Sunday evening my wife and I were on our way to very dear friends in the neighborhood of our loved ones in the outskirts of Copenhagen.　 We had spent some wonderful hours with our oldest daughter, Connie, and her husband, Lars, and their two bright boys, David (17) and Andreas (12).　 And also with their church.　 Now we wanted to end our one day´s excursion together with a Danish/Faroese family.

But we didn´t make it.　 We were very close, but the power failed.　 The power in our car.　 The battery suddenly went flat when we made a brief stop on the way.　 So our son-in-law, Lars, most charitably responded to our cell phone call and quickly came along and got our car re-started with his battery charger.　 We 　dared not make any more stops now and hastened back to our home town, Næstved, abt. 50 miles south of Copenhagen.　 The rest of the story belongs to the garage.

This humiliating experience was kind of an object lesson.　 What use does it make, if the externals are beautiful (the appearance of our car and ourselves) and yet the power is not there!　 That spoke to my heart.　 We´d just that day attended a church service, the outward appearance of which was perfect.　 　The smiles and the music were there.　 And so were the many loving hugs. 　So enjoyable, indeed.　 But what about the power? The spiritual power in our lives as individuals and in the corporate church set-up?

The Spirit-inspired and -filled apostle was not impressed with the externals.　 He never was. He wrote to the Corinthians, "For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power!"　 (1 Cor. 4:20).　 Some believe that the epistle to the Corinthians is the most relevant epistle to the western church because of its worldliness and hypocrisy. That could very well be true.　 They were very close to the real thing, and yet the power was not there.　 At least for some time.　 In 2 Cor. 7 we see however a repentant church.　　 "I rejoice…that your sorrow led to repentance"　 (v.9), the apostle wrote with tears of joy.

This is the only right way to go about it. Yes, in the streamlined churches in the States, without exception.　 And in the apostate church in my own country.　 Otherwise we may be very close, and yet miss the real thing, because our spiritual battery went flat, maybe without our knowing it ourselves as was the case in the lukewarm Laodicean church.　 The message there was the same:　 "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.　 (Notice the Lord still loved them!)　 Therefore be zealous and repent!"　 (Rev. 3:19).

I was once invited to speak at a conference in Sweden.　 The leader of the conference suggested that I spoke on repentance.　 I didn´t want to.　 I didn´t want him to decide what I was going to say.　 Today　 regret it.　 It was my pride at that time.　 For no message is more relevant to the modern church than the message of repentance.