Vital Signs - Deeper Canada by Apostle Emmanuel Iren: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

It's Possible to Have Church Without Jesus

Revelation 3:20 is one of the most quoted evangelistic texts in the church: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with me."

It comes as a shock to many to discover that this text was not written to the world at large. It was written to a church — one of the seven churches in the book of Revelation. Jesus is standing outside a gathering of believers, knocking, saying: you are having your services in there, but I am outside.

It is possible to have church without Jesus. Form without substance. Activity without the Spirit. Having the form of godliness while denying the power thereof.

The church at Laodicea had been hot — but had cooled to the point of lukewarmness. Nobody noticed. It still looked like business as usual. The name of Jesus was still being mentioned. But Jesus was outside the door.

This requires discernment — and discernment is not as common as we think. Many people cannot tell when God is absent. God was not in the earthquake. God was not in the fire. Many times, it is the still small voice, the stillness, the quiet. God is not always where the action is.

Self-Preservation Is the Devil's Religion

When Jesus told his disciples he was going to die and rise again, Peter grabbed him and began to rebuke him. He meant well — it came from love. But Jesus looked at him and said: "Get behind me, Satan. For you savor not the things that be of God."

The insight there is severe: any religious endeavor whose goal is self-preservation is controlled by the devil.

This is subtle. If every prayer is about personal needs, if every church visit is about what God will give, if every Bible reading is to find a new revelation for more finances — the devil is comfortable with that religion. The moment Christ's purpose in a person's life becomes primarily about meeting personal needs, sensitivity to what God is actually doing disappears. The power of God that is supposed to secure the move of God becomes a pillow to rest on.

Revelation 12:10–11 — "They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death." Three things brought victory: the blood, the testimony, and not loving their lives. A church that is self-preserving cannot produce the third. And without the third, the pattern of overcoming cannot be sustained.

Vital Signs — How to Know If the Spirit Is Healthy

In medicine, vital signs measure the state of essential body functions. The reason they matter is that you can feel fine and not be fine. There is such a thing as internal bleeding — no visible wound, normal appearance, but something life-threatening is happening inside.

There are spiritual vital signs. Clinical measurements of the health of a soul and a church that do not rely on appearance alone. One of the signs of physical sickness is loss of appetite. Spiritually:

• Not feeling like going to church anymore
• Not feeling like studying the Bible anymore
• Not feeling like praying — and when praying, everything within screaming to stop
• Sensitivity to sin beginning to dull — the days when you would have to call someone to clarify a misstatement, the days when speaking behind someone's back felt like spiritual restraint, those days feeling far away
• Long periods with no sense of answered prayer, no supernatural word of knowledge, no fresh song — things that for a person flowing with God happen regularly

Pay attention to these indicators. They are not legalism. They are vital signs. They tell you something that the surface cannot.

Revival restores what drift steals: tenderness of heart, sensitivity to sin, sensitivity to prayerlessness, the ability to feel when something is off.

The Goal of Self-Preservation Corrupts Ministry

The people who feed 5,000 with Jesus, then try to make him king by force — they had biblical precedent. Moses gave bread for 40 years. They were simply comparing Jesus to Moses. The problem was not the comparison. The problem was the motive: they wanted an economic advantage engine. They wanted every service to be about their material benefit.

And this is a recurrent danger. Power given for the advancement of God's kingdom gets redirected toward personal advancement and personal comfort — and the person doing the redirecting does not even notice, because they still have a name, still have a reputation for being alive, still have activity. The church at Sardis had all of that. Jesus told them: "You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead."

Revelation 3:1 — You have a reputation. Your church makes the list of vibrant churches. And you are dead.

This is the call: to rebuild what has fallen. To restore broken altars. Not to sleep on the altar, but to rebuild it.

The Requirement for Revival

Revelation 12:11 presents the formula for overcoming:

• The blood of the Lamb — the foundation. Christ's work is the basis.
• The word of their testimony — revival answers to preaching more than anything else. Christ did it, but you must tell it. Boldness to speak about Christ, to invite people, to not be ashamed.
• Not loving their lives to death — the willingness to give the cross not just intellectual assent but practical surrender. The antidote to a religion of self-preservation.

The revival generation is here. The anointing to build, to plant, to pull down, to root out — it rests on you. Every plant your heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted out, and in its place the ideologies of the kingdom will be established. Never accept any culture as the status quo if it is inconsistent with the kingdom. You are that generation that will build back broken altars.

Lord, wherever my religion has become self-preservation — wherever I have made a pillow of the altar, slept on your power, used the things of God for my own comfort — I repent of it. Restore my hunger. Restore my sensitivity. I open the door. Come in, and dine with me. In Jesus' name. Amen.