Having ministered the cross (the believer’s crucifixion with Christ) for more than 40 years in many impossible situations, humanly speaking, I have a vantage point which is accorded to few people.  My ministry has been primarily to individuals and family situations, but this could readily be extrapolated to society at large.  This ministry is in response to God’s calling on my life in 1967 (Isa. 58:10, 11) and was documented in Handbook to Happiness (Tyndale), my first book in 1971.

Most of those whose lives have been transformed were in desperate situations, where they had no other way out than to find God’s answer for their lives.  Many had tried all known answers, including the helping professions, with no permanent resolution to their dilemma.  Indeed, quite a number were suicidal and ready for God as the only answer to their impossible situation, which required a miracle, God’s specialty.

Having witnessed these miracles consistently over more than four decades, I can confidently assert that the Church should have, and could have, been seeing miraculous life transformations every day of the week!  However, the cross for the believer (Rom. 6:6) is not central in most church ministry, which means that the flesh is in the ascendancy.  Harnessing fleshly solutions within the church, or referring to fleshly solutions via the helping professions, results in symptomatic relief, on occasion, but glosses over the fleshly root. The result is to utilize carnal weapons in a vain attempt to pull down spiritual strongholds (2 Cor. 10:5). Or, the flesh is thereby strengthened for its inevitable conflict with the Spirit (Gal. 5:17).

Since preaching the cross is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18), its lack causes a corresponding lack in power for ministry, or results in an all but powerless church.  The situation inside and outside the church is becoming increasingly needy, with the church becoming increasingly impotent at the same time!



As the secular society becomes aware that its answers are futile, it will be forced to seek an answer beyond human intelligence and experience.  When it is finally open to God’s answer, it would logically turn to the Church which has historically been God’s representative on Earth, only to find that answers given by an all but impotent church are little better than the wisdom of man and his collective answers.