3/27//2020 After reading 2 years of VOM articles, and 8 chapters of “Revival God’s Way” by Leonard Ravenhill:

I do desire greatly to see the Church’s glory in my America restored. But it’s only because I’ve seen it in other nations around the world: nations where she is persecuted and treated as the enemy.

In my exploration of the Ten Stages of Christian Maturity entitled “To a Mature Man” I wrote two years ago, I made the case that every believer must be working toward the stage of Persecution. One man quoted by the Voice of the Martyrs said, “If I do not obey, then I don’t get persecuted.”

My question to the church in America is this: We are the body of Christ right? So often, Jesus is most recognizably portrayed as with his body hanging on the cross, right? This is what many people in our nation know. If the glory of Jesus body is portrayed as giving himself up on the cross
How should the glory of His body, the church, be portrayed?
If the Body of Jesus is not portrayed to people as giving himself on the cross,
how on earth, will mankind recognize our Savior in the church at all?

I also said in “To a Mature Man”, I don’t believe the church must be persecuted to come alive again. I believe it must come alive again and then will be persecuted. We lack in obedience, division from the world, the power of God, devotion to Him, and a heart to do righteousness and to follow His mission. Look at how things are going in our own nation right now. It’s not entirely their fault.

I am at Stage 6, but the danger here is getting entangled in the good and bad snares of the world. I have been bogged down by responsibilities, entertainments, and the fear of Man. It is the mercy of God to show me this, and it is my ache to need to share this, somehow.

Also, in sharing these stages with friends, one friend commented that the stages are sometimes in a loop. We go from Justice to Service back to Wilderness often. As I thought more about it, I realized that each stage is built upon the previous one. That means the key to advancing from one stage to the next is in the previous stage.
Example: If a person is in the Community Stage (5), but is not receiving any specific calling or clarity from the Lord about their mission, but they are falling into the pitfall of man’s approval, they will not advance to the Service Stage (6). To fix this, a believer must return to the Wilderness (4) to see if there is any area of compromise that is hindering his wholehearted devotion to the Lord. If a believer comes back to this stage and finds that the Holy Spirit is not even in him or with him, he must go back to his Baptism (3) to see if he has even received the Spirit. Only through humbly growing at the Lord’s pace will full Maturity in Christ be reached, and as T. Austin-Sparks said, “God is not satisfied with anything less than fullness.”

God, please forgive me for my slackness in pursuing this maturity and in calling others to this maturity. It is only in the person of Jesus Christ, His actualization, that all the world will know Your good news is real.