General

Its amazing how God works things out. Last night I was originally scheduled to lead a discipleship group that I’ve been working with almost two years. This happens on the same night that the church I am currently pastoring has a midweek Bible study get together. There is a very capable teacher leading the Bible study at the church on this day so I’ve been trying to balance between going to the discipleship group and the Bible study.

As the day progressed one thing after another came up in the daily life of the people involved in the discipleship group. Things like family members in the hospital, car accidents, and kids getting hurt – tough day. As these things happened, one by one people were texting me and telling me they were not going to be able to participate in the discipleship group. We were pretty much forced to reschedule the discipleship group to next week. Naturally I was disappointed, but I didn’t know what God had in mind.

It was still early enough so Marie and I decided we would go to the Bible study at the church instead. We needed a few things from the grocery so we left plenty early to stop at the store and then still make it to the Bible study gathering. About five minutes into our grocery shopping we ran into someone we had not seen in years. After a quick moment of trading pleasantries an innocent statement was made that surprisingly triggered a tragic story from the person. This mother began to describe how their relationship with their children had completely fallen apart and crumbled. It was so sad and awful. Both Marie and my hearts were broken. For awhile I stood there not knowing anything to say. I kept asking God to give me the words to say in addition to silently praying for this person’s soul. There was such hurt, sadness and anger in their own heart as they related their story.

We stood there listening for well over half an hour in the middle of the grocery store. This person needed to share this story. There wasn’t a whole lot we could say other than to encourage them that things could still turn out well and this would be what God wanted. We ended the conversation assuring her we would pray for her. Shae had said, “I guess I bored you with my story”. We assured her that was not the case and I told her, “Well now you’ve given me something to pray for”, in a way that said I was glad for the opportuinity.

As we continued with our shopping I looked at the time and it was already ten minutes after the time the Bible study started and we not only had to finish our shopping but had to drive to the church. Bythe time we got there everyone would already be gone. We decided we would finish our shopping and get something to eat as we had not had dinner yet. We didn’t feel bad about missing the Bible study because we figured God had wanted us to have this time and conversation with this hurting mother. But He wasn’t done yet.

We finished our shopping and headed to get something to eat at a local restaurant when Marie’s phone rang. It was another old friend on the line. For years now, this person had been taking care of an elderly gentleman they had known since they were a child as he lived out the last years of his life.

She told Marie that the man had passed away that day. Well here goes God again. We were free. We hadn’t gone to the discipleship group or the Bible study and now we were available to spend time with this friend who just needed some encouragement. We invited her to dinner and talked abotu all sorts of things, especially God and the Bible.

God knew both of these situations existed and He allowed us to participate in His ministry. He cleared our calendars so we could. He knows what He is doing.

We need a Paradigm Change – Badly!

Numbers occupy a lot of our lives. We have phone numbers, addresses, identification numbers such as SS or employee ID’s, licenses and much more.

Churches use numbers a lot too. We keep attendance, finance, and membership numbers, pardon the pun, “religiously”. The numbers we focus on in the church tell us something about what is important to us and can send the wrong message. Some would say they reinforce what is ailing the church.

The attendance numbers are the most important to us in the church. It is those numbers that tell us how well we are doing. We may say those numbers aren’t important and that they merely represent souls, but the unfortunate truth is we use them to tell us whether we are successful, regardless of how much we deny it. Membership is often another way of measuring our success. You see, our psyche makes us feel we need to get people to join us to be successful.

But what does attendance really say or mean? On one hand we like to say that the church is everywhere and not just in a building, but then the main thing we measure is how many people come to the building. The truly radical among us might also measure how many come to a once a week Bible study or Cell group and count that in the attendance number. We keep measuring how many come to something.

Interestingly, in pastoral reports we do measure how many people were saved but those numbers are typically miniscule compared to our attendance numbers, even in a small church. What does that say? We explain it away by the fact that most of the people that come to church are already saved. Then why are we spending such a high percentage of our service to God in merely attending? Why are most of our “ministries” centered around this act of attending, i.e. music, singing, teaching Sunday School, taking care of the building, etc.?

Isn’t attendance important? Well, let’s look at that. The passage we use most to validate this thought is Heb. 10:25 – “not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” But in the same letter in chapter 3 verse 13 we are told “But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” I can’t go to church daily, it is just not feasible. So as long as I think of the church not only as a place but as ‘my’ group of people, i.e. the people who attend or are members of where I go to church I cannot obey Heb 3:13. If you examine Heb 10:25 more closely the real point of that verse is to gather for a purpose, which is specifically to encourage one another. It’s not the gathering that is important but the encouraging. So how can I obey Heb 3:13? I have to think of church differently. Church must become to me all of the followers of Christ, not just my group (my congregation, fellow church-maembers).

How did the early ‘church” view church? Didn’t they talk about numbers? Didn’t they keep track of how many people were fed miraculously? What about in Acts when it talks about how many people were added to their number? What about those things? The book of Revelation also mentions numbers as does other passages. But where do we find mention of the number of people attending church? The miraculous feedings tell us how many people were served by Christ (and one could say the church). The approximately 3000 added to their number on the day of Pentecost tells us of a great revival, but we never get a follow-up on how many attended weekly.

Ironically, counting numbers got David in trouble once. While the Lord told Moses in Exodus and Numbers and David once in 2nd Samuel to take a census; that was to organize, tax and put them to service. But I Chronicles 21:1 says “Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.” This didn’t turn out well because it was a matter of pride and arrogance rather than obedience. Is our attendance counting a matter of pride as well?

In the “Doctrine of Original Sin” from the ‘Works of John Wesley’, Volume 9, Wesley shares the following story. This story illustrates how we can be religious but not holy. God’s desire for us is that we are holy far above being religious.

Wesley writes:
This was a man of honour among the Christians of the Romish Church! And many such are to be found all over Italy, whose trade it is to cut the throats; to stab for hire, in cool blood. They have men of conscience too. Such were two of the Catholic soldiers, under the Duke of Alva, who broke into the house of a poor countyrman in Flanders, butchered him and his wife, with five or six children; and after they had finished their work, sat down to enjoy the fruit of their labour. But in the midst of their meal conscience awaked. One of them started up in great emotion, and cried out, “Oh Lord! what have I done? As I hope for salvation, I have eaten flesh (meat) in Lent!”

For years we were taught the cardinal virtues. They are Prudence, Justice, Temperance or Restraint, and Fortitude or Courage. A new virtue has come forth in our time and has risen above all the others. It is Tolerance.

Tolerance is the buzzword of the day and appears to be the supreme virtue. Today’s tolerance is not the tolerance of your fathers. That tolerance meant to put up with a lot and be patient. Today’s tolerance started out as live and let live, but that has too much of a 60’s ring to it. On the surface it means to accept me for what I am and what I do, no matter what that is. But it means much more than that as well. Essentially it means that nothing is wrong, except of course intolerance (which is evolving a new meaning itself).

All religions and belief systems are the same. All lifestyles are equal and to be celebrated. Value systems are left to the desires of the individual and nothing is an absolute. Not even tolerance is an absolute, we are discovering. The traditional Christian belief system is becoming less and less tolerated – ironically in the name of tolerance. A Christian expresses their belief in the Christian view of marriage and they are a hater and homophobe. So tolerance has an exception. A belief in absolute right and wrong as inherited from our Creator is not to be tolerated because it violates today’s idea of tolerance.

As much as tolerance is lifted up as a lofty value, today’s tolerance is anything but lofty or value. Behind this new idea of tolerance is something more sinister, put in our ears by our enemy and accepted by a society weak in holiness. Today’s tolerance is nothing more than a worldview of leave me alone, there’s nothing wrong with me. But God says, yes there is something wrong with you and I have the cure, I am the cure. God’s motive for saying this is something much greater than tolerance. It is love. Yes, it is love that causes God to tell us something is wrong with us, all of us. Love doesn’t sit by and watch someone continue down a path to destruction without warning and pleading with them to change course; tolerance does.

Our enemy deceives and leads us astray little by little. He can take the song ‘Just as I Am’ and turn it into a lesson on tolerance. We are convinced that God accepts us just as we are, so that must mean we are fine just the way we are. True, God does accept us just as we are and because He loves us He continuously works to change us, conforming us to the image of Christ. What a difference we see in the last two sentences if we will look. God cannot tolerate sin in our lives if He loves us becasue sin destroys. Does love allow you to just sit by and simply watch someone die?

God said, “For the greatest of these is love”, not tolerance.

The day will come, indeed it is approaching, when religion will be looked upon as the cause or source of all our problems. When that happens a new religion, by necessity will rise.

More and more we are told our beliefs are private matters; translation, keep your beliefs to yourself. We hear, “Don’t shove your Christianity down our throats,” even when simply stating our beliefs. By its very nature Christianity is convicting and therefore can be “painful” to hear. It is painful to hear that one has cancer, but it is also the only way to begin the treatment for healing. The ultimate goal is the healing, but the diagnosis must be shared. How absurd it would sound if someone said to the doctor who told them they had cancer and shared their recommended means of treating the disease, “Don’t shove your medical care down my throat.” Because hearing that we are corrupt and in need of Christ’s grace can be painful, we are told to keep it private and more and more that is precisely what we do – hiding inside our churches. Christianity will continue to get blamed more and more for the ills that are present in society.

The world’s other major religion, Islam, has become so associated with terrorism and violence and the desire to force its ways upon all society that it becomes an easy target for blame. In addition there is naturally a divide between Christianity and Islam. I say naturally because if you believe the claims of one you have to reject the claims of the other. Either Christ is the only Savior of mankind or He is not. He claimed He was, so your choices are limited to what C. S. Lewis points out and that is He is either Lord, lunatic, or liar. By His own claims He cannot be just a good man or a good prophet. So the world’s two most popular religions cannot be compatible. this often results in conflict around the world.

As these escalate, and they will, people will cry out for a solution. Religion will be come the source or cause of all of society’s problems. Great numbers of people will turn against religion and it will be subdued and trampled under foot. This will create a void. A void, that ironically can only be filled by some form of religion. Man is by nature a religious creature. God created us to worship and worship we will. but we will not worship the Lord God Almighty because He will be associated with ills of the world. So man will worship himself and more specifically their best amongst them. Thus will the anti-Christ find his way into the world.

Keep your lamps trimmed and ready. There is only one God. There is only one Savior and one means of grace – Jesus Christ.

The big story this week has been the President’s announcement that he support’s same sex marriages. The responses have, not surprisingly, taken us down that familiar road of arguing whether people are homosexual by choice or by genetics.

One local radio talk show personality made the argument that it is ridiculous to believe it is choice. The logic used in this argument was that if it was a choice the person could change their choice and could be changed. Going on, they argued, therefore If I could change someone from homosexual to heterosexual then it stands to reason I could do the inverse – change them from heterosexual to homosexual. Well, what’s to say you can’t?

No case was made to refute the idea that this would indeed be possible – it was just assumed that it was utterly ridiculous to imagine a person being convinced to change from heterosexual to homosexual. The logic used for this argument is awful, almost as bad as ‘If A equals B then B must equal C’. If one’s opinion is that homosexuality is a choice then by default the homosexual chose to change from heterosexual to homosexual. They were indeed convinced (by someone, by circumstances or some combination) to change . Whether you agree with the premise of choice or not, there is nothing in the talk show host’s argument that disallows the possibility to change – in either direction. If you do agree with the premise of choice you have to believe one can change in either direction.

The logic falls apart even further if we examine it deeper. The argument for genetics is that you either are attracted to people of the opposite sex or people of the same sex and it is determined by biology. The assumption that must hold true is that attraction is biological. But is that true? Is that what all of the evidence says?

The basis for this assumption and the reason it is so popular is that heterosexuals seem to be attracted to numerous people of the opposite sex – therefore it is driven, yes, determined by biology. That leads to another assumption, specifically, that this is the norm. I will certainly grant that if it can be established that it is indeed the norm for people (whether heterosexual or homosexual) to be attracted to many different people in a sexual manner the assumptions and ultimately the theory stand on much firmer ground. I am not convinced that this latter assumption has been established.

First, lets discuss the word norm. In many cases people will use the word norm to express what happens in most cases. But this is not an accurate description for this word. In America most people will refer to a soccer match as a soccer game, but it was meant to be referred to as a match. The actual norm is to call it a match. Calling it a game is a derivative or corruption from the norm – even though the vast majority call it a game.

Let us begin with the premise that there is a norm for attraction and that there are certainly corruptions or perversions of that norm. Another big story this week involves a 33 year old female teacher having a sexual relationship with an underage student. People are upset and outraged by this story. The teacher has been indicted for doing something illegal. Very few people do not see this as corrupted or perverted. It would not matter how many of these cases took place we would not see them as normal because normal in this case is not based on the number of incidents but rather on what we believe acceptable, an absolute right or wrong. Thoroughout society we do not believe that it is normal for a 33 year old teacher to be attracted to an underage boy.

While some cultures may differ as to whether a man should have one wife, or two or five for that matter, no culture believes a man should have as many and whatever woman he wants. We do not believe that is normal. If it is purely biological then why not? How does biology provide for a morality; a morality that on some level all people’s agree?

As Christians we believe that man was created a certain way. We then, through rebellion went astray. We believe there are all manner of consequences and effects of that history. As Christians we believe that God made man and he made a companion woman. What if this was the norm? What if when God created man the norm was for a man to be attracted to one woman and a woman to be attracted to one man? What if the fact that we certainly seem to be attracted to multiple people is a corruption or perversion of the norm? We can see other corruptions of our original state of creation – for example, we die.

There is evidence there is a norm and that it is built into us, for example our view that the unnatural attraction of a 33 year married woman to an underage boy is abnormal. Or the universally accepted morals that we live by providing limits. If it is true there is a norm and it is built into us and has simply become corrupted it blows up the assumptions that the genetics argument is built upon. It doesn’t just address the homosexual issue though. If it is true it means it is just as much a corruption of the norm to desire more than one person of the opposite sex as well. While it may be the norm in the sense that is common among people it does not mean it is the norm in relation to how we were made.