofold.

It was the idea of their love feast that they would have, that they would get together to fellowship and share their food and their time together, and that they would also partake of the Lord's Supper in a time of remembrance of who He was.

And it said that they devoted themselves to prayer. Now we've got to understand that their devotion to prayer was not something that was haphazard or just a little time slot. I'll give Jesus a little time while I drive in the car to work.

We think that's normal. It has nothing to do with normal. If you look at the prayer life of Jesus, you find Jesus was in constant communion with His Father, and then He had those times of constantly getting away to be just with His Father, because He loved being with His Father.

And what was normal was to be in a place of constant, never-ending communion, and a place of constant abiding with Him, and a place of longing to be just the way, just with Him. It is not normal Christianity for people not to be active and vibrant in prayer.

It's not normal for Christians not to be in prayer meetings. It's not normal for them to have a passion for His presence in the prayer closet. It's not normal. It's a perversion, and we call that normal today.

We call it normal to be prayerless. We call it normal not to be a part of the prayer groups. We call it normal to have a couple of minutes prayer a day and think that God is happy with that. We call that normal to come home from work and to turn on the television instead of hiding away with Him on our faces.

We call that normal. But it's not normal. It's a perversion, because the early church devoted themselves to prayer. It wasn't a side issue. It was their life. It's what defined their life, defined their Christianity, defined the life of the church.

And so as a result of these things being what they literally devoted their entire life to, as a result of it, it says everyone was filled with awe. Not just those within the church, those outside the church.

They were filled with awe, and many signs and wonders took place. You want to know what? Let me be really honest with you here. The world is not in awe of you. The majority of this community doesn't even know you exist.

We're not normal. But we pat ourselves on the back for so long that we are. And the real question is, do we really want to get normal? Because you know what it goes back to? If we want to get normal, we've got to start doing this very first thing, to devote ourselves to the Word and fellowship, breaking the bread and the prayer.

Not an aspect, a dimension of our life. It literally has become the driving force of our life. And we'll never be normal apart from that, because that is the standard that Christ established of what it means to be normal.

And then it says they took care of one another, selfless love, giving of themselves, that if they had possessions, they would sell them so that other people could have. That has nothing to do with the American church today.

Virtually nothing. The American church is about what we can accumulate, a God that will prosper us financially, that will make us prosperous, so we can have stuff and more stuff, and spend the stuff and the money we get on ourselves, we'll give a little bit to the church, a little bit to missions, and the rest is all mine, mine, mine.

That has nothing to do with Christianity. Nothing in any way, shape, or form. You look at the early church, and the early church gave of what they had. They didn't hold it, they didn't greedily keep it, they were looking to get the biggest and the best cars that they could have, or the biggest and best SUVs, or the biggest and best houses, or the biggest and best anything.

They lived to give, and to give of themselves, even if it cost them their own comforts and pleasures and ease and wants and desires. We don't understand that. And then, there's another thing of normal Christianity, the Lord added daily to them.

You want to know what happens? We can go week after week, and month after month, and not have people saved at altars, and think that it's normal. Do you hear what I'm saying? When was the last time that nobody was saved at your church, and you ran to the altars, and you wept at it?

It says, dear God, deliver us, heal us of our barrenness. Do you know in the Old Testament, for a woman to be barren, they always thought it was a curse of God? Do you understand barrenness in the church today is not life, it's death, it's a curse of God?

It's that we're not normal, so we don't have the ability to produce, and God doesn't want us producing perverted, twisted children. He wants us producing normal children. He wants normal babies in us and saved at this altar.

He wants people that are twisted and deformed coming to this altar and being straightened out and made normal. And if we're not normal, then what's He going to make? Because if they come to this altar, they will become just like you.

And does God want the converts that come to this church to be just like you? Does He want them to follow you everywhere you go, to pray like you pray, to act like you act, for your marriage to be just like your marriage, for their evangelism to be just the way that you evangelize, the study of the Word and the prayer to be just like you?

Does He want them like you? Because you know in His goodness, and this may be a disturbing statement, but in His love and mercy, He may keep them from you because He doesn't want them like you. That's a disturbing statement, isn't it?

Now let's look a little further at what was normal in the book of Acts. Fourth chapter and the thirteenth verse. Interesting verse here. When they, referring to the Sanhedrin council, saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and took note that these men had been with Jesus.

So what is going on here is the Sanhedrin council knew who Jesus was. They saw the life of Jesus. They saw the acts of Jesus. They saw the miracles of Jesus. They heard the words of Jesus. They crucified that man.

They crucified the Son of God. And now here's two men standing before them that are talking like Jesus, acting like Jesus, behaving themselves like Jesus, seeing the miracles like Jesus. And when they looked at them, they said, these men have been with Jesus.

What they're looking at is, here's all the twisted Sanhedrin looking at some men that are standing up there straight that are becoming normal. And they went and said, those are some normal people. Now, of course, they wouldn't have said that they were normal.

They would have said themselves normal. But yet they saw something that was not like them, something that was like the Jesus that they had just crucified, and it disturbed them greatly. Can people tell that we've been with Jesus because we act like him, we talk like him, we think like him, because we're becoming more normal?

Or do they look at us and see us not much different than them? The majority of people who call themselves Christian today are not much different than the world. They watch pretty much the same things on television.

Listen to so much of the same music. Act the same way. Live out the same type of life. Their marriages are just as much of chaos as the world's is. So what do we have to give the world? What can we go to them?

Say, look, come to Jesus and you can be like me. That's disturbing, isn't it? What we should be doing is just come to Jesus and be like me, but we should be making sure that people can see that we've been with Jesus, that we've been with him.

In Acts 9, I'll just read you a few verses that speak of the conversion of Paul. Here is this newborn babe that comes to Christ. And you want to know what? He was a twisted mess of religion, a twisted mess of religion.

And when he comes to an altar, in essence, Jesus delivers him and starts straightening him out, starts making him normal. Let's look at what normal looks like. And you want to know what, church? This doesn't look like us.

Let's look at this. Let's see what conversion was meant to be and whether or not we are producing normal conversions. In Acts 9 -16, what's going on there is God speaks to a man named Ananias and tells him, go to Paul and tell him what I want you to tell him and pray for him that he would receive his sight and receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

And so what does he say to Ananias about Paul? He says, I will show Paul how much he must suffer for my name. God didn't go to Paul and say, Paul, I'm going to make your life wonderful. You want to know what?

When we do that, we start twisting them even more than what they were when they came to Christ. We start saying Jesus is out just to make you happy and prosper you. The reality is his life is difficult.

And as a Christian, we're going to face spiritual warfare. And if we become normal, there's a price to pay. And so right off the bat, God says, I'll show him what he's going to suffer. Well, then what does he say in the 20th verse?

At once, not years later, at once he began to preach in the synagogue that Jesus, son of God. Then the 22nd verse says, yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ.

After many days, the Jews conspired to kill him. You know, that's normal Christianity. That's normal. Do we look anything like this? Is our life anything like that? Paul gets saved and immediately, even though he's told you're going to suffer for me, immediately he goes out and begins to proclaim the wonder of this God.

Begins to proclaim the wonder of this God that can save from the twisted perversions of his own life. And his anointing was so great upon him, his passion so real, he became so quickly a threat to the devil that what they want to do after a little bit of time, they're trying to kill this newborn babe in Christ.

You know what we do? We get people get saved. And then what we do, we start making them like us. And if they get a little bit alive, you know, then we want to calm them down because you know what happens if somebody has a fire God and we don't?

You know what it does? It reproves us. It tells us that we're dead. It shows that there's no fire. And you know what we want to do? Either one or two things. Either we're going to go get the fire and say, I want to be like that.

Or more than likely what we do, we try to calm them down to make them like us. Because if they stay on fire, they're going to continue to be reproved to our life. They're going to continue to show that we're not normal.

Let's look a little further in Philippi. Paul's there in Acts 16 and the 20th verse. It says these men's being Jews do exceedingly trouble our city. Do you exceedingly trouble your city? That's normal Christianity to trouble it.

Not trouble it with problems, not trouble it with the police coming over because you're having another marital conflict in the home. But that you're troubling the city because the gospel is going forth with such love, such power, such anointing that it's disturbing them, that the worst of the worst are being saved, that businessmen are being saved, that buyers are starting to suffer business because so many are being saved as a result.

Are we normal? Are we even close to normal? We become so comfortable in the community, they don't even know we exist anymore. He's wanting to make us normal though. The problem is, let me be honest here, the majority of you don't want to be normal.

That's the reality. You don't want to be normal. The truth of the matter is, I'm not preaching for the majority of you. Because I know the majority of you don't have ears to hear. Self-righteousness is blinding you, is stopping up your ears that you cannot hear what I'm saying.

But you know who I'm preaching for? I'm preaching for the couple that would want to be like a Paul. For the couple that would want to be like a Stephen or a Philip or a Peter and a John. Those are the ones I'm out after.

Because you want to know what? We can fill pews with dead people and all dead people do is they stink in their own decay. But you want to know what? Babies produce life. Living people produce. And that's what I'm out after, to see people come alive in Christ, that they might reproduce life.

Let's look a little further. In Thessalonica, in the 17th chapter, the sixth verse, here's a testimony that comes from an unsaved man about Paul. These who have turned the world upside down have come here too.

That's normal Christianity. Let's look at it again when he's at Ephesus in Acts 19. He says, you've seen here how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia.

I want you to think about that for a moment. You know what was going on? So many were being saved in Ephesus. So many were being saved. And this was a large city. I mean, you're not, I'm not talking about a couple thousand.

I'm talking tens of thousands of people. I don't know the exact numbers or anything else about it. But this was a large city because it was a Roman colony. As a Roman colony, it would have a Roman legion.

It would have Roman officials and everything else that would be there. And so this was a large, a large city. And here out of this, so many were being saved that the silversmiths started a riot. What was the issue here?

The silversmiths were making idols of the goddess Diana because Ephesus was known as being the central place of the worship of Diana. And so many were being saved that they weren't buying idols anymore.

How many people would need to be saved before a riot started in your town from the drug dealers and the bar owners infuriated at you? Do you understand that this was not a couple of people coming to an altar, a couple of people through the year?

This was a massive people, so many being saved, that it was literally affecting the economy of their community. That's normal Christianity. That's normal. Now, let me shift gears here. And let me look at a little bit of what makes us unnormal.

Because this is an important thing. I think what makes us unnormal, we don't even understand. I was born and bred in the Detroit area. And so you know what that means? That means I think like an American.

I don't know how to think otherwise. And so as a result, there are things in the American culture that are good and things in the American culture that are evil. And if I don't try to understand what is evil and not allow it to become part of my way of thinking, you all know what that way of thinking is going to be part of me.

If I do not make sure that I'm thinking right and allowing my life to be developed and defined by the word of God and by this place of the very first things that we looked at, at the place of devotion, the word of God and fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer, if I don't allow my life to be defined by that, other things will define it.

And that's what's going on in the church today. We are being defined by other things. Other things are telling us what is right and wrong, what is of importance and of value, what is worth spending our life on, what is worth living for and dying for.

And so what I want to do is I want to look at the philosophy of American thought. I'm going to make this very simple. I'm going to make this very basic. I want to share with you first a quote from a man named Roy Hesschen.

He said, the breaking in of truth about ourselves and about God and the shattering of the illusion in which we have been living is the beginning of revival for the Christian as it is of salvation for the lost.

But we have lost sight of things as they really are and are now living in the realm of complete illusion about ourselves. What he was saying is that we are living a lie as Christians. We're in an illusion.

We think we're normal, but we are so subnormal, we don't even know how far we've fallen because we're not willing to look at the standard. We're not willing to look at what has shaped our lives. We're not willing to cease to be worldly people.

Let's look at this. There's three points I want to touch on the philosophy of American thought. And I will give this to you as an absolute. Every single person in this room suffers under it to one extent or the other.

The worst thing you can do is sit there and say, not me. Because you know what that does? That keeps you in it. These three things I'm just going to highlight. I'm not going to get deep in philosophy here.

I'm just going to highlight these points. What is the very first thing that defines the philosophy of American life today? The first one is extreme individualism. What is extreme individualism? In America, we are people fiercely individualistic.

We want to do things our way. We don't want people telling us what to do. We are independent, independent in our hearts, independent in our minds, independent in our relationships. We don't want to be controlled.

We don't want people telling us what to do. We don't like it when bosses tell us what to do or spouses tell us what to do or children tell us what to do or anybody tells us what to do. When people are telling us what to do, we get hot and bothered.

We get angry. We say, who do you think you are? And who we dislike most of all telling us what to do is God. We don't like it. We are extreme individualist. And do you know what individualism really comes down to be?

It is a philosophy of humanism. And what is humanism? Humanism, very simply put, and the man that probably gave the best definition of it was a philosopher from the 5th century BC. His name was Protagorius.

And he gave the definition of humanism where man is the center of all things. Man is the center of it. Well, how does humanism affect the church? Humanism makes God exist for man. That God is there to make me happy.

God is there to satisfy me. God is there to fill my every need. We make God subservient to us. We make it all about us. We make worship about the issue of whether we come and get blessed. We make church whether or not we get something from it.

We make church a humanistic thing where we walk through the doors and say, how come the church here, if you meet my needs, what kind of programs you got, pastor? What kind of things you got to offer me?

Raw humanism. How often is it we begin complaining because we think we deserve more? Because we think life is about us. That God is there to prosper us, make us happy, meet our every need. Actually, it's the total opposite.

We were created to bring pleasure to God, to joy to His heart. That my worship is ultimately to bring glory to His name. It has nothing to do with me. That my service is not about me, whether I'm fulfilled.

That church has nothing to do with me. It has to do with God. That is to be all Christ-centered, all Him-centered, not me-centered. And as long as we have man at the center of it, everything is going to be about him.

How many of you come to church for what you can get? And you want to know a good example of what it is to come here just for what you can get? Those who come here just for what they can get are never involved in the church.

Never involved. They have no ministry. They have no involvement. They'll come here Sunday morning, be gone, you'll never see them again. Because life is all about them. Church is all about them. It's all what they can get.

It is a selfish, self-absorbed concept of life that they pursue because that's what they want. They do not want a God that's going to invade their space, nor a God that will upset their way of living.

Let's look at the people of God in the days of the judges. And I want to read to you one verse that is interesting. The 21st chapter and 25th verse, it says, In those days Israel had no king. Everyone did as he saw fit.

That's an interesting thing. Everybody did as he saw fit. That's humanism. To do exactly what I want, the way that I want to, when I want to, how I want to. Everything's about me. Well, let's look at it in 2 Kings, the 17th chapter.

As Israel goes on in time, they take this humanism and the worship of God, and now they take it further, to a further extent. Let's look at what happens here. In 2 Kings 17, in the 33rd verse, it says, They worshiped the Lord.

Well, that sounds good. Let's look at the rest of the verse. But they also served their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations which they had been brought. So the idea of their humanism went and says, Well, I'll worship God with what's convenient, but I'm going to worship my own stuff as well.

I'll do what God wants me to do Sunday. Well, I'll just come to church and worship and pray a little prayer occasionally when life gets hard, but I'm going to go live the rest of my life doing my own thing, worshiping my own gods, my own desires, my own ambitions, my own wants.

It's all about man. It's all about man being the center. Do you know what happens when we become an individualistic people? Do you know what happens when we become fiercely individualistic? The next point of the American philosophy is that we become a self-indulgent people.

We become a people that are desire-driven because we want what we want no matter what it costs. And so you know what we do as Christians? We'll get a hold of our charge cards. We'll charge our charge cards up because we see things we want and we think we deserve them.

They do this as advertisers. You know, you'll be sitting there watching television and the advertiser will come on and here's this big red truck. And they say, You deserve a new Ford today. And you sit there and go, Yeah, I do.

I do. I've been wanting that big red Ford for so long. And then another show comes on and says, You deserve a new wife today. Yeah, I do. I'm pretty tired of this old one. Do you hear what I'm talking about?

A self-indulgent people. If I'm individualistic, I'm going to pursue one thing. The lust of my own flesh. What I want. It's going to be all about me. It's going to be all about my life. Jesus made this interesting statement.

Matthew 24, He said, Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold. We always think of that with other people. Them out there, and I believe it has to do with them out there, that as wickedness, as lawlessness increases, that their love will grow cold.

And we can look at that just with news stories. And sometimes when I'm on the road or when I'm preaching, I can go weeks without even knowing what the news is. And just because I can't get a radio station or anything else, try and get the news.

But I remember a little bit ago, maybe a month or so ago, the story of a woman that threw her babies over the bridge and drowned them. Because wickedness abounds, the love of most will grow cold. But when wickedness, lawlessness abounds in the church, guess what happens in the church?

Their love grows cold just as well. And let me give you an idea here of wickedness, of lawlessness, where you can go and say, Well, I'm not a lawless individual. You know what lawlessness is? It's breaking the law.