Excerpts from The Road to Reality by K.P. Yohannan

Posted: 2007-02-03 17:29:31

Preface---We have lost it. (We have lost the reality of Christianity). We have served up a watered-down gospel for so long that the real Gospel has become an embarrassment (or is thought of as heretical, strange or “going too far.”) I challenge you and invite you to come on a journey to reality. We are going to head for the heart of Jesus (and the real thing that we need).

P. 19.  I (K.P. Yohannan) was very successful in the ministry as a foreign missions leader (and speaker), making a name for myself, and ample funds were coming in to travel and do great things, I thought. One night the Lord gave me an ultimatum, “If you are going to do things your way and if you continue to feel the way you do, I’ll find someone else for the work I’ve planned for you to do.” I had fallen into the same trap as the Church, I had the bountiful provisions of the western culture to do my dreams. But I was to go God’s way (and know this in my heart of hearts) or God would leave me to carry on my dreams.

P.24.  In one mission gathering that I attended thousands came to hear Jesus Christ’s claim on their lives. The greatest Christian orators of our time addressed them. Some of the finest musicians in the world played and sang to them. Beautiful films and videos portrayed the needs of the lost and dying in vivid, graphic detail. Hundreds of Christian organizations spent tens of thousands of dollars to present the desperate needs of a world without Christ. Mission leaders flew in from every continent of the world to plead the cause of the lost. In addition, the participants themselves spent large sums of money to come and be challenged, educated and informed. What would be the results of this enormous investment? Thousands stood at the invitation and offered themselves for missionary service. But as with past conferences the statistical chances of even a handful of these going to the hidden peoples is almost nil. Fewer than one percent of those who respond to the altar call will ever go to the foreign mission field as Christ called us to do in His Great Commission.

I was at a very successful church at a youth rally. I poured out my heart to 350 young people. With tears I gave from my heart and from the heart of the Lord. Though I could see that my appeal had deeply moved many, when I asked for a show of hands of those willing to give their lives to Christ’s service, not one was able to say, “Yes, Lord!” P.25, Not one was willing to break out of the velvet cage of comfort and convenience to begin a radical lifestyle lived by the inner reality (of knowing God and following His voice).

P. 32.  We have an endless diet of books, cassettes, conferences and seminars. We are a generation of Christians who have all the answers but won’t cross the street to help a neighbor in spiritual distress (let alone cross the sea). This demonic reasoning goes like this, “Me first—after all, I can’t help others until I help myself!” I will sit in my comfortable pew week after week sucking baby bottles as long as I am entertained and it doesn’t interfere with lunch or the ball game.

P. 33.  Was Karl Marx right? This kind of religion is a narcotic—“The opiate of the people.”

We are active in so many things that the Lord never told us to do. He is not sponsoring our things, and the house we are building (that He is not building) we are building in vain. What the Lord thinks of our religious merry-go-round (is being spoken clearly in prophetic words coming out in the last 10 years. It is enough, the Lord is not in it, Ichabod, the glory has departed. And this prophetic message is being rejected by the church at large as too radical and not necessary to accept to be saved).

P. 38.  Watch the faces of people coming out of church. Why do so many look as if they’ve just left the local movie theatre, laughing and casual? Are these the faces of people who have just had a face to face encounter with the living God? Have they just witnessed the miraculous? What is really going on in the churches today?

When are we going to look at ourselves in the mirror and say, “OK, I know enough now. I’ve trained enough. What am I going to do about my knowledge of God and His ways? (The trouble is we haven’t barely begun to know God, walk with God, and we have not made ourselves completely available to whatever He wants and requires of us. We must begin this process today, while you hear His voice, today, do not harden your heart (day after day He is calling to us)). (Hebrews 3:7,8 and 15)

P.39.  Hyperactivism and dead works are a problem in our churches today. Modern churches are the most frenzied organizations, the calendar is so full you can keep going day and night on a year round basis. It is a trap of carnal activism which we call religious activities and fellowship. (It is a merry-go-round the Lord wants us to get off.)

We even turn off the TV to go every time the church doors are open. But in the wake of these busy Christians are often broken homes, broken relationships, divorce, disobedient children, and divided churches. Where in our busy Christian lives of service is Christ Himself?

P. 40.  Let us go across a bridge from world-weary “Christianity”, fairy tale “Christianity”, comfortable “Christianity”, across a bridge few even know exists and take our first steps toward authentic Christianity (to a relationship with God).

P. 43.  Authentic Christianity is for every believer (not just great heroes of the faith the we have read about). There is a way out of the mess the Church is in and you may feel engulfed in this “worldly Christianity.” Or possibly, you have left attending regular churches in great discouragement. (But God is calling anyone who will hear now to the life He has for us and has had available for us all along. It is not too late, whether you are 20, 50, 80 or whatever. It is time to hear and step toward this greater relationship with the Lord). God will not force you to this path, (He is calling to you, He may be frustrating every other path you’ve chosen. It is not too late.) But the journey you must decide to begin personally.

We must get to the burning bush like Moses did, we must come face to face with the living God. All Moses’ attempts up to that point for success were Moses’ ways. Now it must be God’s way only.

P. 71.  The concept of suffering will be a normal part of our path walking with the Lord, seeing Him only, but the message of suffering is resisted by the Western Church. We celebrate the dedication of Olympic athletes who diet, train and exercise daily for years to prepare for the games. They give up not only physical comfort but any hope of a normal social and family life. They give every thing up for a gold medal. We are called to give up homes, family everything to follow Jesus for a much greater prize that does not compare.

P. 74.  Five young pioneer missionaries (native eastern Indians) who had heard from the Lord were to go and start a mission in Rajasthan (a northern state in India). They had no money for a train, let alone enough money for food and rent when they arrived there. But this was there answer: “If we have no money to go by train, we will walk (1500 miles). If one becomes sick and dies on the way we will bury him by the roadside and the rest of us will continue on. If only one of us survives the journey and reaches Rajasthan, and place only one gospel tract on the hot desert sand of that state before he dies, we will have fulfilled our mission and we will have obeyed the Lord.”

P. 79.  I sat with a frustrated pastor and his wife, sensing the agony and heart cry of his soul. The pastor claimed he was tempted to pack up and walk away from it all (his successful church ministry, because the people were going no where and not being changed). P. 80,   “Brother K. P., I am tired and desperate. I stand before these people every week. Yet there is no real difference between them and the people of the world. We have every sin you can imagine going on in the believers of our congregation, divorce, adultery, gossip, lust, unforgiveness, pride, boasting, jealousy, rebellious youth. I don’t know if I can go on preaching the Word to such hardened hearts. Brother, is this really the Church of Christ, or are we just calling it the Church….?”

This pastor is no longer at that church, he walked away from a successful pulpit and career in a major denomination. He is willing to be unknown, choosing instead to spend time waiting upon the living God, walking before Him with a blameless heart (not satisfied with living a lie, putting on a front to please people and seeing not the reality of God in himself or in the lives of his people).

P. 83.  We will do almost anything for bigger numbers, larger organizations, success, a mega-church. But all the while God is looking for a few who will walk with Him in purity and holiness.

P. 103.  Gideon had to learn to recognize the voice of God and receive commands from God as to what to do next. Through fleeces, signs and messages he learned to hear God.

P. 121.  How to lovingly get into the Heart of Jesus and gain His heart to see all things as He sees them. “Lord, please stamp eternity into both my eyes,” may I see everything as you see them, people, possessions, eternity, what do you want, Lord? May I have your heart Lord, and your tears, “break my heart with the things that break your heart.”