GodsView : Facing Uncertainty!

GodsView : Facing Uncertainty!: And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was bein...

Facing Uncertainty!

And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, "Save us, Lord; we are perishing." And he said to them, "Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?" Matthew 8:23-26
Why didn't somebody tell me earlier in my life that I can't fix everything? I thought that with due diligence, everything can get resolved. If there were things up ahead that concerned me, I could just make a plan to solve them. In time, I could have it all figured out and then set the automatic "good life" pilot and let it take over.
It's only more recently that I have grasped that life will never be "together" this side of eternity. It's hard to accept sometimes that perfect is only for heaven.
There will always be people problems. There will always be financial challenges. There will always be a home burden, or a crisis of some kind. Every day I live in this world, there will always be some uncertainty ringing my doorbell.
So much for my assumption that if you just worked hard enough, eventually everything would be sorted out, categorized, and put neatly on the shelf. I have never gotten to that day and what's more, I now know it's never coming.
In Matthew 8:23-24, we land in Jesus' life on a day that perfectly illustrates the imperfections of human existence. "When he got into the boat, His disciplines followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm." In the original language, the two words great storm can be translated to mega and seismic. As in, And behold, there arose a mega seismic on the sea, so that the boat was consumed by the waves. It's worth remembering that this description comes from Matthew, one of the disciples who wasn't a fisherman. He had the terrified layman's perspective on this storm!
I have a few questions about that whole scene:
1. Did Jesus not check the Weather Channel? He totally knew that storm was coming yet He led them right into it. Get in the boat, boys. He knowingly took them into harm's way.
2. Could Jesus have stopped the storm before it started? Sure He could have but He let the storm come.
3. So is it true to say that He wanted the storm? I think we could surmise that He was actually looking forward to how He was going to use the storm in the disciples' lives.
Let's get our theology straight. Sometimes Jesus disguises exciting opportunities for personal growth as difficult circumstances. We would choose to avoid trials at all costs, but Jesus sees the bigger picture.

GodsView : Is Love Enough to Make Marriage Succeed?

GodsView : Is Love Enough to Make Marriage Succeed?: If you and your spouse really love each other, won't that hold you steady when the storms come? Not necessarily--and certainly...

Is Love Enough to Make Marriage Succeed?

If you and your spouse really love each other, won't that hold you steady when the storms come?

Not necessarily--and certainly not if you are thinking of love as a romantic feeling. Feeling wonderful about one another does not make two people compatible over the long haul. Many couples assume that the excitement of their courtship will continue for the rest of their lives. That virtually never occurs! It is naive to expect two unique individuals to mesh together like a couple of machines and to remain exhilarated throughout life. Even gears have multiple cogs with rough edges to be honed before they will work in concert.
That honing process usually occurs in the first year or two of marriage. The foundation for all that is to follow is laid in those critical months. What often occurs at this time is a dramatic struggle for power in the relationship. Who will lead? Who will follow? Who will determine how the money is spent? Who will get his or her way in times of disagreement? Everything is up for grabs in the beginning, and the way these early decisions are made will set the stage for the future. The apostle Paul gave us the divine perspective on human relationships--not only in marriage, but in every dimension of life. He wrote, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves" (Philippians 2:3).

That one verse contains more wisdom than most marriage manuals combined. If heeded, it could virtually eliminate divorce from the catalog of human experience. It will give you stability when the storms begin to howl.

GodsView : What's inside the Trojan Horse?

GodsView : What's inside the Trojan Horse?: By God's grace, I have been the pastor of the same church now for almost thirty-five years. From that vantage point, I have witne...

What's inside the Trojan Horse?

By God's grace, I have been the pastor of the same church now for almost thirty-five years. From that vantage point, I have witnessed the birth and growth of menacing trends within the church, several of which have converged under what I would call evangelical pragmatism — an approach to ministry that is endemic in contemporary Christianity.
What is pragmatism? Basically it is the philosophy that results determine meaning, truth, and value — what will work becomes a more important question than what is true. As Christians, we are called to trust what the Lord says, preach that message to others, and leave the results to Him. But many have set that aside. Seeking relevancy and success, they have welcomed the pragmatic approach and have received the proverbial Trojan horse.
Let me take a few minutes to explain a little of the history leading up to the current entrenchment of the pragmatic approach in the evangelical church and to show you why it isn't as innocent as it looks.

Recent History
The 1970s, for the most part, were years of spiritual revival in America. The spread of the gospel through the campuses of many colleges and universities marked a fresh, energetic movement of the Holy Spirit to draw people to salvation in Christ. Mass baptisms were conducted in rivers, lakes, and the ocean, several new versions of the English Bible were released, and Christian publishing and broadcasting experienced remarkable growth.
Sadly, the fervent evangelical revival slowed and was overshadowed by the greed and debauchery of the eighties and nineties. The surrounding culture rejected biblical standards of morality, and the church, rather than assert its distinctiveness and call the world to repentance, softened its stance on holiness. The failure to maintain a distinctively biblical identity was profound — it led to general spiritual apathy and a marked decline in church attendance.
Church leaders reacted to the world's indifference, not by a return to strong biblical preaching that emphasized sin and repentance, but by a pragmatic approach to "doing" church — an approach driven more by marketing, methodology, and perceived results than by biblical doctrine. The new model of ministry revolved around making sinners feel comfortable and at ease in the church, then selling them on the benefits of becoming a Christian. Earlier silence has given way to cultural appeasement and conformity.
Even the church's ministry to its own has changed. Entertainment has hijacked many pulpits across the country; contemporary approaches cater to the ever-changing whims of professing believers; and many local churches have become little more than social clubs and community centers where the focus is on the individual's felt needs. Even on Christian radio, phone-in talk shows, music, and live psychotherapy are starting to replace Bible teaching as the staple. "Whatever works," the mantra of pragmatism, has become the new banner of evangelicalism.

The Down-Grade Controversy
You may be surprised to learn that what we are now seeing is not new. England's most famous preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, dealt with a similar situation more than 100 years ago. Among churches that were once solid, Spurgeon and other faithful pastors noticed a conciliatory attitude toward and overt cooperation with the modernist movement. And what motivated the compromise? They sought to find acceptance by adopting the "sophisticated" trends of the culture. Does that sound familiar to you?
One article, published anonymously in Spurgeon's monthly magazine The Sword and the Trowel, noted that every revival of true evangelical faith had been followed within a generation or two by a drift away from sound doctrine, ultimately leading to wholesale apostasy. The author likened this drifting from truth to a downhill slope, and thus labeled it "the down grade." The inroads of modernism into the church killed ninety percent of the mainline denominations within a generation of Spurgeon's death. Spurgeon himself, once the celebrated and adored herald of the Baptist Union, was marginalized by the society and he eventually withdrew his membership.

The Effects of Pragmatism
Many of today's church leaders have bought into the subtlety of pragmatism without recognizing the dangers it poses. Instead of attacking orthodoxy head on, evangelical pragmatism gives lip service to the truth while quietly undermining the foundations of doctrine. Instead of exalting God, it effectively denigrates the things that are precious to Him.
First, there is in vogue today a trend to make the basis of faith something other than God's Word. Experience, emotion, fashion, and popular opinion are often more authoritative than the Bible in determining what many Christians believe. From private, individual revelation to the blending of secular psychology with biblical "principles," Christians are listening to the voice of the serpent that once told Eve, "God's Word doesn't have all the answers." Christian counseling reflects that drift, frequently offering no more than experimental and unscriptural self-help therapy instead of solid answers from the Bible.
Christian missionary work is often riddled with pragmatism and compromise, because too many in missions have evidently concluded that what gets results is more important than what God says. That's true among local churches as well. It has become fashionable to forgo the proclamation and teaching of God's Word in worship services. Instead, churches serve up a paltry diet of drama, music, and other forms of entertainment.
Second, evangelical pragmatism tends to move the focus of faith away from God's Son. You've seen that repeatedly if you watch much religious television. The health-wealth-and-prosperity gospel advocated by so many televangelists is the ultimate example of this kind of fantasy faith. This false gospel appeals unabashedly to the flesh, corrupting all the promises of Scripture and encouraging greed. It makes material blessing, not Jesus Christ, the object of the Christian's desires.
Easy-believism handles the message differently, but the effect is the same. It is the promise of forgiveness minus the gospel's hard demands, the perfect message for pragmatists. It has done much to popularize "believing" but little to provoke sincere faith.
Christ is no longer the focus of the message. While His name is mentioned from time to time, the real focus is inward, not upward. People are urged to look within; to try to understand themselves; to come to grips with their problems, their hurts, their disappointments; to have their needs met, their desires granted, their wants fulfilled. Nearly all the popular versions of the message encourage and legitimize a self-centered perspective.
Third, today's Christianity is infected with a tendency to view the result of faith as something less than God's standard of holy living. By downplaying the importance of holy living — both by precept and by example — the biblical doctrine of conversion is undermined. Think about it: What more could Satan do to try to destroy the church than undermining God's Word, shifting the focus off Christ, and minimizing holy living?
All those things are happening slowly, steadily within the church right now. Tragically, most Christians seem oblivious to the problems, satisfied with a Christianity that is fashionable and highly visible. But the true church must not ignore those threats. If we fight to maintain doctrinal purity with an emphasis on biblical preaching and biblical ministry, we can conquer external attacks. But if error is allowed into the church, many more churches will slide down the grade to suffer the same fate as the denominations that listened to, yet ignored, Spurgeon's impassioned appeal.
Make it your habitual prayer request that the Lord would elevate the authority of His Word, the glory of His Son, and the purity of His people in the evangelical church. May the Lord revive us and keep us far from the slippery slope of pragmatism.

GodsView : Unmasked!

GodsView : Unmasked!: Remember the old TV show, The Lone Ranger? He would show up and do a good deed, which always led to the question: “Who was that masked ...

Unmasked!

Remember the old TV show, The Lone Ranger? He would show up and do a good deed, which always led to the question: “Who was that masked man?” In the distance, you would hear him say, “Hi ho, Silver...away!”
Personally speaking, I don’t have a lot of experience in wearing masks, except for when I was a kid on Halloween. We would get those cheap, dime-store rubber masks and run around. We would breathe that smelly rubber all night long, knowing we would have our haul of candy to enjoy later on.
Jesus warned His followers about hiding behind a mask, or pretending to be someone we are really not.
The word He chose to describe it was hypocrisy, which means “to hide behind a mask.” In Greek theater of that day, actors would hold masks in front of their faces when they were playing a part.
So hypocrisy is trying to be someone you’re really not. Jesus was saying, “Don’t hide behind a mask. Be real. Don’t be a hypocrite.”
Perhaps Jesus gave this warning at this time, because the disciples might have been tempted either to gain popularity by pleasing the crowds or to avoid trouble by pleasing the scribes and Pharisees.
Luke’s Gospel tells us, “In the meantime, when an innumerable multitude of people had gathered together, so that they trampled one another, He began to say to His disciples first of all, ‘Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy’ ” (Luke 12:1 NKJV).
This is a part of our human nature. We want to be accepted. We want to fit in. So Jesus said, “Be careful. Don’t be a hypocrite.”
How does hypocrisy spread in our lives? Notice that Jesus said, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.”
Leaven is yeast, which is a rising agent. In the Bible, it is always symbolic of evil. It is something that works in secret with penetrating power, starting small and working its way through our lives.
That is why we must carefully guard against it. Little things inevitably lead to big things. Often we will rationalize a sinful act, telling ourselves it’s just one time. But that one thing ultimately leads to other things.
Case in point: King David. I seriously doubt that when he looked lustfully at the beautiful Bathsheba, he thought he would engage in adultery, then murder, and ultimately bring scandal on his kingdom. But that is exactly what happened. A small thing became a big thing.
Hypocrisy is futile and foolish, and Jesus explained why: “For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops” (Luke 12:2–3 NKJV).
Simply put, there are no secrets with God. Whatever you try to hide will surface one day.
The problem was that the Pharisees were more concerned with their reputation than with their character. They were more concerned with what people thought about them than what God knew about them.
Yet the Bible warns about fearing man instead of God: “The fear of man brings a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe” (Proverbs 29:25 NKJV).
The remedy for hypocrisy is to forget about what people say and do and instead fear God alone. Psalm 111:10 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…” (NKJV).
The Bible teaches that a day is coming when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ. It all will become known.
But here’s the good news: If you have been living a righteous life, then that will be acknowledged too. Whatever you have been doing will ultimately break ground one day, and you will have cultivated a crop of it. You’ll reap what you sow.
If you are sowing to the flesh, you will reap corruption. But if you are sowing to the spirit, then you will reap life everlasting (see Galatians 6:8).
Today, can the question be asked of you, “Who was that masked man?” or “Who was that masked woman?”
Fear may cause us to back down on what we believe, especially in the presence of others who don’t hold the same views. It might cause us to put on a mask, so to speak.
But remember what Jesus said. Be real. And don’t be a hypocrite.