—I Peter 2:2
Here in Peter the Bible speaks about Christians being "newborn babes." No one is born a full grown human naturally and physically. They are born babies, and then they grow up. Similarly no one is born a full grown Christian. You are born a spiritual babe, and then you grow up.
There's a whole sermon in just that fact. We are going to be held accountable for the spiritual babies born into the family of God around our altars and in our churches.
I pastured nearly twelve years and really you don't expect too much out of babies because they can't do too much for themselves. Someone else though can do something for them.
Too many times someone is saved on Sunday night and if they make a mistake before Wednesday night everyone in the church knows it, and is already fussing about it. They expect him to be living, by Wednesday night or the next Sunday, just as good a Christian life as they do when it took them years to get where they are.
A number of years ago I held a two-week meeting for a particular minister. We were scheduled to go longer but I cut it off.
Crowds were coming. The auditorium would seat 800 and it was comfortably full every night. People were responding. We weren't really having evangelistic services—I was doing a lot of teaching and praying for the sick—yet on Saturday night when I gave the invitation first for people to be saved, thirty-three adults came for salvation.
They stood across the front as I prayed with them and led them in a prayer. Then I sent them back to the prayer room where others would pray with them while I went on ministering to the sick.
The thing that so impressed me about this service was that of the thirty-three who came for salvation so many were young married couples who looked to be between the ages of twenty-five to thirty-two. I learned later not one or the group had ever been a Christian; not one was a member of any church. I asked the pastor after the service about these young people.
He said, "None of the thirty-three were backsliders. They were all sinners who came to be saved."
That was unusual. I asked him if he knew any of them.
He said, "I don't know a one of them. They've never been to my church before."
I asked him, "Did you get their names and addresses?"
He said, "Oh brother, I just figure if they got anything they'll be back. You don't have to worry about them."
I said, "I'm closing the meeting tomorrow night."
People are born babies. They need to be seen about. They had never been to that church before. They had never heard any Full Gospel preaching before. They needed to be followed up and prayed with, talked to, and dealt with. They were newborn babies.
After a leading healing evangelist held a meeting in a certain city a pastor who had cooperated with it said to me, "I'm never going to cooperate with another one of those city-wide meetings. Never another one."
"Why?" I asked.
"I didn't get a person out of it," he said. "Not a one. Not a member. It didn't do me a bit of good in the world."
"It didn't?"
"No."
I asked him, "Did you get cards on any of the folks who came to the altar?"
"Oh yes," he said, "they gave me some cards. But none of them ever showed up."
I was talking to another pastor in the same town about the same meeting and he said, "We got twenty-nine new members out of that meeting. I wish he would come back."
"How did you get them?" I asked. "How did they happen to come to your church?"
He said, "Oh they didn't know anything about our church. I got the cards on some of them and visited them. I didn't just encourage them to come to our church, but I insisted they get in some good Full Gospel church and go on with God. And some of them came to ours."
We are responsible for babies. Babies don't know. Babies can't do for themselves. A newborn baby in the natural can't do much. He doesn't walk yet. He doesn't dress himself. In fact, he doesn't do anything for himself. About all he does is eat. And about all he eats is milk. Spiritually there are newborn babes. And if they get the sincere milk of the Word, they will grow thereby.
CONTINUE
