“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
Hebrews 4:12
The common denominator among powerless versions of Christianity is that they get you excited about something other than Jesus. You can find your sense of self and identity in some thing of Christian religion but it is not Christ.
The reason that “word” culture is powerless to save you from your soul is because this culture lets your soul get proud about standing on the word, getting into the word, spreading the word, preaching the word…but what they mean is the book. Not the Word who became flesh. Oh he is talked about, you bet, he is one topic among many. For this culture the common meeting place is the word, not the Word, and so the excitable types passionately proclaim IT not HIM. And their soul loves the righteous position.
The reason the signs and wonders culture is powerless to save you from your soul is because this culture lets your soul get proud of being in the power of God. Words of knowledge, experiences, evangelical success using gifts, and a myriad of other elements of the kingdom of heaven are placed front and center in the expression and life of the culture, and your soul loves it, chases it, yearns for it, aches to be able to guess people’s birthdays and names, to do a healing leading to a salvation, to have a real out of body vision and so much more. The preachers stand and must tell a minimum of 2-3 supernatural tales per message in order to be validated as to their legitimacy to speak to this crowd. After all, if all they spoke of for 40 minutes was Jesus and your desperate need for humility before him no one would go away pumped up and ready for action. And so these souls are not confronted and remain in their self righteous position.
The truth is no one is trustworthy with the things of God until they have been broken of them. And no one can be broken until they are stripped of the things leaving them alone with Jesus at the cross, choosing to go up there with him because they themselves suck. That soul sees that they are idolators of the Christian religion and must be saved of their own soul. Else their soul will grip the things of God and proudly wave them as their badge, thereby reducing Christ to a show, or an author. Jesus will not be treated so profanely. He will have a people who will be holy to him and him alone. Such people will be granted the things of God in such measure that they can only be called the church. These ones will be the Revelation 12 glorious bride. These will be the ones in whom he will fill everything in every way from Ephesians 1. These will be the house of God. Because they did not love their life, all the way until they died. So when a version of Christianity ties people to their life and to their soul, they are robbing the whole creation of this beautiful new creation. So then the shaking will come on the church which was promised in Hebrews 12. To separate that which is Christ and Spirit versus that which is soul and human, as Hebrews 4 describes.
If the saints need to come out of anything right now it is the versions of Christianity which are not leading them to Christ. Then they can be built together into a house which can withstand the storm. All others are promised to crash, and the ruin of that house will be great.
