A pastor was in college at Dallas Baptist University, as he drove through Dallas on the way to his classes. He would always see a huge sign of a dynamic church in the area that said, “Lifting Up the Name of Jesus!” It was very impressive.
A dozen or so years ago, a Romanian pastor came to visit an American church. He had gotten to know the pastor, who had been involved in a Bible-smuggling ministry when the Iron Curtain was still up. The pastor asked him what he thought of our country and the church in this country.
His friend was at first hesitant to speak, for fear of giving offense, but finally said that in his opinion the American church was rich in material things but poor in spiritual things. And by that he did NOT mean that we were the blessed “poor in spirit” whom Jesus commended. No. What he meant was that American Christians, by and large, had a flabby faith because it was rarely even exercised, much less tested…