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  NORMAL CHRISTIANITY
  by Glenn Meldrum
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Summary: Normal Christianity is living a life devoted to the Word,
fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer, as seen in the early church, and
it's the only standard of what normal is, according to Jesus Christ.

Duration: 54:19 Topics: "Separation From World", "Holy Living"
Scripture References: Acts 2:42-44

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DESCRIPTION
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In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the need for Christians to
separate themselves from worldly influences. He compares the need for
Jesus to drive out the money changers from the temple to the need for
believers to remove things like television, music, and other forms of
entertainment that are contrary to God's standards. The preacher
highlights the danger of compromising with the world and adopting its
values, pointing out that many churches and Christians are no different
from the world in their choices and lifestyles. He calls for believers
to be transformed by their relationship with Jesus and to live holy
lives, just as Jesus did. The sermon emphasizes the importance of
surrendering to God and abandoning oneself to His will.

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CONTENT
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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.

They're a 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 laughingstock 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, then 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 the 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, 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, is our 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
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've 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, in 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 awe 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, this is a sermon in itself to preach this idea of
what was normal.

We have to understand at this point they had walked with Jesus. This is
just after Pentecost. They had 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, 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's 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 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.

It's not in awe. 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 to 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 prosper.

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 weren't 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 your 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 Him 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 it's 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 and 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 synagogues 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 live, 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 of 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 in the 20th verse. It says, these men 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 enormity 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, it's stopping up your ears that you
cannot hear what I'm saying. But do 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 of the 6th 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 see and hear 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. Do
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'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 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? How many people 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 mass of 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 do 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 want to know what?
That way of thinking is going to be part of me.

If I do not make sure that I am 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 to 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 are in an illusion.

We are living 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 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 start 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 individualists. 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 B.C. 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 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, where 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 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.

In 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.

Now, 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, self-loathing 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, 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, you know, I can't get a radio station
or anything else to 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 you
know, 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. Now we can go and
say, Well, I'm not breaking the law. I obey the laws of the land here.

I'm a good person. But it's not the laws of the land that he's really
addressing. It's the laws of God.

And let me present this in a way. You know, the scriptures emphatically
tell us that no fornicator will enter the kingdom of heaven. Not one.

What's fornication? It's an old word, so we really don't know what it
means. So let me make it very practical to us. Fornication is premarital
sex in any way, shape, or form.

It's a one-night stand. It's a man and woman living together outside of
marriage. It's adultery.

It's any form of sexual perversion. And it says not one person that's a
fornicator will enter the kingdom of heaven. It's an impossible.

But you know what we do? We go and we sit in front of the television.
And we watch fornication with our eyes. Or we listen to the filth of
jokes that are all sexual.

And then we come to church and we raise our hands and say, Oh, Jesus, I
love you so much. What a lie. It's because we are a fiercely
individualistic people that are living for our own lust of our flesh.

We are self-indulgent. So we allow the increase of wickedness in our own
hearts, in our own minds, in our own lives. We compromise the faith and
as a result our love grows cold.

Because you want to know what? We are more concerned whether our house
is in good repair and everything's going fine in our life than whether
our neighbors are going to a real and literal hell. Do you hear what I'm
saying? We do not love the lost. We don't care about the lost.

We'll do very little to try and reach any. How many of you that call
yourselves Christians, when was the last time you witnessed? When was
the last time you reached out to your loved ones or to neighbors or even
strangers? When was the last time you tried to speak to somebody about
their soul that you cared about them? Because wickedness increases, the
love of most will grow cold. Most! Look at the Greek word in there.

It refers to virtually everyone almost. It's what happens. It's what's
happened to the church.

It's not normal. What was the early church? They cared about a perishing
world. They laid their lives down to rescue a perishing world.

It's not normal Christianity not to do that. It's a perversion. We are
called to be like our Lord and Master.

We're called to be like the early church. They laid their lives down for
the salvation of the lost. They laid their possessions down, their
wants, their ambitions, their careers, their everything.

That is normal Christianity. Because we are self-indulgent, we are
twisted perversions of what we call Christian. And what is the last
thing? Individualism and self-indulgent people produces another thing.

It produces a victim mentality. What do I mean by a victim mentality?
That it's not my fault. How many marriages fall apart because husband
and wife point fingers at each other? If he wasn't such a jerk, if she
wasn't such a woman like that, I wouldn't have a problem.

This marriage would be good. So we point fingers at each other. We blame
everybody else.

We have that so much in our society today. Everybody's blaming everybody
else. I'm like this because of my parents.

I'm like this because of the boss. I wouldn't have lost this boss if he
wouldn't have been like that. I knew better than the boss and he should
have listened to me.

And so on. All the blaming of everybody else, never looking in the
mirror. How many people in this room will not listen to this message,
really listen to it, take it to heart because you are playing that old
victim mentality.

I don't have a problem. It's other people. I wish my husband was here or
my wife was here or my son was here.

Rather than understanding that what is being preached is for you because
until you hear it, there's no hope of change. A victim mentality. You
know how Jesus deals with the reality of our sin? It tells us in Romans
2, 4 that the goodness of God leads us to repentance.

It is His love, it is His tenderness, it is His kindness that leads us
there. No man can rightly value the redemption of Christ who has not
seen himself lost and undone and absolutely without hope outside the
cross. And so what is the love of God made manifest? It is revealing the
reality of our wickedness, of our lawlessness that is stealing away our
heart, making it go cold because we are so individualistic that we are
self-indulgent people that we are people then that call victim as a
result.

Now how do we become normal? You know, we'll never become normal until
we first see our abnormalities. You know that? You cannot repent of any
sin until you understand what your sin is. And if you cover your eyes
and stop your ears to what the Spirit of God will say, do you want to
know what? He will leave you in your sin.

He'll leave you in your sin. That's a disturbing thing. He loves us so
much He died to rescue us.

But He will not force upon us the change of our characters, the change
of our lives if we will not embrace it, if we will not allow it. So we
have to want to hear. We have to pray like Psalms 139 where I prayed in
the opening here where David went and said, Search me, O Lord.

Courageous prayers that would say, God, search me. I don't want nothing
in my life contrary to You. I don't want anything breaking Your heart.

I don't want a self-indulgent attitude. I don't want individualism
robbing me of relationship. I don't want to play the victim in always
blaming everybody else, dear God.

Forgive me of those things. Change me. But until I understand that I'm
not normal, guess what? I'll never begin to pray prayers that might
change me.

As long as I think everything's fine and dandy, that my Christianity's
okay, guess what? I will not pray about it or I'll pray it for somebody
else not realizing that I am the one that needs the transformation. So
how do we become normal? Let's look at this. Well, we have to go back to
the very idea of what normal is.

And what is normal is what the early church did, but more specifically
what Jesus did. And so John tells us in his epistle, in 1 John 2, in the
6th verse, I challenge you to memorize this verse. I challenge you to
make this verse the ambition of your life.

If you make this one verse the ambition of your life, I guarantee you'll
be a radical. You'll be a biblical Christian. Until this verse is lived
out in your life, you'll not be a biblical Christian.

You'll be a Christian that's cultural according to what all the deformed
individuals that say, well, you're normal, I'm normal, everything must
be okay. It's only when you look at this and this becomes the cry of
your heart, the cry of your life, the passion, will you become normal.
And what does 1 John 2, 6 say? Whoever claims to live in Jesus must walk
as Jesus did.

To be a Christian means I must walk exactly like He did. I must think
like He thought. I must walk as He walked.

I must love as He loved. I must give up myself as He did. I must abandon
myself as He did.

Everything He did is what I'm called to do. Anything less than that is
not Christian. Now that can really upset us, can't it? Because then if
we look in the mirror we all of a sudden start seeing a ton of stuff
that is very far from being Christian.

We start seeing the caliber of our marriages and we start saying, God,
you're no part of this place because it's nothing but chaos and madness
and bitterness and unforgiveness and attitudes. We start seeing how
unchristian we really are when we start looking at the truth of it. But
until we look at the truth of it, guess what? We will stay the twisted
mass of people that we have been for years and years and years.

So let me just touch on a few things of how we walk as Jesus walked, how
we become normal. And there's so much with this but I'm just going to
highlight a few points and then close. Let's look at Jesus.

How did Jesus walk? This is probably the most important of it all. This
is the most beautiful of all the things that I will share with you on
how to become normal. The most beautiful, the most important.

And what is that? It is intimacy with God. Jesus loved his Father. He
didn't pray because he had to pray.

He didn't pray because it was a set ritual. Though I do not doubt that
he had his devotional time. He'd get up in the morning, I don't doubt
he'd commune with his Father and commune with his Father every chance he
got.

He loved his Father so as a result of loving his Father, he constantly
communed with his Father. E.M. Baum is probably the best author in
prayer that this world has ever known. He made this one statement I
agree with so thoroughly.

I agree with completely because I think we have such a perverted concept
of Christianity that we think otherwise. But he made this statement that
he believed that nobody could be a Christian if they did not have an
active and vibrant prayer life. I believe that.

If you're here and you don't have a prayer life, you're not a Christian.
Now, you may not like that and you may go and say, well, who are you to
judge? Well, what I've got to judge is the Word of God. And how can
anybody say that they love God and not want to be with Him? How can we
say we love God and not want intimacy with Him? How can we say we love
God and not want to be with Him and talk with Him and have Him talk with
us? How can we say we love God and not want to be around Him? If you
don't want to be around Him now on your knees, why do you want to go to
Heaven? Because in Heaven, guess what you'll do? Constantly you'll be
communing with this God.

You'll be constantly in His presence. It is sheer madness to think that
if we don't want Him here really in this life, just a little pigeon hole
of our time, that we would really want to go to Heaven. If you want to
go to Heaven, then you need to want Heaven right now in your life.

And you would want that nearness with Him right now. You would want to
know Him in deep intimacy. You know what intimacy produces? It produces
a lifestyle of repentance.

What is a lifestyle of repentance? Let me present this in such a simple
way. It's so important. Repentance is not a cuss word.

It is the gift of God made manifest. You know what repentance is?
Repentance is if God reproves you a hundred times in a day and shows you
sin in your life a hundred times a day. You know what He's doing? He's
not saying you filthy good-for-nothing thing.

You know what He's really doing? He's saying, Child, I love you. I want
to come a little closer. But there's something between me and you.

Get the sin out. It is the love of God. It is His call to intimacy, call
to nearness.

And if I want intimacy with Christ, I have to live a life of repentance.
And you know what that means? That means that if I want Jesus right here
next to me, right by my side, that means that if He's that close, if I
break His heart, guess what? He makes one step away from me, I'll know.
And I can go, God, Jesus, please, forgive me.

Come back. Don't, don't, don't. I want your nearness more than life
itself.

But you want to know what? Where the majority of Christians keep Jesus
about a mile away. And you know, when Jesus is a mile away, He can make
a hundred steps and you wouldn't even know it. He could get further from
you and you wouldn't even understand it.

That's why Christians can drive Jesus further and further from them and
not even understand what they're doing as they go deeper and deeper into
their sin. Those who want to become normal must become a people of
intimacy with God. A people wanting Him more than life itself.

A people that are willing to live a lifestyle of repentance. Because
we're told in Psalms 24, it says, Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
He that hath clean hands and a pure heart. Those are the only ones who
will ascend the hill of the Lord, whether in this life or when we pass
through death's door.

Man, that some of you will be familiar with the name His name is Keith
Green. He was a musician, a Christian musician of the 70's. You know,
just a man trying to be radical and trying to produce radicals.

He made this wonderful little statement. He said, It seems to me that
there are but few who really live with a passion for God. Especially a
passion just to be with Him.

How many of you have a passion just to be with Him? How many of you have
a passion that when you're coming home from work and your hands are
falling upon the door to your house, that what's burning inside of you
is, I can't wait to be with Him. How many of you ache to be with Him?
How many of you, your most precious time of the day is the prayer time,
that you can just be with Jesus. That you can be there just alone with
Him.

Nobody else around. Nobody else invading that time that you want to be
with Him and Him alone. And it's not this five minutes that you go and
you rattle off some little prayers and you're gone.

You want to be with Him. So you want to talk with Him and you find being
in His presence to be so beautiful that you find yourself there for a
long time because it's joy, because it's beautiful, because He's the
most attractive and wonderful person to be with. How few Christians
understand this.

How are we going to be normal if we are not like our Savior in a place
of intimacy with Jesus? How else did Jesus walk? He walked in
abandonment to His Father. Jesus was totally abandoned to His Father. Do
you know that? He did everything that His Father asked Him to do.

Everything. He says, everything I say, I say because I heard from my
Father. He says, I do nothing of my own for I seek not to please myself
but Him who sent me.

His entire life was to please His Father. He abandoned Himself to the
will of His Father. Abandoned Himself to the will of the Father to go to
the cross.

Yielded. Yielded completely. Utterly.

Absolutely to His Father. And He lost nothing of His personality. He
lost nothing of who He was.

He didn't become half a person in essence. As a result, He gave Himself
up and the reality of His divine character was made manifest. You know,
He abandoned Himself for something else too.

He abandoned Himself to the will of the Father but then do you know what
He did? He also abandoned Himself for us. Jesus didn't go halfway to the
cross. He abandoned Himself to what we're going to look at in just a
little over a month when we're going to celebrate Christmas.

He abandoned Himself to the womb of a woman. You and I don't understand
how radical that is. That is radical beyond imagination.

That God would empty Himself of certain divine attributes to take upon
flesh and blood. That is sacrifice beyond imagination. He abandoned
Himself.

Then He abandoned Himself to the cross. His entire life was a life of
abandonment. And if we are not living a life abandoned to Him in every
dimension of our life, then our Christianity is a perversion because all
of Christianity is about giving up of our lives to Him.

Finding His Lordship. And that's really where it comes down to be
because for us abandoning ourselves to Christ is the issue of Lordship.
It's the issue of making Him Lord of my life.

Who's going to be Lord of my life? Is my own selfish nature? My own
individualism? My own love of self-indulgence? Is that what's going to
define my life? Or is the Lordship of Christ and His holiness and His
character going to be what defines my life? Who defines who I am? You
see, if I'm going to abandon myself to Christ, that means Lordship. That
means absolute Lordship. That means giving up every right, every desire,
every possession, every want, every ambition.

And you want to know what people think that this is radical, but this is
only normal. Let's just take a moment and look at the angels. The angels
have abandoned themselves to their God.

Abandoned themselves. God speaks to them and tells them to go and they
rush to do it. You want to know what happened with a group of angels
that refused to bow to the Lordship of Christ? That's who we call now
the devil and his demons.

It's those that were hurled out of heaven. Those angels that refused to
make Christ Lord And, you know, we have this concept that as Christians,
well, I don't really have to make Jesus Lord. I prayed the sinner's
prayer once.

I go to church once in a while. But Jesus is not everyone who says,
Lord, Lord, we're in the kingdom of heaven, but He who does will of my
Father. Those who truly are yielded and abandoned to Him.

You see, when God decides that He's going to move, He doesn't look for
those who are wise enough or educated enough. He looks for those who are
yielded and humble enough to risk everything in following Him. He
doesn't need your wisdom and abilities.

He doesn't need your talents. He doesn't need your money. He doesn't
need anything you have.

You know, what He's looking for is your surrender, your abandonment.
That's what all of Christianity is all about. That's what the cross is
all about.

That here we are. We are absolute sinners deserving the wrath of God and
only the wrath of God. And He broke into our world to reveal His love
and mercy that He would bear upon His shoulders the wrath that I deserve
that I might find His mercy.

And the only thing that is left for me is to abandon myself to this God.
What is... Two more points. How did Jesus walk? Jesus walked in absolute
holiness.

Jesus was holy. He was holy in His thoughts. He was holy in His words.

He was holy in His deeds. I guarantee you, church, 99.9% of what the
church watches on television, Jesus would not even tolerate. He would go
in with His scourge as what He did into the temple and drive out the
money changers.

He would go in and drive out our televisions and drive out all the
videos and all the music and all the junk that we listen to that we
think is so fine and dandy and okay, not understanding it's a total
abomination to Him. That we have compromised, that we stoop so low, that
we become so subnormal in what we think and watch and that it's okay.
And why do we think it's okay? Because we look at the rest of the world
and we say, well, they're all doing it and they're all walking around
like this all twisted and so we come to Christ and we're still twisted
and say, well, it's okay.

Look at all the churches doing it so I might as well do it too. It's
okay. Let's have a movie night together and watch something that's
totally disgusting to God.

But, of course, we wouldn't call it like that. Do you hear what I'm
saying? We're told this very terrifying verse in Hebrews 12. In the 14th
verse it says, Without holiness, no man shall see God.

That's a promise. If you're not holy, you won't make heaven your home.
No matter how much you come to church, no matter what things you say, no
matter what prayers you pray, if you're not walking in holiness, you
will not make heaven your home.

There's no other way around it. Either this is absolutely true, what he
said, or it's all a lie. And, you know, holiness is never legalism.

You want to know why holiness is never legalism? Let me clarify this
because this is such an important point. So many times people will say,
well, that's just legalistic. No, it's not.

It goes back to the very first point I made about intimacy. To become
normal, I have to want intimacy with him. Do you want to know what is
repulsive to God? My sin.

My sin pushes him away, keeps him away from me, keeps him at a distance.
And do you know what intimacy is? Intimacy is the desire to be holy
because we want him near. So holiness is a joy.

Holiness is a passion. Why would you want to sit down and watch
something on television that would break his heart? Why would you want
to watch some sitcom that is filled with so much filth and garbage? Why
would you want to watch all these shows that are coming out? I can't
even remember the names of them. They're the supposedly live shows that
are done out there.

You know, why would you want to watch things so filled with garbage and
filth and junk of this world and taint you and separate you from God and
then raise your hands on Sunday and say, I'm desperate for you? Holiness
is not a side issue. It's not an option for the Christian. And do you
want to know what? I should never have to apologize to the world or to
the church for being holy.

Because they're living in rebellion against God. Why should I apologize
to them that I'm not like them? And Christians, or acclaimed Christians
that are living in compromise, why should I apologize to them? Why
should I go and say, well, I'm sorry I'm not like you. Well, I'm glad
I'm not like you.

That's what it should be. We should say, I'm glad I'm not watching that
junk. I'm glad I'm not living in those type of lives.

Holiness. Without holiness, no man shall see God. What is the final
point? And I'm just going to highlight this very briefly and then close.

What is normal Christianity? Well, I think he started what normal was in
the church after he died and rose again and ascended to his father. He
established something that was of extreme importance to the normalcy of
the church. You know what that was? Pentecost.

It is normal for us to have Pentecost of power. Let me establish this
though very quickly and very briefly, but it's so important. The
Pentecost of power is more than speaking in tongues.

It is about changing the world. It's about anointing that can break the
chains. It's about a Paul that the power of God came upon him, the
spirit of God came upon him.

He had the baptism of the Holy Ghost and he turned the world upside
down. That is what he wants. That's the Pentecostal power he has for us.

That's what he's calling us to. Smith Wigglesworth, the precious man of
God, early Pentecostal, he made this statement that is so interesting.
He says, Know that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is to possess us so
that we are to be continually full of his utterances and revelations and
divine perception that we may be so remarkably controlled by the spirit
of God that we live and move in a glorious sphere of usefulness for his
glory.

That's what it's all about. The Holy Spirit, the baptism in the Holy
Spirit goes back to the issue of intimacy with God, goes back to the
issue of holiness and lordship. It goes back to the place that I am
abandoned, possessed of my God, that the power of God might flow through
me to touch a hurting, dying world.

That's what he calls us to. That's what is normal. How strange to be
almost saved but altogether lost.

Imagine, let me just make an illustration here. Imagine that there's
this fence. And this fence is the fence between those who are saved and
those who are unsaved.

And on one side are those who are going to heaven and those who are in
the kingdom of heaven. On the other side are those who are in the
kingdom of hell and those who are not going to make heaven their home
but will face eternal wrath. The majority of those that are on the side
of wrath are going to be way out there.

They're not going to want to be anywhere close to that picket fence that
separates heaven and hell in essence. They want to be far because they
love their sin, they love their rebellion and they just want to live in
it. They don't want to pretend to be some kind of Christian so they're
far off.

But there's this whole group of people that they hang around the fence.
And so they're at the fence and they talk to all the people on the other
side of the fence that are in the kingdom of heaven. They hang out, they
talk about, they have meals over the fence in essence.

But one is on the right side, the other is on the wrong side. And
imagine how foolish it would be to have the gate right there that you
could walk through but your entire life say, well I'm so close, look at
this, I must be Christian. I fellowship with Him.

I go to church with Him. I'm right there. But you never cross the line.

You never cross over. You never truly made Christ Lord. You never truly
surrendered your life to Him.

Because you hang out right there at the gate, right at the fence does
not mean you're a Christian. The only way that you can be a Christian is
you must cross over. There must be the radical transformation of your
life.

It's not a little sinner's prayer that you pray that makes you a
Christian. It is the surrender, the abandonment of your life to Him. So
how many of you will not even make it because you hang out around that
gate and you've never truly crossed over? How many of you? And imagine
the tragedy that you stand there before God and says, but I prophesied
in your name and I did things in your name and I cast out devils in your
name.

And He says, depart from Me, I never knew you. To hang out at the gate,
to be right there, so close, but an eternal distance away. Almost saved,
but altogether lost.

If there's anybody here in that condition, you want to know what? Jesus
wants to make some radicals. He wants some radical conversions at this
altar. But you know what the difficulty is? It's always the issue with
Pharisees.

It's always the issue of seeing the reality that we've went and said
we're Christian, but here I'm altogether lost. I've been so far from
Him. I've been living a life that is nowhere near what He wants, but I
put on this show at church.

Jesus, I'm outside the gate. Dear God, I don't want to die in that
place. Your eternal salvation is more important than your pride, more
important than what anybody thinks about you, more important than your
reputation.

It is worth the sacrifice of your reputation that you might obtain and
secure salvation and know that you are truly His. It's not worth
something to gamble with. It's not worth something just to think that,
well, I'm okay.

I'm not that bad of a person. I'm alright. I prayed 20, 30, 50 years
ago.

Everything's okay. You know, I go to church on Sunday, but what will you
hear from His lips one day? And if you don't have the absolute assurance
that you'll hear from His lips, well done now, good and faithful
servant, then you are gambling with your eternity and you will more than
likely lose that wager.

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Audio: https://sermonindex1.b-cdn.net/24/SID24662.mp3
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/glenn-meldrum/normal-christianity/
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