Do your ears itch?

As noted in CoffeeBreak yesterday, many Christians are ready to dilute the true Gospel of Jesus Christ with silly superstitions, angel stories, and bizarre worship practices. A lifetime of ministry has allowed me to see fads come and go in the church. I've seen many doctrinal aberrations that time has corrected. The current issue of syncretism (mixing religions) is the most serious problem I have seen. Even so-called “Spirit-filled” disciples are turning to strange doctrine and weird practices because many no longer trust the absolute sufficiency of the Scripture for life and godliness.

Part of this grows out of our celebrity culture. The fact that someone can sing or dance or act does not mean they have anything authoritative to say about politics, climate science, or religious truth. Yet, we are regularly exposed to the pontifications of those like Kanye West, Madonna, and Bruce Springsteen. Are they experts? On their art, yes! On other issues? Not in my understanding. The same celebrity worship happens in the Church. An athlete who comes to faith in Christ from a life full of dysfunction is put on the stage in front of thousands of teens within months of his conversion, held up as a role model before the water of his baptism has dried.

There many Christian musicians whose passion for worship is unquestioned but whose Scriptural depth and understanding are frequently slim to non-existent. But, because they enjoy celebrity status in church circles, they have a more profound influence than pastors who carefully study the Word and teach from long hours of preparation. The result is shallow Christians with faith built on experience alone, their focus shifted from the Awesomeness of a Holy God to subjective feelings celebrated by the song writer. That is not to say that all musicians are shallow! Some write and lead out of a life dedicated equally to study of truth and excellence of their craft. Then, too, we cannot ignore the huge influence of media speakers whose words fill up books, who take the stage at conferences, using human interest stories and Oprah-like psycho-babble to explain life to us. Frequently their message is without much Bible content or any theological anchors.

Then, too, some are ‘bored’ by steady, solid, life-changing Truth of the Word, and become fascinated by demons, angels, and psychic phenomena rather than the Word of God. Deep reverence for the Presence of Yahweh is insufficient and all manner of hype is invited into the Church to replace the genuine move of the Spirit. This is not new, but it is a growing trend with nothing but terrible consequences for the health of the Church. The Word speaks of this: "The time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths." (2 Timothy 4:3-4, NIV)

Disciple, love the Truth!
Seek out leaders whose lives show integrity.
Commit yourself to a church that is more than a ‘show,’ that is Word-centered even as it is innovative, looking for ways to bring the unchanging Truth to the culture in which we live.

As we celebrate Advent, I urge you to go back to the Gospels.
Read the “Jesus story” told in Matthew and Luke and let the amazing facts of God’s intervention in history wash over you.
Read from John 1 and begin to understand the amazing fact that God became a Man! It’s called ‘the Incarnation!’ God, the Creator, mysteriously and wondrously, moved by love entered this world and was born a baby, lived among us teaching us, died to save us from our sins, and rose again to declare His triumph over sin, death, and Hell.

Hallelujah, what a Savior.

"I need no other argument,
I need no other plea,
it is enough that Jesus died,
and that He died for me."

"My heart is leaning on the Word,
the written Word of God.
Salvation by my Savior's name,
salvation through His blood."

I’ll take mine, Jesus Lite, with a splash of Buddha

The Associated Press started an article today with this line: “When it comes to religion, many Americans like the mix-and-match, build-your-own approach.” This is the finding of a report issued on 12/9/09 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. This ‘pick and choose’ method of constructing personal faith doesn’t just mean that Christians decide to blend some Presbyterian and Episcopalian traditions. A quarter of those who are traditionally Christian claim to believe in reincarnation, a belief adopted from Eastern religions. One in five American Christians also delve into alternative spirituality. They practice yoga, look for energy from crystals, or blend aspects of nature worship into their lives. About a third say they have communicated with someone who has died and half of us claim to have had a religious or mystical experience, a sharp increase from the previous generation. So, is this good news or bad news?

The good news is that life without God was tried and found wanting. Spirituality is back. The bad news is that Christianity, as practiced in America, was found so anemic, so incapable of addressing the deepest longings of our hearts, that people decided to look elsewhere for meaning in life. Most of those who have an eclectic faith are ignorant of Christian doctrine and without understanding of the incoherent inconsistency of their beliefs. Several trends contributed to the present state; a rejection of dogma by free-thinking people, a low view of Scriptural authority among members of the clergy, and exposure to many cultures and religions as the world grew smaller in the 20th century. The same article includes this observation: "Pop culture and the Internet are probably more powerful teachers than Sunday school teachers." Scott Thumma is a sociologist at the Hartford Institute of Religion Research.

I find it amazing that faith and religion which profoundly shape who we are, what we hope for, and how we live should be so casually approached by otherwise intelligent, educated people. Imagine if we trained our children at school in the same way that we do in religion, encouraging them to adopt as true whatever was most appealing at the moment. The facts of science and math that lead to understanding the way that our world operates, that allow us to create machines, medicine, and live more safely and longer are taught with insistence on mastery of that which is true and tested. Yet, in matters of faith, we say, “Find your own way.” No wonder we live in such a muddled mess – morally and ethically! In the Proverbs we read that "There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death." (Proverbs 14:12, NLT) Jesus, who claimed to the Truth, said that “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32, NLT)
Are you tempted by a spirituality that is Jesus Lite, with a splash of Buddha?
Do you reject the mind only to follow emotion in matters of faith?
If so, then prepare to wander, to drift from point in life, and to come to a place without hope.

Discipleship is about knowing Jesus Christ as Lord and includes a healthy component of experience of the love of God. It also requires study and understanding that leads to mature faith that encompasses all of this life and points the way to our eternal home with the Father.
Here’s a word from Scripture for your meditation today. I pray that it will be true in your pursuit of God. "You have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:15-20, NIV)

___________________

O Lord our Lord,
How majestic is Your name.
Your words are true,
Your mercy does not change.
All Your promises are precious,
Reviving our faith.
Every one of them
Will be fulfilled one day.

Oh all Your promises
Are "Yes" and "Amen" in Jesus.
Your promises are true.
All Your promises
Are "Yes" and "Amen" Lord Jesus,
We'll keep running after You.

We will run,
We'll run and not grow weary.
We will rise upon the eagle's wings.
In the presence of the Lord,
Our spirits will soar,
Till we one day gaze upon our King.

But my foot had almost slipped,
O Lord, I'd almost lost my way,
'Til I entered the house of the Lord
And heard Your sweet Spirit say,

Oh all Your promises
Are "Yes" and "Amen" in Jesus.
Your promises are true.
All Your promises
Are "Yes" and "Amen" Lord Jesus,
We'll keep running after You.

All Your Promises
Smith, Andrew © 1995 Mercy / Vineyard Publishing (Admin. by Music Services)

CCLI License No. 810055

Burnt plows!

In June, 1974, I first saw the girl who would become my wife. After a fun Summer of dating, we were engaged, and married in January, 1975. Recently I found an old cassette tape that contained an audio recording of our wedding. I was reminded that the covenant we made before the Lord that day had no escape hatches. We did not create a prenuptial agreement, ‘just in case.’ (Not that either of us had any assets to protect. We were poorer than poor, but did not know it.) For us, the part about being faithful 'til death do us part, so help me God' was more than words. Some days I am a better husband than others, but the feelings of the moment do not change the covenant made on January 10, 1975.

I've only made one other promise like that, my commitment to Jesus Christ. He is my Lord. I must admit that some days I am a better disciple than others. My commitment to Him is not always as obvious as it could be, but even when I am faithless He is faithful. My up’s and down’s don't change the fact of His Lordship of my life.
Statements of irrevocable commitment are sobering, aren't they? A commitment can be comforting and it can be suffocating. Commitment ends selfishness. When we make a covenant, we surrender our autonomy. On the positive side, remember that commitment makes great things possible!

-A bank will loan us money for a major purchase if our credit score indicates we have regularly met our financial responsibilities.

-A well tended marriage brings tremendous stability and support to a couple’s shared lives.

-Serving Christ faithfully gives life a meaning and purpose that cannot be found IN ANY OTHER choice.

-Forming strong, deep partnerships with others at work or in ministry, creates the possibilities of amazing results. The Bible says, "A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken." (Eccl. 4.12)
A story of radical commitment found in 1 Kings 19:19-21. Elijah, the old prophet, is nearing the end of his leadership in Israel. God tells him it is time to recruit the man who will succeed him in the prophetic office. “So Elijah went from there and found Elisha son of Shaphat. He was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the twelfth pair. Elijah went up to him and threw his cloak around him.
Elisha then left his oxen and ran after Elijah. "Let me kiss my father and mother good-by," he said, "and then I will come with you." "Go back," Elijah replied. "What have I done to you?"
So Elisha left him and went back. He took his yoke of oxen and slaughtered them. He burned the plowing equipment to cook the meat and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out to follow Elijah and became his attendant.”

He slaughtered his oxen and burned his plow! What a way to make a commitment. Elisha destroyed the tools of his former life in a sacrificial offering. There was NO going back when that was done, no 'I think I changed my mind' was possible.

When it comes to serving the Lord, are you hanging onto a contingency plan that will allow you to escape if you change your mind? What, if anything, have you held in reserve from His mastery? Only those who are irrevocably committed to Christ and His kingdom, only those with ‘burnt plows,’ know and enjoy the greatest blessings of a life of faith. Disciple, make the choice to give yourself – wholeheartedly and without reserve- to the Lord Jesus Christ. Give Him your past and leave it. Commit your future to Him to be guided into it. One of the best examples of commitment in the Bible is Joshua, the man who followed Moses in leading Israel. As he came to the end of his life, he called the nation’s leaders together and challenged them to burn their plows, so to speak. Take a look.
"So honor the Lord and serve him wholeheartedly. Put away forever the idols your ancestors worshiped when they lived beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord alone. But if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, then choose today whom you will serve. . . .But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord." Joshua 24:14-15



___________________



This is the air I breathe!

This is the air I breathe!

Your holy presence living in me,

And I I'm desperate for You,

And I I'm lost without You!



This is my daily bread!

This is my daily bread!

Your very word spoken to me,

And I I'm desperate for You,

And I I'm lost without You!



Breathe © 1995 Mercy / Vineyard Publishing (Admin. by Music Services)

Marie Barnett

CCLI License No. 810055

Pleasure, God’s gift

Many Christians almost instinctively recoil from the word, “pleasure,” as though anything enjoyable or fun must be sinful, too. Then, too, many equate pleasure with drunkenness or immorality forgetting the pure pleasure that can be found in a well prepared meal, an exquisite cup of coffee, a tender touch, or a well-told story. Gary Thomas has written a book that addresses our pleasure phobia, titled, Pure Pleasure. (Zondervan, 2009) He challenges disciples of Christ to rethink their prejudice against pleasure. The foundation of his argument is not new. He reminds us that trying to scare ourselves holy is impossible! Only a deep love for God, a soul-satisfying passion for Who He is and what He calls us to, can keep us from wandering into the pits of decadence. He writes, “We can build lives of true, lasting pleasure and so fortify ourselves against evil because evil has lost much of its allure — or we can try, with an iron will, to “scare” ourselves away from evil while still, deep in our hearts, truly longing for it.”

The allure of asceticism (rejection of pleasure) is that it feeds our pride! When we fast, there is a strong temptation to feel vastly superior to those who are unable to resist the need for food and drink. When we manage to corral our sexual urges and keep them hidden behind our foreheads, we can express our spiritual contempt for those who embrace another lover. A thousand years ago, the idea that rejecting all creature comforts and pleasure was the path to spiritual maturity took hold. Monks rejected marriage, wore rough clothing, ate only simple fare, did not bathe, and slept in cold cells in pursuit of spiritual depth. Mostly, they created misery for themselves with little to gain in mastery of sin! An idea persists that the pathway to spirituality lies through agonizingly long prayer meetings and endless hours of perusal of holy Scripture. Really?

Thomas pokes at our religious pretensions by reminding us that “prohibitionist Christians squeeze all the joy out of life — an obscene effect, because when you squeeze the joy out of life, you also end up squeezing part of God out of life. You close yourself off to a glorious, beautiful, and all-inviting side of Him.”

Thomas suggests that God must love pleasure. He equipped us with rich senses, created a world full of color, texture, and smells; made us with sensory receptors that cause us to enjoy the touch of another. Why would He make us with the ability to enjoy the world in which He placed us and then forbid us from taking pleasure from it? Jesus assures us that God, like a good father, delights in giving us good gifts! Indeed, the Savior was mocked for His ability to enjoy a good meal and hearty laughter by the Pharisees who thought such things beneath their spirituality. Jesus explained: "A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of. " (John 10:10, The Message)
Thomas recognizes the danger in lauding the benefit of pleasure. He writes, “As Christians, we have an awful tendency to “overcorrect.” We see our error (“Oh, so maybe I can legitimately accept and even cultivate pleasure. I see how I’ve endangered myself and dishonored God with a prohibitionist mind-set”) and then rush to the other extreme to get away from that error, only to create a new one (“I want to ‘eat, drink, and be merry’ for the rest of my life!”). Writing or reading a book like this presents exactly that grave danger.
Today’s church, frankly, has not earned a reputation for intellectual sophistication. Instead of holding things in a healthy balance, we tend to bounce back and forth between dangerous extremes.”   Ain’t that the truth!? And yet, we cannot shrink from telling the truth just because some foolishly abuse the freedom found in it.

We enjoy pleasure, but we don’t worship it.
We take pleasure from the places where God creates opportunities for it, but we know that there are times when His call will trump our desire and we will forego pleasure to do His will.
We rejoice in the things He provides even as we hope for Eternity where we know "You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand." (Psalm 16:11, NIV)

Here’s a passage for your thoughts today. May He fill you up with His joy as you remember the richness of His mercy shown us in the coming of Jesus, the Savior.

"Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song.
Sing his praises in the assembly of the faithful.
O Israel, rejoice in your Maker.
O people of Jerusalem, exult in your King.


Praise his name with dancing, accompanied by tambourine and harp.
For the Lord delights in his people; he crowns the humble with victory.
Let the faithful rejoice that he honors them.
Let them sing for joy as they lie on their beds." (Psalm 149:1-5, NLT)

Stains, Schedules, and Sin

Just as I was ready to slip into a dress shirt from my closet I noticed a couple of stains on it. About 99.5% of the shirt was clean and free of wrinkles, but the two spots smaller than a penny stood out, grabbing my attention. Blemishes are like that, aren’t they?

A well-known pastor who is a successful author of several popular Christian books, who leads a growing, innovative church in Washington, DC, reported on his blog that he was ‘mortified,’ by his failure to remember a scheduled wedding this weekend. Only after a phone call did he realize and then showed up more than 2 hours late! His reaction? I quote- “The ceremony was actually a beautiful ceremony. But my ego is fractured, bruised and black and blue. Still kicking myself. Still can't believe it.” (http://evotional.com/2009/12/mortified.html) One moment of failure eclipsed his successes. Mark will recover but the memory, I’m sure, will always make him feel regret.

When someone falls flat on his face, what shows up first in his obituary? His failure, of course. The years of success, the thousands of acts of kindness, the hard work of their lives always follows the lead which is about their sinful moment! Mention the famed preachers - Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, or Ted Haggard - and see what people remember first. It won’t be the best things these fallen men have done; the ministries and churches they built, the books they wrote, or the lives their messages changed. Their moment of moral collapse will be the one thing that eclipses everything else about them. The stain screams for our attention, rivets our eyes.
Today I am not trying to convince us that stains, forgotten appointments, or sins don’t matter. They do! I didn’t put on that stained shirt. I took it down to the laundry pile and applied some stain lifter to the spots. Mark, the pastor who forgot the wedding, acknowledged his forgetfulness and will most certainly be doubly diligent about checking his schedule. It isn’t just the famous ‘sinners’ who need redemption, is it? There are a few chapters in my life story that I’m glad have not been reported on “60 Minutes.” If you’re honest, you have made some decisions that you would not reported either.

The Bible says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God!” The Message says it this way: "We’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us." (Romans 3:23, The Message)
Perhaps your failure isn’t as spectacular as that of another, but it’s still a stain. At least two know about it- God and you! All sin separates us from God; dramatic and public, ordinary and secret – alike! But that does not need to be the end of the story. Let me put that damning passage I just quoted into context where we learn of new possibilities. "Now a righteousness from God, apart from law, … (comes) from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus." (Romans 3:21-26, NIV)

Jesus Christ came into this world, John tells us, not to trumpet our sins, nor to point out our predicament. “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son…” "God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again." (John 3:17, The Message)
Stained by sin? Shamed by failure? Guilty and afraid? Don’t run and hide. Look up and acknowledge what’s been done. Here’s the promise. Believe it, receive it, and live it.
"If we walk in the light, God himself being the light, we also experience a shared life with one another, as the sacrificed blood of Jesus, God’s Son, purges all our sin. … If we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won’t let us down; he’ll be true to himself. He’ll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing." (1 John 1:7,9, The Message)

________________
I was once a sinner, but I came
Pardon to receive from my Lord.
This was freely given, and I found
That He always kept His word.

There's a new name written down in glory,
And it's mine. O yes, it's mine!
And the white-robed angels sing the story,
"A sinner has come home."
For there's a new name written down in glory,
And it's mine, O yes it's mine.
With my sins forgiven I am bound for heaven,
Nevermore to roam.

In the Book 'tis written
"Saved by grace."
O the joy that came to my soul!
Now I am forgiven and I know,
By the blood I am made whole.

A New Name In Glory
Miles, C. Austin
© Public Domain