Self-confidence, self-reliance, is the great undoing of us as believers; the undoing of the church. We look around us and we see many churches, very, very confident in what they are doing. We see all the modern innovations and gimmicks, very confident in their – and the great word is – giftedness. There’s a gifted preacher here and a gifted preacher there, gifted instrumentalists and gifted soloists. Prayer has become almost token and incidental. The church is so confident in its innovations: drama and theatre, and all kinds of things. Everything is coming into the church: things borrowed from the world, outright worldliness, and wall-to-wall music! There is a group of churches, a large group of churches, in this country, which recently published a video in which they featured three of their churches that they thought would be an encouragement to others. ‘Do it like this’ was the essential message. And what was it? All confidence and innovations and performance, and entertainment, and froth and shallowness. That's what self-reliance and self-confidence leads to. Over fifty years ago in a fraternal Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones, ‘There can be no revival while there is all this confidence’, and he was right.
Do I start off each waking day buoyantly going out to the car, to the bus, to the train, and embark upon my day with hardly a prayer? Do I sit in the office, or in the workplace, or enter into the lecture theatre without seeking help from God for the day? Are we unaware of the nature of the opposition? The fact that Satan desires to have us and sift as wheat, and bring us down with some unworthy reaction, some ill-temper, some act of selfishness or unhelpfulness? Will he seal our lips so that we have no testimony for the Lord? Self-confidence, self-reliance! Then we shall fail, and we shall be useless believers. Unused by God!
There is a warning about excessive emotionalism here when we are evangelising. Now, these things are wonderful. The preacher is bound to be passionate. He is bound to be larger-than-life sometimes. He is bound to express himself with great feeling and vigour and to be concerned for souls. So, yes, we are not going to speak as though we are giving a chemistry lectures, or something of that kind. But there is an extreme to which you can go, when you are playing on the emotions of the people. The preacher may be roaring at the top of his voice and the decibels are ear-splitting and the whole thing is an emotional assault. Well, even in the upper room that happened. Peter’s excessive, over-the-top passion and vehemence swept the other disciples along with him. That is why in some of the most high-power evangelistic preaching the actual long-term results are tiny. There is bound to be passion, but excessive histrionics is no substitute for clear instruction of the mind with the Holy Spirit blessing the word to the heart.