Transforming The World Or Escaping From It

I love this quote from Greg Boyd’s “The Myth of a Christian Nation"
So, too the reason God now calls kingdom people to remain separate from the ways of the kingdom-of-the-world is not to isolate them from their culture but to empower them to authentically, serve their culture and ultimately win it over to allegiance to Jesus Christ. The reason we are not to be of the world is so we may be for the world.

This point is especially important today, for a significant portion of evangelical Christianity has come under the influence of an escapist apocalyptic theology. Believing Jesus will soon “rapture” Christians out of the world before destroying it, they have little concern with the church being a witness on issues of social justice, global peace, the environment, and so on. To the contrary, in the name of fulfilling biblical prophecy, many are actively supporting stances that directly or indirectly encourage violence, possibly on a global scale (of instance, extremist Christian Zionism). Since the world is doomed for soon destruction, the thinking goes, the only thing that matters is getting individuals ready for the rapture.

Whatever else one thinks about the New Testament’s eschatology, it certainly does not encourage this sort of irresponsible escapism. The hope offered to believers is not that we will be a peculiar elite group of people who will escape out of the world, leaving others behind to experience the wrath of God. The hope is rather that by our sacrificial participation in the ever-expanding kingdom, the whole creation will be redeemed (Rom. 8:20-23; Col 1:18-20)

I believe Mr. Boyd to be correct in his assessment. It is much easier to let the world go to hell in a hand basket then engaging it with Calvary type love. It is much easier to look at homosexuals with AIDS and say “this is God’s judgment” than to put our arms around them and love them. It is much easier to ignore the rapid decline of our environment than it is to march hand in hand with “tree lovers”. It is much easier to say “we will be raptured away from it all, so prepare yourself for the next kingdom” while ignoring the world around us. Why care about child slavery? Why care about Darfur? Why care about world hunger? It is funny that Jesus came to reverse the curse of the fall while we not only avoid assisting Him, we actually applaud such destruction and pain in the name of God’s judgment!

Written By Lionel Woods

God's Goodness

One thing I recently realized is..the importance of writing down what the Lord does in our lives. I think it is extremely important to be able to recall all of the circumstances that the Lord has proven Himself in our lives. We recently at my fellowship have begun to explore “Faith” and what it means from Biblical standpoint. We started to write down times past that the Lord’s hand was evident on our lives and also to write prayer requests you’ve been praying for years. Sometimes after praying something for years and years-the prayer or person praying it-loses the once urgent fervency and it becomes repetitious. Or may become lackadaisical and absent of true biblical faith of belief.

Two things stuck out for me while I thought on the goodness of the Lord.

1. True Friendships
2. A Real People and Real Christians

Less than 2 years ago while making the Holy Spirit driven exodus from the false church; I used to HATE the Church of Christ or Body of Christ with a passion. I literally and unapolgetically can honestly say I thought the church folk were “Ignorant and Unlearned People.” Before making the exodus I searched long and hard for someone to hear me in my plea of Biblical Accurate Exegesis. If I could have ran to the pulpit in my old synagogue and screamed at the top of my lungs. “WHY CAN’T YOU PEOPLE HEAR ME!!!” I would have and probably should have.

Slowly and I do mean slowly the Lord started to reveal His saints to me one by one and I began to love the idea of the Church and how the members function as a body. Initially I started to meet a lot of believer’s on line and through electronic communication but no one close. As the Lord saw fit he did place me into a local fellowship of Bible believing people who were just as zealous about truth as I was. Not exactly the route I would have taken but the Lord knows exactly what He is doing.

Secondly, I have a very transparent personality and don’t like having superficial friendships. I spent at least 12 years trying to cultivate solid relationships but found out that once you start studying the Word people will either love you, hate you, or keep you at distance. The Lord has given me true friends that will rebuke, love, correct, and many other things that will push me to Christ and His Word. I just want to encourage you in the Lord to write down the things the Lord has done for you and your family in the past.

I think I can make a strong case for doing this from the scriptures. Just think throughout the Old Testament all the times that the Prophets reminded Israel of all that Lord had done for them and miraculous things the Lord had done in times present and past. They were constantly reminding them of the many works of the Lord. Even from a New Testament perspective we hear Christ doing the same things, we hear Paul reminding Agrippa, and we hear Stephen before his murder also reminding the people of their ancestors. David time and time again speaks of the works of the Lord and uses that to encourage himself when going through a trial. Point is, that this is a Biblical concept. Take the time to reminisce of the Lord’s faithfulness in your life. Just a few questions for you to ponder as well.

• Do you love God’s Church that was bought by the Blood of Christ?
• Are your relationships intimate with God’s people and more so than your relatives?
• Not only what has God done for you but how is He using you for His glory?
• Are you being fed not only by your elder/pastor but are you feeding him?
• What about the Body?
• What are you grasping from your fellowship and is it really true communion?

Evangelism

I absolutely love sharing the Gospel of Christ. Our fellowship of believer’s decided we needed to search for an outlet in our community to begin sharing this message that so dramatically changed our hearts and our lives. Unlike most churches, we don’t go out and say, “Come to our church and it’ll be great.” No sir!! We take the church to them, knowing that from the scriptures the time of fellowship(we call the church) is for the Body of Christ. I cannot remember the last time I invited someone to my church with the exception of my family when they come in town.

About 3 months ago myself and the elder at our fellowship found a (so called) ministry to begin to go to and share. This ministry was a group home established to house about 7-10 young men who had problems with family or just troubled lives. This was located about 15 minutes from where we live and was in the “inner city.” The children had horrible stories to tell from watching their siblings be molested by step-parents to having parents who were addicted to drugs. This organization was a Christian based organization who supposedly hired church members who we soon came to discover where just that-”church members.”

We soon began going to these young men and pouring our hearts out week after week, taking them various places to do fun things but also to establish a relationship with them as well. Our first incident we took them to McDonald’s just to get to know and their chaperon came along who was also supposed to be a Christian. We gave them the raw deal about their total depravity and desperate need for a Savior-Christ. The chaperon quietly sat their and did not say a peep. All of these young men were forced to go to church with everyone from the group home and what they saw made them subtly come to abhor Christianity without even knowing it. They were seeing the staff at the group home play church on Sunday and then go back to the group home and live their lives totally separate from what they were instructed from the scriptures.

Unfortunately they attended a Word of Faith-Prosperity Church but from this experience week after week they began to develop a false view of a Christian life. We began to go through the scriptures and talk about the converted heart and true Christianity. We did not realize that we were describing the staff in which these children lived with day after day. Being children ages 14-19 in age; this truth liberated them & I assume they began to launch these truths at the staff. I can imagine the staff did not enjoy this.
This being a month in a half ago we have been struggling to get time with these youngsters. We meet with them weekly and have scheduled time with them on at least 3 occasions were the staff did not arrange the time correctly(probably purposely) and when we get to the residence they are doing something else at another location. Very frustrating for us since we are taking time away from our schedules to do this on our days off normally.

Nothing super theological here-just asking for your prayers for these young men and the seeds we have sowed with them. The group home name is “WATCM” and it stands for “Where are the Christian Men.”

To Vote or Not to Vote…….

Yesterday at fellowship(Lord’s Supper) with the brethren we engaged in a interesting conversation in regards to politics. This is something I brought up simply because my view is somewhat changing about this issue largely due to a book I am reading about this-church and state etc…. We are really close at our fellowship and we all are pretty open(never really understood why this is such a discreet issue amongst people?) about our stances on politics and who we or who we are not voting for. This is one issue amongst us in our fellowship that we really really differ on. Most things we pretty much have the same mind but this is another story as I discovered yesterday.

I, on the one hand am NOT voting this election and laugh at the thought of it for various reasons. I along with the Elder at our congregation have the same view on this issue. I guess I jump on the Hyper-Calvinist camp on this issue. Others as we discovered are voting they say because they must “choose between the lesser of the evils.” Ummmm I think I will choose Abortion for $100 Alex”-”Nope not me, I will choose Gay Marriage for $200 Alex.” Being Sarcastic here, but I never have been able to grasp that logic but some seem to understand and make it walk on all fours. Logically it does not make sense to me. Furthermore some will say if you don’t vote for the lesser of the evils you are by your absence-voting anyway.

Linked here are the candidates Obama and McCain’s stances on the crucials-HERE.

This year the whole political game has agitated me more than ever. WHY?


1. These candidates all talk the same game and fluff until they get elected and then what? Then the people who want to crucify you for not voting on what they consider the larger issues, they themselves aren’t involved in their neighborhoods voting for mayors or governor’s-somewhat hypocritical to me.

2.
I work nights and listen to Bott Radio Network(a somewhat Biblical radio station) and they constantly say ridiculous things like-”Obama is the anti-Christ” and they choose to vote for McCain because they say he is more conservative and has Christian Morals. Or to be just “real” about it-because he is Republican.

3. On the secular stations like “Tom Joyner” they are a little less discreet and come out and basically say, “we voting for him because he is Black” or “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and its about time I got my 40 Acres and Mule-Great Grand dad would be proud.” This is even said amongst some of the Black and Reformed Christian folk.

These are some of the questions I have.

Is the next President going to change this land for the better?

What does it really mean to “vote for the lesser evil?”

Is there a Biblical mandate for believer’s to vote?

And please don’t say anything silly like, “your ancestors died-you better vote” or “Obama is your brother-brother” (Mark 3:32-35)

The Rape of God’s Mercy

A Warning About Presumptuous Sin

By Daryl Wingerd

Have you ever sinned on purpose? Have you ever known that something was sinful, had every opportunity to avoid the sin, yet decided to do it anyway? If so, were you comforted in your decision by thoughts of God’s forgiving mercy? Perhaps you said to yourself (as I once heard a man say, just before telling a blatant lie to keep himself out of trouble), “It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.” This type of premeditated, intentional sin is called “presumptuous sin.”

Presumptuous sin is knowingly doing what God forbids while presuming that you will be covered by His mercy. It is an attempt to force God to apply mercy instead of justice. It is no wonder that John Bunyan (author of Pilgrim’s Progress) once referred to sin as “the dare of God’s justice, the rape of His mercy, the jeer of His patience, the slight of His power, and the contempt of His love.”

Consider four sobering truths about presumptuous sins and presumptuous sinners:

1. God hates presumptuous sin.

A purposeful, planned approach to sin reveals one of the things God hates the most. In Proverbs 6:16 we read, “There are six things which the Lord hates, yes, seven which are an abomination to Him.” The list that follows includes pride, lying, and murder. Among these we find that God hates “a heart that devises wicked plans” (v. 18). God hates all sin, to be sure, but when you sin on purpose, your premeditated act is particularly abhorrent to Him.

2. Presumptuous sin is feared and hated by godly persons.

David pleaded with the Lord to keep him back from presumptuous sins (Ps. 19:13). He concluded his thought by saying, “Then will I be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgression.” People who sin presumptuously should have no confident expectation that they will be considered “blameless,” or even that they will be acquitted by God.

3. True Christians are repentant sinners, not presumptuous sinners.

Regardless of the type of sin involved, those who are repentant sinners are said to be “washed,” “sanctified,” and “justified,” while those who carelessly continue in sin are warned not to be deceived. People of that sort, Paul tells us, “will not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9-11). Presumptuous sinners are acting like they are on their way to hell, not heaven. They may be.

4. Presumptuous sin often leads to disastrous consequences.

King David knew that what he was tempted to do with Bathsheba was a sin against God, but he did it anyway. In this case, his presumptuous sin brought a series of painful and tragic consequences:

It led David into further sin-plotting the murder of Bathsheba’s husband. (2 Sam. 11:14-15)
It brought on a lengthy period of painful conviction. (Ps. 32:9-10; 38:1-8; 51:3, 8, 12)
It brought a stinging rebuke from the prophet Nathan. (2 Sam. 12:1-14)
It led to the death of the child of that union. (2 Sam. 12:14-18)
It gave occasion for the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme God. (2 Sam. 12:14)
It moved the Lord to plague David’s posterity with violence, and even to raise evil against him from within his own family. (2 Sam. 12:9-11)

People who presume upon God’s mercy should not be surprised when they experience similar consequences. In fact, they should expect them. Perhaps it was this very experience that led David to pray this prayer:

Also keep back your servant from presumptuous sins;Let them not rule over me;Then I will be blameless,And I shall be acquitted of great transgression. (Ps. 19:13)

UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

Let me first say that I am an advocate of the permanence of marriage. This is a position that is rare amongst believer’s to say the least. John Piper also holds this position linked here. Not as if Piper is the final point of arbitration-for he is not. I linked it so you would be able to read his stance to get an idea of what I am talking about here. My stance is a lot more exhaustive but at least you’ll get an idea from reading his article on the matter. I have had a formal debate about the matter with my dearly beloved brother from Stand Up Ministries-Saiko Woods already and really don’t want to argue about it anymore-but just thought I would share. Let me tell you a story and see if you can imagine what you would do…..

Your beautiful wife(or husband) of 3 years finds out that she is pregnant!! You are both estatic over the matter and start to make preparations for the new child. You and your spouse have already agreed that she will stay home for a few years and you will work. So the man gets 3 jobs to slowly peck away at the debt and the wife searches for work to do at home on the computer all while making preparations to eventually come home from her day job. Soon enough the beautiful child is born and all seems to be going well. The good news is that you are making the ends meet with your 3 jobs but the bad news is that your relationship is dwindling because you are never at home with the family.

The husband realized this is not working as planned so the wife searches for work outside the home again since the at home computer thing just isn’t working out. The husbands approves of her new found job and they work opposite shifts in order to have round the clock care for the baby. In the time you took preparing for the baby-you also pull your family from a heavy word of faith-prosperity-seeker sensitive church and in retrospect, this move; strengthened your faith and weakened your spouses. You realize that the Lord spoke to you and saved you through this ordeal and in the process realized that your spouse is not a believer.

In the course of the next 3 months the relationship continues to dwindle and your spouse drops the bomb!! “I commited adultery!” Ironically(sovereign grace) enough you have been studying how to be a better spouse and how that is liken unto Christ and His Church. You now being a believer understand that when you recieve truth it must be followed by action, fueled by love-otherwise it is meaningless or useless. What to you do? Do you take the “Exception Clause” view and run for the hills as if you have not been a sinner who was dispatched an unlimited amount of grace or do you see this as an excusable reason to divorce your spouse? On the one hand you say, ” This is messed up Lord and this is NOT what I signed up for!” on the other you say, “What an extraordinary way to be like Christ and bask in the fellowship of His suffering.”

You see how your spouse has become the total opposite of what you had come to know and love and scriptures run through your mind regarding persecution and how the Lord said “I have not come to bring Peace…..” Listen here…

The Dictionary or the world defines love as this;A deep, tender, ineffable “feeling” of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance.
How does this contrast with the Biblical Worldview of Love? Let us look and see.

1 Corinthians 13(emphasis mine)
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

First let me say; Isn’t it ironic how truth is connected to love? No coincidence here. Truth is conformity with fact and reality or whatever corresponds to reality. The type of love we see in these passages are rarely seen in our culture today. Yes we see couples who are happy and love without limits but are they manifesting true Biblical love? We see couples continuously getting divorces over ridiculous things. Most commonly we see divorces due to selfishness. In our culture people love and they will say it is unconditional but when something goes not according to their plan they retract their love like a rattle snake after a vicious strike to its victim. Really their love for you is tied to how they perceive your love for them. This is NOT Biblical Love, it is love centered around their own selfish will. Let me pause and say, “I have not arrived and I am learning this daily in my marriage and my wife can be a witness to this fact” I have seen enormous flaws in my past with the way I loved my wife and people in general and it is always tied to how I am treated versus how I would like to be treated regardless of their reaction towards me. You see our relationship to God is first and to people second. The way we treat people is a direct correlation of our understanding and obedience to God.

James 4:1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God.

In this James hits the nail on the head. We are self-centered by our Adamic nature from birth but we are now striving after the qualities and nature of Christ and they are contrary to this world. If you look into your life, just think how putting the needs of others would make a difference in every situation. This is no way makes men passive or feminized, it on the contrary emulates the attributes of Christ with love and truth hand and hand; you see it can be no other way. For example-If you love your friend or family member, your love for them compels you to tell them the truth about their corrupt state, that is true love.

John 15:9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit–fruit that will last.(emphasis mine)

1 Peter4:12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; 13 but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation. 14 If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.(emphasis mine)

Being in Love-I have come to the realization that this is not a Biblical Term. Biblical Love is never a state. Love is always a commitment, a choice, or an action. So the Bible crucifies what we call “In Love”, in this we see people say they fall out of love or fall into love as if it is some magical hole in the air. Love is something totally(maybe not totally but in conjunction with) aside from our fickle emotions. If you look at people in the Bible in Acts, at the time of conversion you very rarely see any documentation of emotions tied to their salvation aside from joy and happiness in their suffering in which they see it as an honor to be counted worthy to suffer for HIM. We are to Love our wives as Christ Loves the church and love one another as our self. If love is simply tied to feeling or sex, when we have hard times the marriage will diminish and a allegory can be made from that to how we see the false gospel preached and when people go through storms of life(in which the Bible promises persecution to every true believer) they fade away.(parable of the Sower)

Analyze your love in the face of the truth of God’s infallible Word. I assure you that you will see a immediate need for a change in the way you deal with people and not just your spouse. Remember your horizontal relationships are just a reflection of your vertical relationship with the Creator of all. In Christ

Who needs Faith?

“I finally got it!!” I spent 4 years in a Prosperity-Word of Faith cult, 1 of which I was awakened to my ignorance by the grace of God and then decided to get out and search for a Biblical body of believer’s. I could imagine this is how I felt once the Lord rescued me from that madness. 8 months later I would find a church; join and from this point-trying as hard as I could to keep away from the likes of the heresies taught by many faith teachers and charlatans. In my attempt to do this I; in my Reformed(Biblical) circles, skip over the scriptures that speak of things that seem charismatic or too faith oriented to grasp. I gradually place “Faith” on the shelf of the past and proceed for Biblical sound doctrine since I finally found what I was looking for. This is going to be somewhat of a culmination of what I have been studying and experiencing in the past couple of months on finances, faith, and life..so please excuse the clutter.

First let me clarify that I am trying very hard to lose the term “Reformed” and hence forth, that word will be replaced with “Biblical.” I have hastily come to the conclusion that reformed does not describe what I believe and is too broad of a term to really encompass who I(we) am in Christ. “Biblical” can more closely define who we are in Christ. I, along with Lionel am reading “The Reformers and Their Stepchildren”, by Leonard Verduin. This book is great and closely examines the reformation and brings to light-when we say reformed-what do we really mean?

I am a part of a great home congregation in which i believe the Lord is leading and has been with us and guiding us daily. Now I finally found a Biblical church and got away from the craziness. To my surprise I come to the knowledge that these believer’s like so many in the Charismatic circles have experiences to go along with their testimonies just like those in the Word of Faith churches. Is this wrong or is it Biblical? Isn’t there a little subjectivity along with everyone’s objective faith in Christ? Yes, just think of Moses, Samuel, Paul and so many others. Now what about “Faith” and what part does that play in “Biblical” circles. How do we build our Faith? How is Faith apart of our every day lives? Do we allow the Lord room to show Himself? Faith seemed to be such a integral part of peoples lives in the time when Christ was ministering before His ascension. I just recently realized that in my attempt to get away for the Charis-mania that I somehow lost the zeal to exercise Faith in ways that would not exactly fit into western christian reformed circles. What do I mean? Well, this may seem simple to some but…the last time your car broke down, what did you do? When your air conditioner went out in your house…when your family member died and you did not have the money to travel…when your child was sick..when you were sick…

Well I can answer for myself and say..I without thinking ran to my credit cards before praying for the Lord to intervene or provide without going into debt and using other resources. When my son gets sick I run to the doctor sometimes while praying other times without praying about it until afterwards. What aspects of our life in this western world do we see the Lord moving mightily and the result only able to be attributed to the work of God. My next book read is going to be on the life of George Mueller. I have heard rave reviews of this man and his faith, prayer life, and testimony.

I have read so many “Biblical” books about the Apostles and the works they did and for the life of me cannot be satisfied by this answer—-The miracles and work that the apostles did was only to authenticate the Gospel. HOGWASH!!! Exegetically being faithful to the texts we cannot make that answer walk on all four’s. It just does not hold water. I have stood by that answer for a long time now and it just is an excuse for us to explain away, possibly our lack of faith. I have even stood by Macarthur’s explanation (1 Cor 13:10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.) about gifts but how we exclude certain gifts and then keep others?

Here is the question I leave you. How do we know when to exercise faith and believe God versus handling it ourselves? Is their a relationship of Faith and Works modeled by Abraham in laying with his wife after receiving the promise of a child? Are we to view our Faith as Synergistic or Monergistic? These are questions I ponder a lot in seeking the Lord about many things like salvation of loved ones, getting out of debt to be freed up for missions and ministry, and the lists goes on. Throughout the entire New Testament we are constantly reminded of the faith of others and how the Lord uses faith in the life of His people. Again…

How do we know when to exercise faith and believe God versus handling it ourselves?