Shakespeare wrote the play, “Much Ado about Nothing.” There is much from preachers today about doing, but little about being. However, a Christian’s doing needs to come out of being. Many ministers talk about church growth and their “doing”, but not many talk about what God is doing in them. There is unfortunately little attention or attraction for what God is doing in individual hearts and lives. There is little attention to personal breaking and molding. There is much attention to facilities and numbers. Little attention is given to personal sin, repentance, heart purity and holiness. Tolerance and social activism become the theme, rather than heart purity and the Spirit’s filling. Preaching becomes milk instead of meat and sin permissive “unconditional” love replaces genuine, holy and sacrificial agape love. 

    Music is vital for praise and worship, but not when it becomes a church’s dominant drawing card, and not while God’s Word is relegated to the sidelines and its message to a Sunday morning message that is about as nourishing as a “twinkie.” Today is a day when the church is accustomed to describing shallow motivational messages as “Awesome!”

     This article does not tell you “how to be.” Understanding His Way Ministry’s books, dvd’s and Bible Studies do (Bible Studies and Bookstore). What this article does tell you is what is missing in churches and in Christendom in America today—real life in the Spirit. Life by the Spirit, in the Spirit, is what God calls,”AWESOME!” 

     It’s necessary to differentiate. We are not talking about the fabricated hype that churches/ministries in America market today. We’re not talking about contemporary revival and contemporary gospel; we’re not talking about consecrated flesh or foreign spirits masquerading as the Spirit’s filling and we’re not talking about a power that produces strange results and strange children. 

     Out of such comes huge churches and much “doing” through consecrated flesh, using motivational contrived church programs. This is flesh that generates “I’m blessed; you have a blessed day” benedictions pronounced over every unsaved person in the grocery store check out line. Every heathen, heretic, atheist and apostate receives their “blessing from God.”

     Genuine revival has been turned into a carnival. The genuine gospel has been turned into “gainsaying” and sound doctrine into contentless trivia. What were once anointed messages delivered by God-called preachers 

have now, for the large part, become ludicrous propaganda delivered by money hungry, glory seeking, vocational charlatans.

     God wants “doing” to come out of “being,” “being” to come out of “belonging,” and belonging to come out of genuine conversion and regeneration. Salvation comes from a true recognition and acknowledgment of sin that, in turn, promotes a wholehearted repentance and surrender by grace through faith to Christ as Lord and Savior. This person becomes a new creature through Jesus Christ. With this comes the desire to live a life of “being”. This does not mean to live as a “natural man” (I Cor. 2:14) working out a life of “doing” good works by carnal consecrated flesh.

     God’s Spirit does not come to fill the proud, the arrogant, the flamboyant, the boisterous. Neither does His Spirit anoint these. This kind of walk, this filling, and this

“anointing” at best comes from consecrated flesh and, at worse, from a foreign spirit. This spirit and its accompanying arrogant attitude is especially odious when displayed through preachers.

      If all of this sounds strange or foreign to you, you may be so blessed as to be in a church which is scripturally sound, is teaching “doing out of being” and whose ministers seek and value brokenness, contriteness and humility rather than “nickels and noses.”

     If what we’re saying strikes a resonating chord in your heart—spiritually and scripturally—and you’re sick of counterfeit, fabricated hype, you needn’t feel obligated to acquiesce to its teachings; you can choose this way of scriptural “Being.” Out of this comes a different “Doing.” It’s not “doing to be” but “doing from being.” Two “beings” that may look the same but are very different—with two different motives, two different spirits, two different feelings. One, in the name of Jesus, is really glorifying self; the other, in the name of Jesus, is dying to self. One person has that distinctive shine on the face that comes from consecrated flesh and another spirit. It has a glare that radiates pride and self-exaltation. The other has the glow of God’s shekinah glory. It is a glow that radiates self renunciation and God’s manifested majesty.

     God’s Spirit and His Word make the distinction clear. How can we recognize the shine? God gives ample discernment to his elect. (I Jn. 2:20, unction) He gives to every person a free will to choose and every choice made takes us one direction or another. May God give you the wisdom and discernment to make the right choice.