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Circumstantial Christian: It Isn’t Enough

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If you could meet any one from history – who would your top candidate be? The top contenders in 2026? Pope Leo XIV, Abraham Lincoln, or George Washington. In my limited research I was surprised to see these three outpaced Jesus.

I must confess that I have an ulterior motive in asking this question. Most followers of Jesus, asked this question, would usually reply by shouting, “Jesus!” These would elaborate by stating, “If I could meet Jesus, experiencing the things He did – my life would never be the same.” But is experiential knowledge of Jesus enough? Was it enough for the followers of Jesus 2000 years ago?

Over the years I have heard some pretty amazing things. Pastor if I had more time I would pray and read the Word. Pastor if I made more money I would tithe. Pastor if I didn’t have to work I would be at church more. Pastor if I had the relationship with Jesus that these other people have I would be more involved with ministry. Can I let you in on a little clue? If you are not choosing it now – you won’t choose it later. Any of the things mentioned above are circumstantial. In other words they are dependent on circumstances. Circumstantial Christians are tossed about by the wind and waves of life. They rarely stand for anything because they’re too busy falling for everything, waiting for the ideal circumstance to come along.

Here’s another one I heard: “Pastor if I had been taught by Jesus Himself I wouldn’t be living like I’m living. If I knew more stuff I could be a better follower of Jesus. If I had more knowledge I would witness. If I could pray like you pray I would pray more. If I knew the Word like you know the Word I would spend more time in Bible reading.” No you wouldn’t. Knowledge wasn’t enough, neither was proximity to Jesus’ miracles. Seeing and hearing Jesus – in the flesh – wasn’t enough. All of these things were not sufficient to transform their lives.

There’s a scene from the Billy Crystal movie, City Slickers, in which Billy Crystal’s character, Mitch, asks Curly, a rough and tumble cowboy, What’s the meaning of life? To which Curly replies, extending one finger in the air, “One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean…” (I will leave the ending to your imagination). The implication being that you must stick to that one thing and ignore everything else. The one thing that the followers of Jesus needed was the Baptism and Infilling of the Spirit. It was so essential that Jesus told those same followers it was good for Him to go away. Why? Because the Holy Spirit was coming to dwell among, and in, the believing, followers of Jesus. (Emphasis on Active Faith)

By now you know where I am going with this argument. If Jesus, the Son of Man, needed the Holy Spirit, and the followers of Jesus needed the Holy Spirit. Then do we not also need the Holy Spirit. But it doesn’t end there. John 20:22 And having said this, He breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit! Guess what happened after they received the Spirit? John 21:3 Simon Peter said to them, I am going fishing! They said to him, And we are coming with you! So they went out and got into the boat, and throughout that night they caught nothing. Now you might want to throw the whole argument in my face. The disciples received the Holy Spirit and instead of fishing for men they went fishing for fish. The resurrection appearances of Jesus meant nothing. Even this was not enough. What was the one thing they needed? Acts 1:4-5 And while being in their company and eating with them, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for what the Father had promised, Of which [He said] you have heard Me speak. For John baptized with water, but not many days from now you shall be baptized with (placed in, introduced into) the Holy Spirit. Receiving the Holy Spirit, and being sealed with the Spirit for salvation was not enough. They needed the Baptism of the Spirit.

It’s seven days to Pentecost. Are you making the grain of His Word count. Speaking of grains, are you taking all of this with a grain of salt? An idiom implying something is meaningless, worthless, unreliable, and not to be believed. Are the grains of His Word of greater value than your idiom? 

One Thing Is Needful

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Luke 10:39-42 And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at [k]Jesus’ feet and heard His word. 40 But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.” 41 And [l]Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. 42 But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.” (NKJV)

If you are student of missions, or were involved in a church which emphasized missions, you may have heard of a missionary by the nick name of “Praying Hyde.” John Hyde was born in 1865, in Carthage, Illinois. His father was a Presbyterian minister who proclaimed the Gospel often exhorting his members to respond to Jesus’ prayer that the Father would thrust forth more laborers into the harvest. Rev. Smith Harris Hyde prayed this prayer not only from the pulpit but in his home, around their family altar. One of the biggest answers to those prayers came from one of his two sons.

The prayers of John’s father made a powerful impression upon his life leading him to attend college, and proceed to seminary, graduating in 1892. It was during this time that he began some major heart searching, turning himself to God in prayer. During this time of seeking it became clear that God wanted him on the mission field. In October 1892, he set sail for India. On his way to India he received a letter from a close friend saying, “I will not cease praying for you until you be filled with the Holy Ghost.” Frank JJ Di Pietro stated: “This made John extremely angry. After all, he was a seminary graduate and on his way to pursue his destiny. John threw the letter in the trash and angrily walked out of the room. As he was walking along the deck of the steamer, he could not get the thought that he must be filled with the Holy Ghost out of his mind. After much soul searching, John decided that his dear friend was right. Going to Scripture (Acts 1:8), he then knelt by his cabin bed in prayer and surrendered to God’s will and was wonderfully filled with the power and fire from on high.”

John’s ministry of prayer and evangelistic work would last over the next 20 years. He was so given to prayer that the natives did not refer to him as praying Hyde, but as the “Man who never sleeps,” and the “Apostle of Prayer.” His prayer life was radically changed as a result of the Baptism. Often he would spend 30 days and nights in contact prayer, and many times was on his knees in deep intercession for 36 hours at a time. His fellows missionaries thought he was fanatical and crazy, yet he could not understand why prayer was such an isolated experience in the Church. True prayer is Spirit-born. True prayer is praying in the “Holy Ghost.” In his mind those who are filled with the Spirit are filled with prayer. As Leonard Ravenhill said: “There is something very questionable and unbiblical about those who claim to have had a baptism of the Spirit and yet know nothing of extended periods of prayer.”

John Hyde was soon joined by a few fellow intercessors. They saw that there was one method to obtaining spiritual awakening in India, and that was intense prayer. “They set themselves deliberately, definitely, and desperately to use this means until they secured the result. They prayed non-stop for days and nights. Their prayers were answered through a series of outpourings of the Spirit in the northwest part of India, especially in 1904 at Sialkot….Upon seeing the results of a deeper prayer life, John gave himself even more to prayer.” During this deepening of his prayer life men would often walk by John’s room overhearing him weeping breaking out in tears over the sins of the world and especially God’s children. John would often pray for 40 hours non-stop and then go to a series of meetings without rest. Such a spirit of intercession was on John that when he walked past others, they too would begin to groan in agony for the lost. John’s cry began to be, “Give me souls, Oh God, or I die!” – Di Pietro

IN 1908, John prayed what was seen as an impossible task: that during the coming year he would save, one person a day in India. At the end of that year it happened. That year he had prayed over 400 people into the Kingdom of Heaven. The following year it doubled to 2 souls a day. The year following that he moved his goal to that of winning four souls a day. John said, “If on any day four people were not converted, that night there would be such a weight on my heart, I could not eat or sleep until I prayed through to victory.” What many do not know of Praying Hyde is that following his prayers of lying prostrate on the floor, he would often come off the floor clapping his hands, dancing, and shouting filled with holy laughter.

See only one thing is needful and that is the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Are you a Martha or a Mary? Can you see that even though the disciples saw Jesus raised from the dead, had visited His empty tomb, and experienced a visitation of angels and Jesus Himself – that it was not enough? Their lifestyle remained the same. It wasn’t until the Baptism that their lives began to change. You may say, “Well I’ve been baptized in the Spirit.” Maybe that is so – but are you praying like John Hyde? Better yet, Are you praying like Jesus? We casually claim the name of Christ (Christian) failing to examine our deficiencies in His Light. If something is missing do not be like the Laodiceans who claimed to have no need. Return to your knees until what is missing is met with the reality of Heaven’s Answer. Its in the wrestling that we are changed.

One Thing

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There’s a great scene in the movie City Slickers in which Billy Crystal (playing a city- dweller in the throes of a midlife crisis who’s trying to find himself on a dude ranch) is talking to Jack Palance, an old-time cowboy, about the meaning of life. Palance holds up one cowhide-gloved finger (No, not that finger; his index finger) as he says, with a cigarette dangling precariously from the corner of his mouth, “Do you know what the secret to life is? This.” Crystal looks a Palance, puzzled, and asks, “Your finger?” As the scene at the dude ranch closes, Palance looks at Crystal and smiles wryly as he holds up his finger and goes on to explain the meaning of life. “One thing, just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean (use your imagination).” “That’s great, but what’s the one thing?” asks Crystal. “That’s what you gotta figure out,” says Palance.

In the light of all that is happening regarding the virus that “one thing” comes into sharper focus. Is it your health, where to find groceries, the brevity of life, will I have a job, is the economy going to collapse, getting a disease, the importance of family, or what you’ve lived life for? The other thing that comes into focus is what do you set your sights on? Where should your focus be?

Recently John David and I were having a conversation about what the prophets were saying. Which reminded me of a prophecy given several years ago back in October 2010. I was blown away by its relevance to our present crisis:

On October 22, 2010, I dreamed I was walking through a log cabin. Every room that I walked through was a different part of America. It was like this log cabin was the United States. Small fires started breaking out on the floor in every room. They were easy for me to stomp out. As I started to leave the log cabin, another fire ignited that I went over to put out. I saw that it had burned through the floor, so I looked through the hole to see if I could determine what was causing these fires. I discovered that the entire foundation of the building was covered in hot burning coals. I knew the cabin was about to go up in flames so I started to turn aside to grab my laptop computer. Immediately, I heard the voice of the Lord say, “You don’t have time for that. Get your wife, and the fire hose, and put the fire out.” The dream ended. When I woke up I was deeply shaken.

Interpretation: Our national problems are much worse than we realize. The foundation of our nation is being consumed by a fire that threatens everything. The reference to “my wife” represents the church, and she alone has what can put out this fire—the truth. In Ephesians 5:26 we are told that water represents the Word of God, and this alone can save us now. I believe that if the preachers and the prophetic voices in America don’t stand up and pour out the truth, our whole nation is about to be lost. And we’ve got to pour the truth on the foundations.  A week after my dream, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi who believes in Jesus (who I cannot name) had a dream that I felt corroborated mine. The following is an abbreviated version of what he sent to me:
    
I had a dream on the evening of October 29 and again during the afternoon on October 30. I saw a giant grizzly bear running rampant through America and the rest of the world, though primarily in the United States. It was large enough that it could swallow a man whole in a single bite. People everywhere were cowering in fear. I watched in horror as it swallowed person after person with alarming speed and left a swath of destruction behind it. As it approached where I was standing, that fear and panic started to overwhelm me, and then suddenly I felt a peace. That was when I noticed the Lord was standing next to me. He said, “Come with Me, you have seen all that you need to here. There is something else you need to see.”  He took me to what looked to be a classic church with a steeple.  When I walked inside, while it still had the feel of a house of worship, it looked more like a hunting lodge filled with trophies. Suddenly I saw what looked at first to be the rampaging bear. Then I realized that, no, this bear was considerably smaller, and while still menacing, it was nowhere near as fearful as the rampaging bear that I had seen.  After a moment I realized that it was another trophy. As I approached, I saw a plaque at the bear’s feet that said, “The Great Bear of 1929.” Even knowing that it was a long dead trophy, I still stood trembling before this bear. The same fear and confusion seemed to radiate from it as was radiating from the rampaging bear. Again, I felt calm come over me as the Lord stepped up to my side. When I turned to Him, He said, “You need to stand in my peace to see clearly what must be done.”  As I looked back at the bear I noticed a rifle in a case next to it.  It looked like an old M1 Garrand in 30-06 caliber. When I looked at the manufacturer’s information inscribed in the barrel it said, “Mission and Intercession Armory.” In place of the model number were two verses, “Matthew 6:33” and “Matthew 6:10.”  As I was marveling at the rifle, an old hunter approached me.  He was dressed in a field jacket of WWII vintage. He said, “That rifle is great for killing bears. We used it to take down the Great Bear here. It is available for any who are willing to take it up now. One well aimed shot at the heart is all it takes.” The dream ended.

In both of these dreams there is an answer to the current crisis. In dreams and visions, bears usually represent fear, or as in this case, a “bear market,” which is actually the result of fear. Though I was not told this in my dream, I felt that the fear that was devouring our foundation, and would soon consume the entire house, was an economic catastrophe. In my friend’s dream, it was a bigger bear than the bear of 1929. Often the time when we wake up from a prophetic dream can have significance, indicating a date, or a Scripture verse. That he had this dream on “the evening of October 29th” also speaks of 1929. This is what we are approaching. In my dream the answer was to get the church (my wife), who has the hose, and get her to pour water on the fire. The water that can put this fire out and save the house is the truth. Pastors, preachers, individual Christians, must stand for the truth without compromise, they must proclaim it boldly regardless of the threat, and they must do it now. That I did not have time to get my laptop spoke of how we cannot worry about our own stuff—we’ve got to proclaim the truth. In my friend’s dream, the weapon we can use to kill the bigger, more deadly bear we are facing now was the same weapon that killed the bear of 1929—faith in the Lord and His coming kingdom (Matt. 6:10), seeking “first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” and not worrying about tomorrow (Matt. 6:33-34). The only way that we can do that, as this dream indicated, is to stay close to the Lord.

What’s the One Thing that every believer should be turning to in the present upheaval? Matthew 6:10 specifically – we should be in prayer. Secondly, Matthew 6:33. We should seek the Lord’s Kingdom and His righteousness. The question is, What will the Lord find us doing when He returns to the earth?