Culture has changed how we view right & wrong.
"Increasingly, we don’t want to judge
others for anything, even if what they’re doing is destructive. But is
being non-judgmental the same as granting tacit approval, even support?"
Monday, 8 June 2015
Monday, 1 June 2015
Christian Entertainment
AW. Tozer
- wrote these words in 1955: For centuries
the church stood solidly against every form of worldly entertainment, recognizing
it for what it was-a device for wasting time, a refuge from the disturbing voice
of conscience, a scheme to divert attention from moral accountability. For this
she got herself abused roundly by the sons of this world. But of late she has become
tired of the abuse and has given over the struggle. She appears to have decided
that if she cannot conquer the great god Entertainment she may as well join forces
with him and make what use she can of his powers. So today we have the astonishing
spectacle of millions of dollars being poured into the unholy job of providing earthly
entertainment for the so-called sons of heaven.
Religious entertainment is in many places rapidly crowding
out the serious things of God. Many churches these days have become little more
than poor theatres where fifth-rate "producers" peddle their shoddy wares
with the full approval of evangelical leaders who can even quote a holy text in
defence of their delinquency. And hardly a man dares raise his voice against it.
Friday, 1 May 2015
Forgiveness is Tough!
Forgiveness is not an option on the buffet table of the Christian walk. Heaven is for those who receive forgiveness vertically from heaven and give it horizontally on earth.
Forgiveness requires sacrifice. To get to it from Heaven required the Lamb to lay down his life and for us to give it horizontally will require the sacrifice laying down of our hurt and desire for retribution
Genuine forgiveness requires this: devastating violating will always want injustice and hurt satisfied.
Forgiveness like this is not easy. It's not for sissy's or the faint hearted.
Like faith it needs to be constantly strengthened and build up, it like faith is tested and its then a focus of fight
Many times savage hurts and grievous wounds can creep back in unawares to seek a root of bitterness to grow troubling you and defiling many.
We must be on guard to let our faith not weaken to unbelief and our forgiveness to weaken to bitterness
Sometimes the initial decision to forgive can require many back up decisions to fortify it
Sometimes it will need the grace of God to undergird it as you will struggle in your own ability.
Many times it's simply unfair to forgive but because He has us and our sin and requires us to, we must.
Sadly many good and godly because of their unforgiveness to a violation have stopped growing, opened to door to darkness and potentially closed the door to heaven.
Yet the very people who violated them can go on and lead powerful live's because they got vertical and have given horizontal forgiveness
It's a dicy place to be in: calling someone unclean and worthy of judgement when God has declared them clean and pardoned because they have sought Him for it
To forgive doesn't mean you have to be someone's best friend or even like them it means you pardon them, let go of the violation. Sometime forgiveness will open a door for an even closer friendship than before. Sometime it won't and its impossible to even be on good terms because of the nature of the situation and the person. But it's important to pardon
Pardon doesn't always means there will not be consequences. You might pardon some one but have to go thru court or divorce etc
But the key thing is to move on obey and honour God and his precepts. I know people who hang on to stuff for years, I'm so sorry it happened to you but your lack of forgiveness is now the thing that is killing you, others who seek out stuff to then use trip others. Stuff that God has pardoned and every one has moved on from
Forgiveness requires sacrifice. To get to it from Heaven required the Lamb to lay down his life and for us to give it horizontally will require the sacrifice laying down of our hurt and desire for retribution
Genuine forgiveness requires this: devastating violating will always want injustice and hurt satisfied.
Forgiveness like this is not easy. It's not for sissy's or the faint hearted.
Like faith it needs to be constantly strengthened and build up, it like faith is tested and its then a focus of fight
Many times savage hurts and grievous wounds can creep back in unawares to seek a root of bitterness to grow troubling you and defiling many.
We must be on guard to let our faith not weaken to unbelief and our forgiveness to weaken to bitterness
Sometimes the initial decision to forgive can require many back up decisions to fortify it
Sometimes it will need the grace of God to undergird it as you will struggle in your own ability.
Many times it's simply unfair to forgive but because He has us and our sin and requires us to, we must.
Sadly many good and godly because of their unforgiveness to a violation have stopped growing, opened to door to darkness and potentially closed the door to heaven.
Yet the very people who violated them can go on and lead powerful live's because they got vertical and have given horizontal forgiveness
It's a dicy place to be in: calling someone unclean and worthy of judgement when God has declared them clean and pardoned because they have sought Him for it
To forgive doesn't mean you have to be someone's best friend or even like them it means you pardon them, let go of the violation. Sometime forgiveness will open a door for an even closer friendship than before. Sometime it won't and its impossible to even be on good terms because of the nature of the situation and the person. But it's important to pardon
Pardon doesn't always means there will not be consequences. You might pardon some one but have to go thru court or divorce etc
But the key thing is to move on obey and honour God and his precepts. I know people who hang on to stuff for years, I'm so sorry it happened to you but your lack of forgiveness is now the thing that is killing you, others who seek out stuff to then use trip others. Stuff that God has pardoned and every one has moved on from
Friday, 17 April 2015
The Real Gospel (Way of the Master).
If you listen to most modern preachers, they will tell you how God can help you. He’s your friend and He’s there for your happiness. He has a wonderful plan for your life. However, with a spiraling world economy, the increase in global disasters, wars, unstoppable diseases, massive floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, tsunamis, and escalating violence, it’s not so easy to make the promise of a bliss-filled future for those who respond to the gospel.
Words mean different things to different people. While some preachers would say that a “wonderful” plan means that God will be with us in the lion’s den, they don’t mention the lions, and so they are disillusioned the first time a lion looks at them as lunch. God isn’t portrayed in Scripture as some sort of divine butler who comes at the beck and call of humanity. There’s no promise of perfect happiness in this life. The Christian life is rather portrayed as the opposite. The Bibles promises tribulation, temptation and persecution for those who live a godly life in this sinful world.
Consequently, skeptics are right when they say that the church is filled with hypocrites—those whose lives don’t reflect what we know they should. And our land is filled with those who think that they were once Christians who have fallen away from their faith. The following letter is typical of those in this category:
“Ray believes I was a ‘false convert’ and was never a ‘true Christian’ the entire time I believed I was a born-again evangelical Christian for many years. I spoke in tongues, had the many gifts of the Holy Spirit, laying-on-of-hands, the whole nine yards.”
He may have thought that he had the whole nine yards, but he was thrown a curveball. Sadly, this person (just one of very many) is almost certainly the product of the false gospel—the promise of an improved life. Notice the “evidence” he cites of his supposed conversion. It was that he possessed gifts, when the Bible says that it is by fruits (not gifts) that a Christian is known.
The Scriptures list the evidential fruits of conversion as the fruit of righteousness (always doing the right thing), the fruit of praise (giving God due praise for His kindness, etc.), the fruit of thanksgiving (having a thankful heart for the “unspeakable” gift of everlasting life, etc.), the fruit of repentance (living a life of holiness—no longer serving sin), and the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, faith, meekness and temperance).
Instead of possessing these fruits, the false convert deceives himself, and plays the hypocrite. He doesn’t come to “know the Lord” because his sin still separates him from God. He holds onto secret sins (lust, selfishness, a covetous heart, bitterness, etc.), and it’s only a matter of time (as with Judas) until he is exposed as a pretender. Many hypocrites stay within the Church, sitting among God’s people—as goats among the sheep--and will be sorted out on Judgment Day.
The reason the false convert had a false conversion is that he didn’t find a place of biblical repentance in the first place. He never saw sin in its true light. That’s why the Ten Commandments should be used in our witness, and not the unbiblical “God has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life” gospel.
Instead of trying to attract the sinners to the Savior, we should rather do what the Bible does. It drives them using the Ten Commandments. It is similar to the way the police may have an amnesty for illegal weapons. They would say, “You are violating the law by possessing illegal firearms. If you hand them in before the end of this month you will not be prosecuted.” And therein is the essence of the message of the gospel. We have sinned against God by violating His Law. In His sight we are criminals. There’s going to be a terrible Day of Judgment, when God reveals His anger against all evil, but He is rich in mercy and offers amnesty. If we lay down our weapons of hostility, He completely forgives us because of the cross.
When we leave off the fact that sinners have violated God’s Law and are under His just wrath, there’s no reason for them to lay down their weapons. Instead of fleeing to the cross to be saved from God’s wrath because they have sinned against Him, they instead experimentally come to the Savior to see if His wonderful plan is better than theirs. There’s no fear of God, there’s no knowledge of sin (which comes by the Law—see Romans 3:19, 20, 7:7, 7:13), and there is no conversion to Jesus Christ.
A woman named Kim once wrote to us and said that her husband had our video series, saying that she mocked Kirk Cameron and me, calling us “The Hokey Brothers,” and naming the video series “The Won't Work Series.” In other words, she didn’t believe in the use of God’s Law to bring the knowledge of sin, and be used as “a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ” (see Galatians 3:24), and said,
“Late one night the phone rang and it was a very nervous man who said that a woman at Union Station (that's in DC) gave him my business card… It turns out a friend had … double parked, ran to a security guard and handed him my card saying, ‘This is the woman who will answer your questions about God’. He stammered on the phone telling me the story and then said that he had kept the card for a year, thrown it away several times only to dig it out of the trash. Clifton then went on to ask me question after question about scripture. My husband found passages so that I could read directly as I spoke to Clifton over several hours. Well after midnight Clifton was still questioning why he needed God and I went ‘full Ray’. ‘Have you ever told a lie?’ I queried. My husband was pounding the pillow laughing as I was mouthing to him to shut up. Within minutes Clifton's heart changed. He was crying at his need for God and saying that he never knew why he needed Him. We prayed and I never heard from Clifton again. My husband, however, never misses an opportunity to laugh at my now former mocking at Ray.”
So if you are a Christian, make sure you do what Jesus did when you present the gospel to a lost and dying world. If they are humble and have a knowledge of sin, give them grace (John 3:1-5). If they are proud and self-righteous, give them the Law to humble them and bring the knowledge of sin (Mark 10:17-22). Do what Paul did in Romans chapter 2. He said to his hearers,
“You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? You who say, “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law?” (Romans 2:21-23).
Imitate Paul. Do what Jesus did. Open up the divine Law as He did in the Sermon on the Mount, and show sinners the seriousness of sin and its fearful consequences. To fail to do so is the ultimate betrayal, the terrible repercussions of which will only be seen in eternity.
Words mean different things to different people. While some preachers would say that a “wonderful” plan means that God will be with us in the lion’s den, they don’t mention the lions, and so they are disillusioned the first time a lion looks at them as lunch. God isn’t portrayed in Scripture as some sort of divine butler who comes at the beck and call of humanity. There’s no promise of perfect happiness in this life. The Christian life is rather portrayed as the opposite. The Bibles promises tribulation, temptation and persecution for those who live a godly life in this sinful world.
Consequently, skeptics are right when they say that the church is filled with hypocrites—those whose lives don’t reflect what we know they should. And our land is filled with those who think that they were once Christians who have fallen away from their faith. The following letter is typical of those in this category:
“Ray believes I was a ‘false convert’ and was never a ‘true Christian’ the entire time I believed I was a born-again evangelical Christian for many years. I spoke in tongues, had the many gifts of the Holy Spirit, laying-on-of-hands, the whole nine yards.”
He may have thought that he had the whole nine yards, but he was thrown a curveball. Sadly, this person (just one of very many) is almost certainly the product of the false gospel—the promise of an improved life. Notice the “evidence” he cites of his supposed conversion. It was that he possessed gifts, when the Bible says that it is by fruits (not gifts) that a Christian is known.
The Scriptures list the evidential fruits of conversion as the fruit of righteousness (always doing the right thing), the fruit of praise (giving God due praise for His kindness, etc.), the fruit of thanksgiving (having a thankful heart for the “unspeakable” gift of everlasting life, etc.), the fruit of repentance (living a life of holiness—no longer serving sin), and the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, faith, meekness and temperance).
Instead of possessing these fruits, the false convert deceives himself, and plays the hypocrite. He doesn’t come to “know the Lord” because his sin still separates him from God. He holds onto secret sins (lust, selfishness, a covetous heart, bitterness, etc.), and it’s only a matter of time (as with Judas) until he is exposed as a pretender. Many hypocrites stay within the Church, sitting among God’s people—as goats among the sheep--and will be sorted out on Judgment Day.
The reason the false convert had a false conversion is that he didn’t find a place of biblical repentance in the first place. He never saw sin in its true light. That’s why the Ten Commandments should be used in our witness, and not the unbiblical “God has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life” gospel.
Instead of trying to attract the sinners to the Savior, we should rather do what the Bible does. It drives them using the Ten Commandments. It is similar to the way the police may have an amnesty for illegal weapons. They would say, “You are violating the law by possessing illegal firearms. If you hand them in before the end of this month you will not be prosecuted.” And therein is the essence of the message of the gospel. We have sinned against God by violating His Law. In His sight we are criminals. There’s going to be a terrible Day of Judgment, when God reveals His anger against all evil, but He is rich in mercy and offers amnesty. If we lay down our weapons of hostility, He completely forgives us because of the cross.
When we leave off the fact that sinners have violated God’s Law and are under His just wrath, there’s no reason for them to lay down their weapons. Instead of fleeing to the cross to be saved from God’s wrath because they have sinned against Him, they instead experimentally come to the Savior to see if His wonderful plan is better than theirs. There’s no fear of God, there’s no knowledge of sin (which comes by the Law—see Romans 3:19, 20, 7:7, 7:13), and there is no conversion to Jesus Christ.
A woman named Kim once wrote to us and said that her husband had our video series, saying that she mocked Kirk Cameron and me, calling us “The Hokey Brothers,” and naming the video series “The Won't Work Series.” In other words, she didn’t believe in the use of God’s Law to bring the knowledge of sin, and be used as “a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ” (see Galatians 3:24), and said,
“Late one night the phone rang and it was a very nervous man who said that a woman at Union Station (that's in DC) gave him my business card… It turns out a friend had … double parked, ran to a security guard and handed him my card saying, ‘This is the woman who will answer your questions about God’. He stammered on the phone telling me the story and then said that he had kept the card for a year, thrown it away several times only to dig it out of the trash. Clifton then went on to ask me question after question about scripture. My husband found passages so that I could read directly as I spoke to Clifton over several hours. Well after midnight Clifton was still questioning why he needed God and I went ‘full Ray’. ‘Have you ever told a lie?’ I queried. My husband was pounding the pillow laughing as I was mouthing to him to shut up. Within minutes Clifton's heart changed. He was crying at his need for God and saying that he never knew why he needed Him. We prayed and I never heard from Clifton again. My husband, however, never misses an opportunity to laugh at my now former mocking at Ray.”
So if you are a Christian, make sure you do what Jesus did when you present the gospel to a lost and dying world. If they are humble and have a knowledge of sin, give them grace (John 3:1-5). If they are proud and self-righteous, give them the Law to humble them and bring the knowledge of sin (Mark 10:17-22). Do what Paul did in Romans chapter 2. He said to his hearers,
“You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? You who say, “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law?” (Romans 2:21-23).
Imitate Paul. Do what Jesus did. Open up the divine Law as He did in the Sermon on the Mount, and show sinners the seriousness of sin and its fearful consequences. To fail to do so is the ultimate betrayal, the terrible repercussions of which will only be seen in eternity.
Monday, 9 March 2015
Mothers Day - Splitting the baby!
In the Old Testament, there is a great account of Solomon's wisdom, which also showed his heart. 2 Woman come to him with 1 dead baby and 1 living baby. Both Mothers claim that the living baby is theirs and the dead baby belongs to the other. Solomon understanding the heart of a Mother calls for a sword and for the living baby to be cut /split in 2 with 1 piece being given to each mother. The real Mother refuses and agrees to the 'fake' mother having the baby. The 'fake' mother insists on the baby being split. Solomon recognises that the 1st woman is the true Mother and orders that the baby be given to her.
Churches are God's children, birthed through the labours of pioneering pastors and wives. Humanly speaking they pay an often hidden price to see the church (baby) come to life. However there are others who wish to claim for themselves what they have not birthed or paid a price for. They did not serve and undergo the labour that comes with birthing a church. These 'fake' mothers, in order to get what they want they are prepared to split the baby (church), because for them, half a baby (church) is more than what they had before.
Churches are God's children, birthed through the labours of pioneering pastors and wives. Humanly speaking they pay an often hidden price to see the church (baby) come to life. However there are others who wish to claim for themselves what they have not birthed or paid a price for. They did not serve and undergo the labour that comes with birthing a church. These 'fake' mothers, in order to get what they want they are prepared to split the baby (church), because for them, half a baby (church) is more than what they had before.
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