"I am a part of a religious system that has created a whole host of means & methods for doing church that in the end require little if any help at all from the Holy Spirit of God. We don't have to fast & pray for the Church to grow, we can market for that to happen. We don't have to pray to bring the crowds in, we got publicity for that. It's dangerously possible to carry on with the means & programs of church & do them all smoothly & even be "successful" in our church culture & in the end get there & realize we've done it all & the Holy Spirit has been absent from the entire process. We've made a deadly mistake decieving ourselves mistaking the presence of physical bodies in a building for the existence of spiritual life in the Church. The greatest hindrance to the advancement of the Gospel to the nations today may be the attempt of the Church of God to do the work of God apart from the power of the Spirit of God. What if the greatest hindrance to the advancement of the Gospel is not the self indulgent immorality of our culture but the self sufficient mentality of the Church? One question, are we dependant on ourselves or are we desperate for His Spirit?" - "The Presence of Christ in the Great Commission" - By Dr. David Platt, Senior Pastor, Church at Brook Hills, Birmingham, Alabama
http://www.sbts.edu/resources/chapel/fall-2008/the-presence-of-christ-in-the-great-commission/
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