Secret Fanatics 1976

I'd like to start out today by reading a verse that may sound strange, but it's not in there by accident. From 2 Corinthians 5, verse 13, For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. If we are in our right mind, it is for you.

One thing that we're seeing more and more of these days is the fanatic. And I'm not talking about the health fanatic or the natural food fanatic, the chess fanatic. I'm talking about the man or the woman who is so taken up with a particular cause that they're willing, cheerfully, to die for it.

The revolutionary who wraps himself up in bombs and somehow gets on the 747 isn't kidding. He's in dead earnest about what he's doing. Perhaps he's practiced for this thing for years, at least for months.

And if you aim 50 guns at him, that's not going to scare him. He has come to do a job. He's going to get it done.

And if he dies doing it, he considers that a privilege. Now you may feel sorry for him, a man who gets so carried away. But this man is going to turn right around and feel sorry for you.

He says, at least I have something to live for. I know what I'm doing with my life. And if I have to go hungry, if I have to do without a few things, if I have to sit in prison for a while, or even if I have to die, at least my life has meaning.

Does your life have meaning? Then the cause for which this man has just given everything falls apart. Now what does he have? What do you do when the purpose or the cause or the movement for which you've given everything you got, shed your own blood perhaps, turns out to be more corrupt than all the corruption you were fighting out there in the world? See the problem with fanaticism is not that people sell out everything they have for that cause, that people are willing to die for the truth that they're convinced is the truth. The problem with fanaticism is that the average, in most cases if not all, the movement, the revolution, the cause, the purpose for which this person lays down his life, turns out to be false.

See the issue is not, is that man a fanatic, implying, see, that to be a fanatic is evil, but the issue rather is, is this cause, this hope, this purpose for which this person lays down his life worth it? The only thing in the world as far as I'm concerned that's worth sinking your life in with the abandon of a fanatic is God. And a strange thing happens when you become a fanatic for God. Suddenly your fanaticism becomes an inward thing, secret, hidden from the eyes of men.

If you flaunt your fanaticism, if you march around parading all your great sacrifices before the eyes of men, then you're a hypocrite. Let's suppose that somehow or other we're able to travel back through the centuries into the Middle Ages to a city in Eastern Europe, like every other city in Europe at that time, that's just teeming with religious fanatics. On any given day you can see a bunch of monks marching down the street, beating themselves with ropes to try to purify their bodies.

And in another section of town these guys are carrying great big heavy wooden crosses for miles every day. And over here are a group of women who are almost starved to death. They're fasting and fasting and their eyes are sunken deep in their heads as a means of trying to purify themselves.

Now the people of this town are very impressed with these deeply committed ones because that's the thing to do. And so they come up to these ones who are so committed in this way and will ask for special prayers. You know, pray for my mother, pray for my brother, pray for my little child.

And of course the prayers are prayed but it seems like nothing seems to happen. There's in this town a cabinet maker who opens a shop every morning at 8 o'clock and at noon he's standing in the doorway socializing with the people as they come and go down the street. He's perfectly dull and normal like everybody else.

And yet it gets to be known that when this cabinet maker lays his hand on a sick child, the child is always healed. He brushes it off as a, you know, well, after all, what's wrong with, you know, anybody can pray for a sick child and see it healed. And so nobody really makes much fuss over him except the monks who are beating themselves with ropes and the people who are carrying the crosses and the women who are going without food really find this source of tremendous irritation and envy.

How come the power of God flows out through that man and not through us? We're the totally committed ones. We're the ones who have sold out our lives and he's just an ordinary cabinet maker. But what they don't know is that the only true fanatic for God in that whole city is the cabinet maker.

That beneath the surface of his very ordinary life there burns a flame of passion for God that melts his very body into a stream that goes out and heals. Before God, this man is beside himself. And before men, he's perfectly normal.

For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. If we are in our right mind, if we are in our right mind, it is for you. Now, this was the thing that people couldn't figure out about Jesus.

He looked so ordinary, there was nothing flashing, nothing spectacular about him. He was so simple, yet every life this man touched was somehow changed. Not everybody was saved, but nobody was the same after they were touched by Jesus.

Yet he didn't bear any of the marks of a fanatic. In fact, he was even accused of being a wine-biver and a glutton. The fanaticism, the burning passion was hidden.

This man, Jesus of Nazareth, was beside himself with love for his father and the desire to do his father's will, even if it meant laying down his life for the sins of the race. Now, many times we feel a kind of pressure to do certain things or talk in a certain way that will convince people around us that we are truly committed to Jesus. See, but the minute you begin to act in a certain way to demonstrate to people around you that you are committed to Jesus, you've lost your commitment.

You've defiled it. If you want to be a fanatic for God, the only one who will ever know that you're a fanatic for God will be God. People may see good works flowing out, they may even see at times that healing stream touching lives, and may somehow even have a strange conviction coming over them as you utter the name of Jesus from time to time, but they will never see the flame of passion for God that burns inside your soul, nor should they ever see it.

Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Piety is a valid fanaticism. Piety is simply the thing or things that we do to demonstrate to God how much we love Him.

But it must always be practiced in secret. And so, we are secret fanatics in our giving. Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men.

Truly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Now, in the Apostolic Church, we know from reading the Book of Acts that there would be people who would sell extra property and bring the money that they got from the sale of the property and lay it publicly before the Apostles' feet.

And in Corinth, when they collected money together to send to Judea, to the saints who were half-starved over there, it was no doubt quite public. At least, much of it was. And we may pass the plate.

God may show us to do something else later on. Who knows? Or maybe He's showing us now, and we're too stupid to see this. But whatever.

We may use envelopes, or we may not believe in using envelopes. But the real issue is that however we give our alms, our offering to God, it is to be done in such a way that nobody sees the cost to us. The minute we begin to give in such a way that people see the cost to us, you know, then we're hypocrites.

We become fanatics before the eyes of men, and we become hypocrites. You know, the giving that we may do to God may look, if anybody could see it, absolutely crazy, unreasonable to any sensible person. We are beside ourselves.

See, but we are beside ourselves in secret before God. Nobody sees what's really happening to us and what this is truly costing us, but our Father who sees in secret. And when we do this, we will begin to then see that our Heavenly Father causes what we offer up to Him to become worth far more than the dollar value.

We are to be secret fanatics in our praying. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward.

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Again, this does not mean that Jesus is just making a blanket condemnation of public prayer. Jesus himself prayed in public.

The apostles prayed publicly in front of each other at times. But if you pray in public, whatever public prayer you may pray must be the tip of the iceberg. The vast bulk of the prayers that we pray are to be prayed in secret before God.

Now, when we begin to put our hearts into praying alone before God, when we apply our minds and our strength, our understanding to lifting people up before the throne of God faithfully, and weeping before God for these needs that are pressing in on all our lives, and crying out to him for help, then a strange thing begins to happen out there where we're more sane among men. We will then begin to see God answering our prayers out there, and nobody will know that God has answered our prayers but God. We don't say, you know, well, I mean, there are times, of course, we rejoice.

Praise God, he answered my prayers. We see, you know, Brother Dave back in our midst, or whatever, you know. But normally, you know, we hide this, we cover it.

We don't, you know, our prayer life is something to be done before God alone. But the results will be out there in the open, and the glory will go to God alone. And so we won't have to be fighting over whose prayers God answered when so-and-so was raised up off their sickbed.

Oh, but I pray for him, too, so I get half the credit. We have to be fanatics in our self-denial, but secret. And when you fast, do not look dismal like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men.

Truly, I say to you, they have the reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men, but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Now fasting, which is simply the denial of some legitimate pleasure or need to glorify God, can take many forms.

It may be going without food or going without certain food or giving up a certain thing that makes us pleased or happy or comfortable. But it is never done in order to see how miserable we can make ourselves, how much pain we can stand, how morbid we can get. It is always done so that we can concentrate our hearts on a higher joy, the joy of loving and serving our Father.

When fasting or any kind of self-denial becomes ingrown and in turn, then it becomes morbid. But while we're denying ourselves this or that, in order to concentrate on the mercy and love of God and the worship of His glory, we do it in such a way that nobody sees it. There may be a flame of glory burning in your heart, and your stomach may be growling for hunger, but you go right on doing what needs to be done in your daily life.

You wash your face, you comb your hair, you look your best. And then God, who sees in secret, will allow you the privilege from time to time of seeing a stream of redemptive life going out from you and touching. Otherwise, through your self-denial, through your identification in your living with the cross of Jesus.

So, the more we yield to the influence and the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God, the more we will become an assembly of fanatics. But, the less and less fanatical we will look to the world, more and more we will simply become ordinary, responsible, down-to-earth people who talk and behave in a quite undramatic way. And yet, as we do this, more and more the stream of healing will flow out from among us, and lives that come into our midst will more and more begin to experience sudden or rapid changes for the good.

And the only one who will know why this is happening will be God, who sees, and He alone sees, how we are beside ourselves with thanksgiving and praise for the gift of His Son, Jesus. How we are beside ourselves with the mystery of His cross and the comfort of His Spirit. And we show this in so many ways to God and to God alone.

Let's pray. Oh Lord God, we know that if we could only see reality as it is, so many of the things that we seem to be driven by or drawn by would just fall away from us, we wouldn't even think about them. So many of the things that appear to us as beautiful, attractive, desirable to have, would be seen as something that's not worth wasting time on.

And we just pray, Lord God, that You will teach us this mystery that was given us in the example of Jesus, and in the example of His apostles, of being beside ourselves for You, Lord, and in our right minds for each other and for all men. We ask it for Your mercy's sake. Amen.