But when God comes by His Holy Spirit into His church, things can never be the same ever again. If things do not change within the church, is He really present and working in her? Can the holy God be among His people by the Holy Spirit and the church to feel at ease, comfortable? Is this remotely possible?
Where the church feels the impact of God’s presence with her, the heart cry from many is, “Where can I flee from your presence?” (Ps.139:5,7). This is extraordinary! This is simply astonishing! We have it recorded in Scripture that God’s people wanted away from Him; they wanted nothing to do with Him; and wanted to flee from Him as fast and as far as their feet can carry them.
And it is the same today. When God by His Holy Spirit returns to His backslidden church, there are ructions. This is inevitable. Divisions occur between members, and between members and the minister; believers are set against each other, and the Spirit of God is aggrieved. When God comes, things happen. And often these things are not what we want or expect. But God is the sovereign Lord over His church. The Greek word from which we drive our English word, ‘church,’ means ‘belonging to the Lord.’ The church is His, and He has the right to visit it whenever and however and wherever He pleases.
But when you think about it, this is but a faint picture of what it will be like when Christ comes to visit His church in the future. In fact, anytime He comes to visit His church, this will happen. There will be “wars and rumours of wars” within her ranks. It will be said of our backslidden church what was said by John when Christ came to earth, “He came unto His own, but His own did not receive Him,” (Jn.1:11,12). Christ is not welcome in His church, which He redeemed with His own blood. Even at the end of the first century Jesus said through John to the church at Laodicea, that He was actually standing outside the door of the church, knocking to get in. The church had shut Him out! Incredible! Unbelievable!
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