Dr Paul Allen

Trusting God’s Methods Is it not amazing: though we know the power of the Holy Spirit can be ours, we still ape the world’s wisdom, trust its forms of publicity and its noise, and imitate its ways of manipulating men! If we try to influence the world by using its methods, we are doing the Lord’s work in the flesh. If we put activity, even good activity, at the center rather than trusting God, then there may be the power of the world, but we will lack the power of the Holy Spirit. The key question is this: As we work for God in this fallen world, what are we trusting in?  To trust in particular methods is to copy the world and to remove ourselves from the tremendous promise that we have something different—the power of the Holy Spirit rather than the power of the human technique. Under the leadership of Moses and Joshua, the Jews marched when the ark marched and they stood still when the ark stood still. They did not rush ahead if God did not order the ark (which represented Himself...

“Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ .” ( Philippians 1:6 ) Our Lord gave this powerful promise to perform the good work that He began at and with the church at Philippi (the “you” is plural in the Greek text). It is an earthly, temporal promise; that is, the promise is to “perfect” the good work “until the day of Jesus Christ.” The church at Philippi closed its earthly doors centuries ago. Something much more than mere continuation is pledged. Surely our Lord has in mind His assurance that “the gates of hell” would not prevail against His church ( Matthew 16:18 ), but there were some churches to whom Christ spoke who were in danger of losing their “candlestick” or church-hood ( Revelation 2:4 ; 3:16). What, then, can we be assured of by this marvelous promise? Perhaps the basic “good work” that our Lord refers to is seen in the list of commendations given to the seven churches ...