Fifty Questions

When was the last time you felt God was really doing something new in your life?

How many of us have our testimony as an historical narrative but have no current revelation of the Spirit’s work in our lives?

Is there a momentum carrying you into whatever buffer zone still remains between you and Jesus?

Do you think I am speaking of something mystical, something that God is doing specifically to bring you to a greater level of obedience, trust, and worship?

Are you living in yourself or in Him, and is your spirit soaring over all your problems or are you chained to your circumstances?

Can you actually hear the voice of the Spirit or are you even listening?

Does the Word leap in your spirit or are those Words just doctrinal pieces to some dead orthodoxy?

Does eternity permeate your being and cause you to walk with a pilgrim’s mentality?

Can God speak to you at any moment?

Do some people consider you a fanatic or is everyone comfortable around your benign brand of Christianity?

Are you even weary of the mundane practice of religion or are you hungry for a life that walks with Jesus in such a way as to have some effect on those around you?

Would you be willing to sell everything tomorrow and start a journey without first knowing the destination?

Is your faith predictable and at its strongest when you can actually see what you are trusting?

Do you believe Jesus desires a deeper and closer walk with you?

Does your prayer closet have more shoes and coats than prayer?

When was the last time you earnestly fasted with no thought of weight loss and with a passion to see God’s face?

Are there places that have mildew because of the tears of intercessory prayer?

Have you come to the place that you do not care about anything but following Christ?

Are there still plans and strategies that have captured your heart or have you given everything to Jesus and are resting completely in His wisdom and will?

Do you travail in prayer or does it seem like hollow words while your mind wanders?

Have you been brought so low that you can only see Jesus or are you still clinging to something about you that makes you feel worthy?

Is your own understanding how you interpret things or are you relying on the leading of God’s Spirit regardless if goes against all you “know” to be true?

When was the last time you were actually physically immobilized in prayer way beyond the time you planned to spend?

How do you plan to spend the rest of the life God has given you which is in reality His to spend?

Are you willing to return to the place of salvation itself and begin again and turn away from all the mistakes you have made before?

If you felt the tugging of the Spirit to radically change all that you are doing, will you have to get it approved by others?

Or will it have to be approved by you yourself?

Are you willing to take steps backward and even risk the ridicule of friends and foes alike in order to get out of the comfort of the dry boat deck and walk by faith upon the waves that rage around you?

Is Jesus in your boat or is He calling you from in the midst of the storm?

Can you actually risk the danger of exposing everything to God’s inspection or will you allow a few minor adjustments?

If no one else sees what you see or hears what you do will it affect your passion and determination?

Are you willing to repent of even the smallest sins and can you be trusted not to become a judgmental legalist concerning others who are careless in their lives?

Will you be humble, painfully humble, without being prideful in your humility?

If God does use you to bring His power and grace to others will it elevate you in your own eyes?

If others are drawn to you because they are thirsty as well will it make you feel good about you or good about Him?

Are you prepared to love those who you could never love before?

If God touches something about you that you never thought He would will you be immediately obedient or will you resist?

When God tells you words to speak to someone, words that might be extremely embarrassing and uncomfortable, will you speak them?

Are you ready to be completely shocked when the Spirit reveals to you the level of narcissism that has dwelt inside you for years?

Are you willing to worship Jesus publicly with an abandonment that does not purposely draw attention to yourself but makes no concessions because of the presence of others?

Will you endure unwanted attention because of the conspicuous changes in what used to be your life?

And will you handle criticism with grace and joy while rejecting any hint of being a self serving martyr?

Can you be trusted to give all the glory to Jesus without allowing the flesh to create a pseudo-piousness that projects selflessness but is actually self righteousness?

Will you grow weary when you fall or will you get up and begin anew and afresh?

And when all is said and done, will you live and share Jesus in everything you do and say regardless of the consequences or inconveniences that must come with a dynamic divergence from the mainstream of western Christianity?

Will you be honest with God and yourself concerning all these questions?

Are willing to pursue what it really means to walk in the Lordship of Jesus Christ?

Can you endure the spiritual pain of deconstruction?

Can you receive His strength necessary to rebuild the broken walls and burn the walls that were never in God’s original design?

Are you ready to die to live?

Whatever You're Doing

(Sanctus Real)

It’s time for a healing, time to move on
It’s time to fix what’s been broken too long
Time to make right what has been wrong
It’s time to find my way to where I belong
There’s a wave that’s crashing over me
All I can do is surrender

Whatever you’re doing inside of me
It feels like chaos, somehow there’s peace
It’s hard to surrender to what I can’t see
But I’m giving in to something heavenly

Time for a milestone, time to begin again
Reevaluate who I really am
Am I doing everything to follow your will
Or just climbing aimlessly over these hills
So show me what it is you want from me
I give everything I surrender

Whatever you’re doing inside of me
It feels like chaos, somehow there’s peace
It’s hard to surrender to what I can’t see
But I’m giving in to something heavenly,
something heavenly

Time to face up, clean this old house
Time to breathe in and let everything out
That I’ve wanted to say for so many years
Time to release all my held back tears

Whatever you’re doing inside of me
It feels like chaos but I believe
You’re up to something bigger than me
Larger than life, something heavenly

Whatever you’re doing inside of me
It feels like chaos but now I can see
You’re up to something bigger than me
Larger than life, something heavenly,
Something heavenly

It’s time to face up
Clean this old house
Time to breathe in and let everything out

The Call of God's Altar

Where do we first see what God calls the “altar”? We see a glimpse when God slew animals to make coats for Adam and Eve and wherever that event took place that was the first altar of sacrifice. The altar was a place of sacrifice, blood, death, and worship. From the very first sin of man God began a revelation that included death and blood and that place would be named the altar. And this altar would not just be an appeasement to a vicious God who desired His revenge, no; this would be a place of redemption, reconciliation, forgiveness, and worship.

God instructs Abraham to take his son, Isaac, and go to Mount Moriah and sacrifice his son. Abraham arises early in the morning and heads to Moriah with Isaac, wood, a knife, and two servants. When they get to the place of sacrifice Abraham takes the wood, the knife, and a fire and heads to make an altar of sacrifice. The wood is placed upon the back of Isaac in a startling prophetic disclosure that one day God’s own Son would carry the wooden altar upon His back as He climbed the mount to adorn that wooden altar with Himself.

And we realize that when Abraham lifted his knife to offer his son, God stepped in to allow a ram to take Isaac’s place. But Abraham’s altar was still a place of blood and death, and a place of worship as well. There is no painless redemption and there is no bloodless sacrifice that can be the atonement. Although God pardoned Isaac He still required blood, the blood of a ram. The altar is always a place of sacrifice and blood. It is Jehovah’s butcher block anointed by the Spirit of God, and God’s attention is drawn to that holy place of worship before Him.

God prepared two Roman planks that would serve as an altar upon which He would sacrifice His Son. That would be a place of much pain and much blood and much suffering. It would be the altar upon which the Passover Lamb would die as a sacrifice for sins, and all who enter into that death by faith would be crucified with the Christ of God and in that death they will find life. In a mystery, when Christ was sacrificed on that vertical altar, all who by faith embrace that sacrifice are partakers of that sacrifice. The Passover Lamb of God becomes our sacrifice and His blood is applied to the doorposts of our hearts and souls, and death must pass over us as a defeated foe.

But even as we are made new creations in Jesus Christ, do not believe our calling and journey is complete. We, as followers of Jesus Christ, are called to present ourselves as living sacrifices, crucified, and yet risen from the dead. All of it in Him. And now we are called again to God’s altar and there to be crucified daily. The parts of us that live are blemishes to God’s sacrifice. We must die to ourselves and live unto God and that can only happen when by faith we place ourselves on the bloody altar of death and allow the Spirit to remove the dross and mold us into His image once more. God stands with a cross with our name written upon it and He beckons us come and die and come and live.

We are so filled and even consumed with our own desires and aspirations, and the altar of God looks so painful and so gory and our flesh recoils at such a thing. Who will understand us and who will mock us if we offer our entire lives on God’s altar? What will it cost us, and what plans will it shatter? Will it diminish our joy or will it release joy unspeakable and full of glory?

The word "altar" (Greek: θυσιαστήριον) appears twenty-four times in the New Testament. The word means a place of sacrificial death. This is not the butcher block where you buy your favorite steaks, no, this is the altar of the Spirit where only God can put to death the enemy God calls the flesh. It is the flesh that contaminates our entire beings with thoughts of self and sin, and it is this flesh that makes Christ a doctrine rather than the Risen Lord controlling the vessel He has purchased and now owns. This flesh seeks its own and has very little consideration for the will of Christ, and, in fact, this flesh will present a deception and call it the will of Christ. The flesh will offer God’s will in a convenient and shallow form which costs little and gains much, but that is the very nature of the flesh.

The altar will not reach out and capture you, you must be willing to lie down upon its already encrusted crimson stains and die once more. There is no resurrection without death, and there is no pleasing God without the excruciating and liberating faith that not only allows its flesh to be sacrificed, it even invites it. The pain of death translates into the abundant life that is Him. It is impossible to please yourself and Christ as well. God will not accept a partial and contaminated sacrifice upon His holy altar; it must be the entire life. All must be offered and all must be consumed.

Do you doubt God? Are you unsure as to His ability to consume every part of you? Go ahead; pour water upon the entire sacrifice and see if God can consume it. Gather all of your desires, all of your plans, all of your insecurities, all of your doubts, all of your compromises, all of your sins, all that you hold back, and gather everything that is in the slightest bit not of God and place it all on the altar. Then lay down on top of that dung and lift your hands to worship your God who will do what He promised. Feel the pain and experience the release that walks you through the freedom of service and worship without the double mindedness that has yoked you to you and not Him. And like the birth pangs of a woman in labor, a new life comes forth.

Are you not tired of being half in and half out? Isn’t the fence a poor resting place? Are you peculiar or are you predictable? Do people find you the least bit curious or do they have trouble finding you at all? Is the crowd your home or is the crowd watching you? Are sinners uncomfortably drawn to you or are they comfortably ambivalent to your life? Are you thirsty or are you quenched? Are you content with crumbs or will you press in to eat the entire Heavenly Loaf? Do you believe there is significantly more to this life of following Jesus or do you suggest we have reached the limits of His power and presence? Are you more concerned with the things of this life than the things of the Spirit?

The altar awaits you. Approach it as a privilege and with a holy expectation of a sacred sacrifice that drains your life and flings the stone wide open to a life that permeates your surroundings with the fragrance of Jesus or at the very least causes people to question your sanity.

Unremarkable lives contradict professions of faith in Jesus and are essentially false witnesses.

Seeking Jesus the Christ

Matt.11:29 - Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you shall find rest unto your souls.

The gospel. The word is Greek means the good news. And the narratives of the life of Jesus are called the four gospel simply because the overarching theme is good news, the good news of redemption. In this age of political maneuvering and global orchestration that seeks to bring about an earthly kingdom without the King of Kings, we as followers of that one true King must seek His face and none other. He is all we need and all there is.

The sounding brass and tinkling cymbals have draw the ears and hearts of God’s people for way too long, and we must turn our hearts wholly to Him and Him alone. The Jews desired the Messiah to overthrow the shackles of Rome and in so doing they became blind to the freedom Christ was offering. And so it is with this spiritual generation who seek to force morality on others while being blind to our own immorality in oh so many forms. We seek governmental freedom while being yoked in bondages of all kinds ourselves. The church sees so clearly the sins of others but only casually acknowledges a self serving label of "lesser sins" within her own walls. Causes and issues fill our agenda that can only be achieved by a powerful demonstration and revelation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our church services have become nicely compacted pageants that resemble school programs rather than expressions of grateful worship that know no limitations and have no schedule but that which the Spirit dictates. The time slots for announcements are greater than the time allotted for corporate prayer. The church building remains dark most nights and the schedule itself guards against any unexpected outbreak of God’s power and presence. Elongated seasons of prayerful seeking of God’s face are historical accounts of ages gone by and have found little place in the age of self.

There is no peace but Jesus. There is no love but Jesus. There is no mercy but Jesus. There is no grace but Jesus. There is no salvation but Jesus. There is no life but Jesus. Why has Jesus become such an invisible appendage to the church and why has He become a doctrinal test rather than a living and powerful revelation that identifies individual believers as well as the visible church? Why does Jesus find a nice and comfortable place in many lives of western believers that only slightly deviate from the lives of their lost counterparts?

And even Sunday morning, which should be the one place where believers are stripped from their cultural chains, has become a predictable and orchestrated performance that rarely changes anyone at all. And when you watch hundreds of people exiting a worship service at the appointed hour with little if any residual effect of being in God’s presence, you must wonder if God was there at all. How can people believe the claim that we have met powerfully with the Creator of the Universe and the Lord of our Souls when we are more excited or solemn when we leave a football game? And how can we expect God to manifest Himself in unusual ways when we have cavorted with the world all week and spent an embarrassing amount of time and labor seeking Him? We treat the church service like a concert where the musical celebrity shows up simply because we are there and have paid for our seats.

Church itself has become part of the culture and is given a small seat at the table of policy making. We as believers should not be concerned, much less consumed, with what the kingdom of darkness is doing and planning. Our kingdom is light and that light is Jesus who must be proclaimed and lived in humble boldness and sacrificial love. We are highly organized; we are highly doctrinal; we are highly educated; and we are highly cultural. But are we highly passionate in our pursuit for Jesus Christ? Our hedonism has ensnared our time and motivation and in so doing we remain in Martha’s kitchen uninterested in what is taking place at the feet of Jesus. Watch the church as she rallies new energy every election cycle only to return to her former self afterward. Listen as the church disrespects the president because he is not the one of their choosing, all the while giving lip service to God’s sovereignty in the rulers of nations.

Listen further as the church supports a particular war and with that support she tethers it to God Himself. The church uses the term “just war” in the same way others use the term “just abortion”. The American church has been carefully taught over two centuries the divine favor of God on this nation, but that teaching has always been false. Jesus is now a conservative, and the mystical absolutes found in God’s Word and in seeking His presence are now subservient to some moral and political agenda. This is not the faith of Christ, this is a mutation that continues to evolve away from the pure faith found in the Scriptures.

It is time the church, or at last a handful of awakened believers, cast off the grave clothes and set a course, albeit against the ecclesiastical wind, to seek Jesus and His kingdom. All of us must begin anew and afresh, and we must never question the redemption found only in Christ but we must now question almost everything we have constructed in practice and lifestyle. We must invite again the Spirit of God to fall on us in power and leadership as we fall in brokenness before our God. We must tear up our plans and strategies and create a thirst for God Himself.

Jesus. There is no thought and no emotion greater than knowing Him in all His fullness and in His experiential presence. How can we neglect such a privilege? How have we constructed such an ecclesiastical form while leaving Him behind? We have entire quarterly sermon series’ that deal with all kinds of relevant western issues and relegate Jesus Himself as an understood aside. We bring flag displays and soldiers into God’s sanctuary in celebration of a nation that rose up violently against its government resulting in a combined 50,000 deaths (American, British, German) and many more casualties. All because of “taxation without representation”. The entire war goes against all the teachings of Jesus Himself.

Let us return to the empty tomb and go forth with a new vigor and a new way of living and preaching Jesus. Not with a post modern compromise that obscures the gospel and not with a hardened orthodoxy that exudes self righteousness and judgmentalism, but with the revelation of the Savior Jesus in all His love and graciousness. The darkened world is desperate to see people who are selfless prisms that allow the light of Christ to shine forth without the self interest and political activism that sculptures a different Jesus than is revealed in written Scripture.

At the end of this post I want to exalt Jesus Himself. I want to publicly praise Him for showing grace to a profound sinner like me who did not deserve one cell of His precious blood. I have not been as faithful to Him as I could have been, and I am not what I could be for Him, but to His praise I am not what I used to be. I was a violent racist who sold drugs into the high schools and was unconcerned about God or man. I was widely promiscuous and rode a motorcycle and drove a van, both of which were vehicles that helped me live a life of sin. Only the providence of God rescued me from committing a murder in a planned bank robbery, but I heard the gospel from a sick bed and was saved forever. Morality did not save me; the pro-life movement did not save me; traditional marriage did not save me; conservative values did not save me; and humanitarian causes did not save me.

Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected, saved me one day in March of 1975, and it is this truth that I will cling to by His grace until He receives me from this present life.

I glorify the Person of Jesus Christ forever.

Please Understand the Situation

II Tim.4:3-4 – For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

Col.2:8 – Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments (principles) of the world, and not after Christ.

There is a man who is an up and coming phenomenon in the emergent church movement. His name is Peter Rollins and he is from Belfast, Ireland with a degree in philosophy. I would like to present to you some of his teachings that I have gleaned from some of his interviews and writings. You are welcome to google his name and peruse his teachings for yourself. Here are a few meanderings that are accurate representations of his overall theology.

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“The desire to get a God’s-eye view of the world is reflected throughout history in theology, mythology and philosophy. In much of the Western intellectual tradition there’s a strong desire to name and capture God in conceptual form. I am trying to explore the ancient idea that God transcends all names. We can’t reduce God to a theological idea without making an idol out of words. Instead of thinking of God as a noun it is perhaps more useful to think of God as a verb. For God is known through action.”

“We see this in the word "doxology" which doesn’t mean belief, but rather worship. So orthodoxy actually means correct praise not correct belief. In that kind of a way, it becomes less about the affirmation of a theological approach—important as theology is—but a way of being like Jesus. We have to rediscover this idea that orthodoxy isn’t belief -oriented but praxis-oriented.”

“To bring love into the world is to know God, for God is love. This is not the knowledge of creeds and theology but the knowledge of a transforming relationship with the source of all love. Truth in Christianity is thus different from the way we understand truth in the world, for the truth of Christianity is life, not description.”

“The parable of the mustard seed grasps this. It speaks of a seed becoming a tree that will provide a nest of birds. The traditional interpretation is that this tiny movement will become an institution that will house people. But then there is another interpretation which says that the birds of the air are symbols of evil. In this reading, the movement will grow into an institution that will house that which stands opposed to God. What if neither interpretation is true but rather they both are?”

"In other words I don’t think we experience the truth of Christianity but the truth of Christianity is hinted at in the renewed way we experience everything else. In this way the truth of faith is not one thing among other things but rather is that which brings us into new relationship with all things. The way we explore this within Ikon is by attempting to create a gathering in which Christianity is not fundamentally about an understanding or experience but rather a way of being and interacting in the world."

Taken from here.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for joining us this evening at our intimate, humble gathering. Take a seat, make yourselves comfortable and prepare yourselves. Tonight we would like to share a secret with you, a sacred secret that must be kept strictly between us. To be honest it is a secret which cannot be told, for it cannot be understood or even experienced, but only birthed within us and lived through us. Nonetheless this evening is a futile but necessary attempt to place this sacred secret into some kind of language, for language is the only messenger we know, fallen angel though it may be.

My first encounter with this secret occurred a number of years ago while I was walking home, late one evening. As I weaved my way through the half-dead trees that inhabited a piece of wasteland connecting my origin to my destination I heard an inner voice calling my name. I stood still and listened intently to what I took to be nothing less than the solemn, silent voice of God. As I stood there, rooted to the ground, God spoke to me, repeating four simple words, “I do not exist”"

Taken from here.

"You sit in silence contemplating what has just occurred. Moments before you had been alive and well, then the screech of brakes and the darkness. Now you stand in line waiting for your call to stand before the judgment seat of God. As you reflect upon the last moments on earth your name is called and you find yourself in a huge room facing an awesome throne. Sitting on this huge throne is a breathtaking being who looks intently at you before speaking, ‘My name is Lucifer the angel of light’

You are immediately filled with fear and trembling. ‘I have cast your God from His throne and banished Christ to the realm of eternal death. I hold the keys to the kingdom, I am the gatekeeper of paradise and it is for me to decide who shall enter and who shall be forsaken’.
Then he stretches out his vast arms, ‘In my right hand I hold eternal life and in my left I hold death. For those who would bow down and acknowledge me as Lord I shall let them pass through the gates of paradise, but for those who refuse I will vanquish them to death with their Christ’

"After a pause he moves his arms so that each of his hands are placed before you, ‘What do you choose’?"

Taken from here.

"What if one of the core elements of a radical Christianity lay in a demand that we betray it, while the ultimate act of affirming God required the forsaking of God? And what if fidelity to the Judeo-Christian scriptures demanded their renunciation? In short, what if the only way of finding faith involved betraying it with a kiss? By employing the insights of apophatic theology and deconstructive theory this book seeks to explore the subversive and clandestine nature of a Christianity that dwells within religious institutions while simultaneously undermining them."

Taken from here.

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At the outset please note the absence of any mention of the cross and resurrection. And anyone with a semblance of impartiality can see that Rollins has dramatically reinvented Christianity and presented it as a set of works rather than a born again experience by believing on the Risen Christ. Missing among all the philosophical gibberish is the gospel itself, and yet millions of professing Christians have accepted his “message” because he is emergent and endorsed by men like Rob Bell and Doug Pagitt.

I will not insult your Biblical intelligence by an elongated comparison with his words and the Word of God. But I wanted to present you with just a small sample of evidence of this man’s spiritual position along with the men who endorse him. And the tragic issue is that many believers who are already enamored with a man like Rob Bell will not even give an impartial assessment of these aberrant views. In fact, there is no statement and no teaching so Biblically deviant that some cannot manipulate them to say what they obviously do not say. Many lack even the most elementary discernment concerning redemptive truth because they have become followers of men rather than followers of Jesus and His Word. This is not due to any deeper duplicity or evil intentions in their beings; it is simply due to a profound deception as to what is happening and their complicity in this falling away. I alternate between anger and a deep sorrow.

The immeasurable tragedy has gained momentum through both the weariness of orthodox Christianity and the modern allurement of everything new and spiritually inclusive. There is little reasoning with those already caught adrift in this post modern tide, and it becomes somewhat irrelevant to some when we address even the most doctrinally violent teachings of men who have garnered emergent credentials. To be sure we must guard against any hint of haughtiness or hubris, and we ourselves must never believe we have arrived and are licensed to sit and evaluate all others but ourselves.

Pray and watch both for the deceived and ourselves.

The apostasy has long since gained a beachhead and moves forward with lightning speed. God help us…

Children of a Lesser Christ

There He writhes, surely in inestimable physical pain, but in infinitely more unsearchable spiritual pain and suffering for the sins of all mankind. Who can enter into that realm? Who among us can grasp the enormity of such an event, and even the partial understanding given to us renders us weak with gratefulness and worship. Only the redeemed can comprehend the spiritual implications of His death, and only a sinner enlightened by God’s Spirit can believe that event carries any sort of redemption for them personally. Only the Spirit of God can shine a divine light upon a narrative that looks on the surface like a Jew, dying on a cross, and by that light reveal something of a far greater mystery that has eternal implications for us all.

Men look into the expanse of a star filled night and find a profound wonder concerning the creation, and most find it unimaginable to be asked to believe that dead Jew was the Creator of all of it. How could such weakness be the open revelation of the Great God of the Universe? Yet there He is, draped in a crimson robe of His own blood, and gasping His very last breath. The reasoning of man not only doubts it, he rejects it with confidence. This figure impaled upon two Roman crosses cannot be anything more than another sinful Jew receiving the punishment for His own transgressions. This is nothing more than spiritual superstition.

But just as the invisible wind showcases its power by its influence over that which it targets, so will the power of this event be revealed through those who receive and acquiesce to its life changing power. A few weeks after this punishment was meted out, many thousands of people, the same ones who looked into that night’s sky, will be transformed into followers of the man who died on that day. Only they will no longer view him as just another dead Jew, no, they now realize He has risen from the dead, and He is the Lord God of Heaven and Savior of their souls. They have been captured by God’s Spirit, internally changed, and they will never be the same. They now walk in a strange land which they once called home but now is just a path to walk and a temporary place of sojourning.

These believers have gladly entered a personal journey to learn of Christ and follow in His footsteps, but always looking to and delving deeper into that cross and empty tomb. The paradox of all who believe in Jesus is that all the deepest and most profound aspects of His life and Person are found in that cross and in that empty tomb. That week of passion is the foundation that not only begins the journey; it is the place where the building blocks for future understanding must be hewn. The newborn Christian chicks do not fly away to build their nests elsewhere, instead they bring any additional twigs and food back to that same nest. The tree of Golgotha houses all true nests, and that tree itself gives and sustains all life that flies to its redemptive canopy.

This is the Christ we embrace and follow and this is our faith. We must not entertain the new constructs of men who suggest our faith is found elsewhere, regardless of how noble the cause. One small step away from Calvary is one giant step toward heresy. And when we move Christ and His bloody redemption away from the very core of our teaching, we do despite to the gospel itself and in fact we present a lesser Christ, a Christ that conforms to the philosophies of men and not the Christ whose brightness destroys the philosophies of men. Anything substantively new is most assuredly not true. Only a new and fresher well that is dug deep into the knowledge of Christ that begins and ends with redemption can be considered new revelations of established gospel truth.

And so in today’s exhilarating genre of Christian thought and teaching we have so many who follow a lesser Christ. Some follow the prosperity Christ, others follow the ceremonial Christ, others follow the philanthropist Christ, some love the abortion crusading Christ, others follow the gay hating Christ, and still others follow the American Christ. These are lesser Christ’s and in a real way they are other Christ’s. Gone is the tearful brokenness produced by a deep gratefulness for the cross. Gone is the spiritual contentment that comes from meditating upon that bleeding form, replace by the philosophies of men which excite the flesh and divert the worship from the Eternal One suffering in intense agony over our very sins. The lesser Christ carries no wounds and bids us to change the world through caring for the needs of others with the bloodless offerings of Cain.

We live in an ecclesiastical atmosphere with so many paths to God and so many different representations of the gospel that it is impossible to identify those who are washed in Christ’s blood and those who earnestly follow a noble Christ with high morals, compassion for the poor, but lacking the imperative crown of redemption found only and continually at Golgotha. Some even follow a crass and reckless Christ who was indistinguishable from the sinners with whom He ate. But the true Christ is exalted in His death and all other truths flow to and flow from that same sacrifice. To speak less of the cross is to diminish Christ, and to avoid or even deny the substitutionary element of its power is to deny it altogether.

I can never assess the limits of God’s grace, and I can never pronounce knowledge of any person’s standing before God.

However I can say with certainty that many today are the children of a lesser Christ.

Abortion as a Stumblingblock - UPDATE*

Whatever cause draws us to league with unbelievers is a clandestine attempt to draw us away from Christ. To single out abortion and use incendiary verbiage to leverage the most intense and explosive emotions concerning the plight of children is unbiblical and steers the human heart away from the gospel of Christ and onto the horrors of this world. And regardless of how accurate in their assessment of that moral issue, their unguarded rants only seek to awaken uncontrollable emotions in many, the result of which has been seen again in Kansas.

It is surely true that abortion is a sin and against the will of God. It is the murder of an unborn child. But how we handle that truth within the gospel context can be a very fine, yet significant, line of demarcation. An irresponsible diatribe about abortion can excite the emotions of hatred and revenge more than point to Jesus Christ. Our calling is to lift up the Person of Jesus Christ, not engender a torch bearing mob mentality about the actions of lost sinners. In fact, the hope of the world is the gospel not the elimination of any sinful practices regardless how horrific.

Far too often in these days of political involvement the church has been known for its stand on certain moral issues and not its overt and tangible projection of Jesus Christ. Cursing the basement flood without addressing the leak in the pipe is an unproductive venture, and we as followers of Jesus should repairers of the breach rather than condemners of the lost crowd from which we came. These moral campaigns are a clandestine form of compromise since they trade in the good and not the perfect.

So the next time you read a blog post or hear a message on the subject of abortion which is purposely inflammatory with all sorts of invectives, hyperbole, or an a pictorial meant to arouse emotions of hatred and outrage, think of how that draws people to the Lord Jesus. Being against abortion is a Biblical given, but exhibiting the grace and love of Jesus Christ to the vilest among us is a challenge of the highest difficulty and sacrifice. Jesus died for the abortion doctor and calls us to offer him that redemption.

Be a light, not just a verbal firearm.

*UPDATE - If you believe that war is a God ordained way to protect human life, then by the same logic killing abortion doctors can easily be considered God ordained as well. In this age of terrorists, the doctors can be called utero-terrorists. What they are Biblically is lost.

The Rising Apostasy

I would like to warn you of a coming apostasy, but I cannot. The apostasy about which I speak is here. We as believers must always attempt to show the widest parameters of grace and love, and the most earnest struggle to understand others without immediately reducing the view of others in the most unflattering light. We should avoid using hyperbolic language that inflames others and is melodramatic in nature. In essence, we should approach all who name the name of Christ with respect and patience, and concerning preachers we should be sure of any evidence we use when condemning their teachings. And most of all, the word “apostasy” must be reserved only for the most egregious and unambiguous examples of abandoning the Christian faith. Only then can the full weight of the word and its impact be understood.

Allow me to more fully unfold the meaning of the word “apostasy”. The Webster’s Dictionary defines it as an “abandonment of a previous loyalty” or a “renunciation of a religious faith”. And the Greek word “apostasia” actually means to stand against something for which you once stood. So the word apostasy, used twice in the New Testament (Acts 21:21; 2 Thessalonians 2:3), is a description of a person, a church, or a teaching that once taught the true faith of Jesus Christ who now teaches something else. Apostasy is the most serious accusation and label that any person, church, or teaching can receive, and it must not be used lightly.

I have used the word apostasy in my title with careful thought and with personal trembling, since I will give an account for such a grave and solemn accusation, however there is no other word that can and must be used in this situation. I can say with the knowledge that the Lord knows my words and my heart that I have over the last three years endeavored to view others in the greatest amount of grace and respect, and I have even rebuked those who I believed used unnecessary invectives that were personal or unwarranted hyperbole. My conscience is clear on this matter and I publicly claim no personal insight from God other than that which is available by His grace to every believer.

During this time that I will now openly address I have fellowshipped with several believers who are considered part of, or sympathetic to, the emergent church movement. I have learned many beneficial things from having interacted with them, as well as learned things about which I was disturbed. And this may be the central tragedy of this present falling away, since it does not just affect those who teach such things, it also ensnares many others who have fallen prey to their words of men’s wisdom. And indeed, many pastors and church leaders are among those who ten years ago would have rejected such teachings, but who now use and teach their material.

The emergent movement began sometime in the 1990’s by a small group of people who were seeking a new and fresh way to experience Christianity, and a new way to understand the teachings of the Bible. This gathering was not meant as a small tack in the current sea of orthodox understanding, this was to be a major shift in the core understanding of Christianity, the gospel itself, and how we are to practice and reveal our faith. This movement would seek common ground with other faiths in an attempt to bring spiritual peace and justice to the entire community of faith, within and without the Christian faith itself.

This new, emergent way of defining Christianity would focus on social issues and would focus on feeding the poor, global warming, injustices, war, and a long list of other human interests, and most disturbing of all would be the noticeable absence of the redemptive gospel of Jesus Christ. In an overview, this new movement would be humanitarian in nature and would begin to eschew the kind gospel preaching and presentation that would normally be heard in an evangelical church. The movement would be defined by deeds rather than faith, and the New Testament conversion construct would be changed to resemble a doctrinally nondescript community who seeks to provide material aid to people rather than the message of the cross.

And what about the doctrinal teachings of this movement, were they completely discarded? No, but they suffered a violent change. The way truth was now going to be discussed was more of round table dialogue where all points of view were valid and much of the teachings were philosophy wrapped in a thin veneer of parsed Biblical language. Musings and fables and extra biblical parables were instruments of communicative truth, and their meanings were leveraged to illustrate whatever the teacher desired them to teach. This interview is an example of what is being heralded as the new Christianity.

Col.2:8 – Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

The foremost and most influential men of this emergent movement are Brian MacLaren, Doug Pagitt, and Rob Bell. But make no mistake, there are many others and their numbers are increasing. These men speak all over the country, and their teaching materials are voluminous. They are intelligent, sincere, and have a gift for communication that they use most effectively. These men have evangelical backgrounds and were educated in orthodox Bible colleges and seminaries. Brian MacLaren seems to be the pioneer in the emergent church movement, and he has spoken in both Bell’s and Pagitt’s churches. MacLaren is now welcomed in hundreds, if not thousands, of evangelical churches that were once considered mainstream.

I will be presenting a post later concerning Doug Pagitt and his upcoming conference called Christianity 21. I will listen to the messages after the conference, but I invite you to go to the link and notice that all the speakers are women and the read the topics of their messages. But for now I want to address the ministry of Rob Bell and with whom he aligns himself. Pastor Bell will be holding a conference called, “Poets, Prophets and Preachers: Recalling the Art of the Sermon”, and it will be held in July. The main speaker for this event will be philosopher Peter Rollins. And just recently Bell had Phyllis Tickle fill his pulpit.

Let us examine who this Phyllis Tickle is and what she believes. She sits on many boards and participates on many interfaith discussions, not in the interest of sharing Christ, but in an attempt to form an amalgam of all religions. One of the most prominent and revealing boards on which she sits is the Exploring Faith organization. This organization is compromised of people from several different faiths, and some are heretical professing Christians such as Marcus Borg. This man, Borg, denies the resurrection and in his book “Meeting Jesus for the First Time Again” he states,

“The gospel of John thus is true to the experience of the early Christians, while not being literally, historically true.”

Rob Bell has referenced Marcus Borg in the past, along with other unbelieving philosophers. There seems to be no respect and love for the cross and the exalted One who died there. Christianity has become a philosophy, a curiosity that every Sunday is discussed as to how it can fit logically in a world of such injustice and financial suffering. And the answer is that Christianity is a religion that is meant to help the world fulfill its destiny, and the followers of Christ are to spread humanitarian deeds at the expense of the gospel narrative.

Listen as Tickle and Rollins wax philosophically eloquent and appear quite taken with each other as they muse about everything but Christ and His gospel. They continue to search for truth while being blind to the fact that they have found dangerous error and called it truth. When Tickle says that the church has to go through these changes about every five hundred years, she is not challenged as to that unsupported statement. She is a reckless as the health and wealth preacher claiming God told him that if you give money God will save your children.

And these are people have been invited to Rob Bell’s church to spread their falsehoods. It is because Rob Bell is a false teacher himself and no less a heretic as are they. If you are reading this you may well hear the Spirit warning your heart about the rise in the current apostasy. I am not being theatrical and melodramatic, this current climate is taking great strides away from Christ and His gospel. There is much wrong with all American evangelical churches, and in fact, we all stand in need of a massive revival that awakens us to the glory of sacrificing our lives for Christ. It is this very condition that makes the church ripe for deception, and even those preachers and bloggers that decry the teachings of men like Bell and Rollins many times do not see their own need of personal revival.

I openly confess that in spite of the glorious salvation that I stand in today by grace, I am not what I should be or even what I could be.

I need a move of God’s Spirit in my own life.

I pray you recognize that as well.

To Be in Love With Jesus

Please do not attempt to wake me up from what seemed like a dream from the very first day. Do not try and wrestle away my simplistic and unsophisticated faith which suggests that Jesus is the way to a place called heaven. I have heard all the new voices and all the new and fresh theologies that call us like sirens to rise above the ancient ideas, and I am a spectator to the ever changing and ever increasing nebulous and intangible faith that is being taught in today’s newer spiritual classroom.

When I became a Christian I experienced one driving emotion that actually consumed me. I fell in love with Jesus. I realize that is so sugary and emotional in today’s higher philosophical discussion, but that is what changed my life. I cannot completely communicate to you what that meant within my spirit and how that emotion travelled with me wherever I went. And when I read all the theologies that suggest you must be pained about your sin, or you must grasp certain doctrinal particulars, or the you must be willing to change your life, I know immediately that it is not always so. I fell in love with Jesus without meeting all those requirements and standards.

I realize you get your test marked wrong when you say accept Jesus, or fall in love with Jesus, or a hundred other statements that are on the unaccepted list, but you may cling tightly to that list if you wish, I must cling to Jesus. Please be advised that there are some of us who believe that Jesus is the only way to eternal life, and that those who have never heard the gospel stand in danger of eternal separation from Christ. But we are not interested in all the doctrinal minutia that becomes a self righteous feeding frenzy and only adds to the self righteous accumulation. You may know everything and then again, you may think you know everything, but we do not.

And yet we are not interested in the emerging movement that openly suggests a startling and new definition of the Christian faith. And the chatter, word parsing, and philosophical gibberish does not interest us; we will dig deeper wells in the same places where we first quenched our thirst. We are sure there is water there. The rushing to and fro of the new streams of Christianity were temporarily exhilarating, but alas, they proved to be nothing more than well intentioned discussions that made the cross an aside and set about to meet the physical needs of people while leaving them fallen shells of lostness. Instead of deepening the stakes and lengthening the cords of the tested gospel tent, they set out to unfold another and separate tent.

One group argues over if faith comes first or regeneration while the other group isn’t concerned with faith at all. You must excuse some of us if we do not find those discussions as especially helpful, and in fact they seem to us as counterproductive and hollow. It’s not that we are not interested in doctrine, or that we do not care about the poor, but we believe that the central message must be Christ and that our calling is to present Him to the lost and present Him continually to ourselves so as to allow us to fall more deeply in love with Him.

We are neither the seeker sensitive nor the purpose driven types, but neither are we called to eviscerate those who are. We are orthodox in theology but we reject the redundant doctrinal evangelism set forth by some Calvinists who seem more concerned with election than seeing people elected. The breed of sectarianism created by many of those doctrinal arguments are a stumblingblock to the gospel message itself, and indeed is driven by systematic theology rather than passionate love, and that genre of Christianity obscures the Risen Christ. There is a difference between presenting Christ as a doctrine verses presenting Him as a passionate reality within your very being.

So if you desire to be a part of endless debates and tortured half truths, and if you feel edified by the harshness and self righteous landscape known as the blog world, then you may have it. If God is a God Who wishes to remain aloof and marks His tests without a curve, then what in the world are we pursuing? If there is no grace, and if grace is empowered by law, then we are all playing a spiritual game. One demands a sinner say “repentance”; another accepts even the mildest acknowledgment; and still others require some sort of ceremony to be considered fully legitimately redemptive. What sort of tortured construct is this where even Calvinists argue with each other and Arminians generally accept anything?

You may have come to believe sifting truth is following Jesus, but I have come to understand that the truth is in Jesus, surely aligning with His Word, but surely not stopping within the pages of Scripture. Devotion to Jesus is not just a devotion to doctrinal truth, and devotion to Christ is not ignoring His written revelations as well. I sincerely believe the move of God’s Spirit is a move of personal revival and devotion. It may render you as odd and somewhat outré spiritual, and you may well be misunderstood, but it will be a small price to pay to draw significantly closer to Jesus by shedding the graveclothes of what has become an unproductive replica of what God had intended to be His living manifestation of the earth. His kingdom was supposed to be lived as much as spoken.

Parse it any way you like, Christianity has become just one of the major religions of the earth with little that could differentiate it from all the rest. Living well within the dictates of western culture and being diffused more and more until we not only are blind to its effects, we in fact have embraced them. And in America we have come to be known by the tenants of morality we speak and support much more than the Person of Christ and His gospel of redemption. We have labeled people as conservative or liberal, Democrats or Republicans, and we feel very comfortable listening to a talk show millionaire ramble on and on, demeaning and attacking, and aggressively attempting to preserve his lifestyle, even suggesting that Christians should be capitalists.

And with all that and more, we have left our first love and have nestled down to enjoy this hedonistic pasture. This beggars the question, “Is there such a truth as walking in an experiential presence of Jesus Himself, or are we to just walk according to some moral commandments?”.

You may desire to be concerned over the economy, or foreign affairs, or elections, or Supreme Court nominees, or liberal and conservatives, or the entire landscape of earthly issues that suck the spiritual life out of you and replace it with an earthly counterfeit. Take it all in, read about it incessantly, speak about it, scour the internet, ingest all the political blogs, and basically be consumed with this world all that happens within it. I am winding down and I am pursuing a surrender much deeper than I have ever known. A surrender that actually affects the way I live and think, and in such a way that people who know me are curious as to what has happened. A surrender that leads daily to a deeper surrender than the day before. I do not believe any massive revival is eminent, but I am convinced that each one of us has available an ocean of fresh oil that God can use to anoint us to a new awakening to the reality of Jesus in our lives. Just a deep, simple, and profound river of life that comes from Christ, drowns us in His presence, and returns to Christ.

I have a long way to go, I must get started.

The Refiner's Fire Today

As a backdrop for what I will share in this post you need to watch this.

Both Mrs. Tickle and Peter Rollins are emergent leaders and are friends and guest speakers at Mars Hill Church where Rob Bell is pastor.

Please do not tell me you do not feel it. If you cannot sense that something deeply spiritual is happening than you are not even close to the fire, and in fact you may be oblivious to it all. This move of the Spirit is beneath the surface and has yet to present itself as an observable phenomenon. Those of us that have been touched by the unmistakable calling have been thirsty for some time, and we have seen and heard all the new movements which purport to be the “next” move of God’s Spirit in the church. It cannot be denied that the evangelical church in America has become consumed by western culture and have satisfied their insatiable desire for hedonism by constructing evangelical formats that excite and fulfill a niche in a well rounded western lifestyle.

The evangelical construct has moved substantially away from being Christo-centric in practice and pursuit, to a model that is centered on the fulfillment of our present lives. From politics to family to finances to self esteem, the message of the gospel has become an appendage and not the absolute core. Of course most of the church would strongly suggest that we do place Christ first, but in practice and orthopraxy we have moved substantially away from pursuing Christ and His kingdom in our communities of faith.

Listen to the message themes, read the schedule of weekly activities, and notice what consumes the average believer’s life. Our church houses are prayerless shells that provide a place of meetings and activity, but many times lost in all that are the spiritual disciplines that are essential to spiritual growth and apprehension of Jesus Christ. How is it that the professing body of Christ can live without Him, or even live satisfied with what little they know of Him experientially?

And like pounding the bottom of an empty bottle of ketchup, the church continues to pound and pound the same wineskins hoping to get the last remaining drop of wine from the bottom of the same construct we’ve always used. We have succeeded on some level to cultivate a community of people who have a basic agreement in the Christian faith; however we’ve done it on the strength of organizing, buildings, activities, and the personality of the main preacher. But evangelical churches meet and exist by the scores in almost every city throughout America, tucked away nicely amidst a hedonistic and hollow culture, and yet without making any noticeable impact on their surroundings.

Where is this new and glorious life we say dwells within us? Why did the resurrection life of Jesus Christ overflow through the early apostles, but that life sometimes goes no further than the local church membership roles today? What if 10,000 people were transported to heaven for 5 years and were allowed to worship the Risen Christ and bask in His presence? And what if that same band of saints were given back their earthly bodies and delivered back into our midst again? Do you believe that their testimony and their lives would bear any resemblance to what passes as the church today?

Jesus Christ, the heart of the gospel, has either become a doctrinal issue to be discussed and argued over, or He is to be removed from a place of prominence in the “gospel” message giving way to acts of humanitarianism. Think again on those 10,000 saints that have spent the last five years in the presence of the Risen Christ, what message do you suspect they would preach? Would Jesus be the absolute life force of their preaching and would He be the goal of their living emulation? How is it, how indeed can it be, that millions of people in our communities claim to have the Eternal Savior living and abiding within their very being and yet the substantial revelation of such wondrous truth remains so tepid and unremarkable?

Is the power of Jesus Christ so impotent that His real and actual presence here on earth projects little more than one religion among many? And when the singular life of Jesus in His incarnate revelation was so powerful and so unique that His story continues to be told through the centuries, how can it be that those who claim to be following Him are so ordinary and insignificant within a culture that is devoid of the Spirit of God? Something is wrong, profoundly wrong.

Against that unexceptional reality of the Christian church, many have become disillusioned about continuing in that same hollow vein and they have set out to find deeper meaning to their Christian experiences. And so some have either openly rejected the Biblical truths of the Christian faith or they have instituted such a new and philosophical vocabulary that it is impossible to align it with basic gospel truth and it projects a fresh enigmatic way of saying nothing while pretending to say something. Riddles and parables and stories are at the heart of these new constructs of Christianity while the redemption of the cross of Christ is strikingly absent or at least reduced to an example of sacrifice for the needs of the people of the world. In short these new and emergent teachings have one major commonality, the outright focus away from the redemption provided by Christ’s cross for the sins of the world and the personal message of Christ’s eternal salvation.

The core of the emergent movement is a transfer of spiritual focus and calling from the actual gospel of Jesus Christ to a new expression of Christianity that is a bloodless ministry to the earthly needs of the world’s sinners. Religious philosophy is their Bible and their spiritual community includes non-Christian religions. Most American evangelicals remain so Biblically illiterate and so spiritually unconcerned that they will not be interested in becoming educated as to what is happening to say nothing of being concerned. For the most part we are concerned with ourselves and the prosperity and safety of the nation in which we live. But the real enemy has come, not in planes and tanks, and not with weapons of mass destruction, but he has come as a spiritual farmer and is busy sowing seeds of deception that grow and are eaten by unsuspecting sinners and saints alike.

And some of those who are deceived are eloquent and sincere, and they speak with a literary prowess that is wrapped in an effervescent philosophy that touches our human sensibilities but remains distant from invading the fields that the Holy Spirit desires to reach and change. The emergent movement has not just changed the approach, they have changed the message. While few would demand a King James verbiage, there must be at least a recognizeable communication of the gospel narrative. And even some who when pressed would utter some involuntary alignment with Biblical Christianity, hide the gospel away from the ears and hearts of those who follow their ministries. And many good men, men of God who sincerely desire to serve Christ, have been blinded to this deception. All this, dramatic and unmistakable, is happening with little notice from the body of Christ.

But what about those who resist these unbiblical intrusions? This is where the battle must begin, but not with whom we might think. It is true that we must expose and confront false teachings, especially in today’s compromised religious landscape, but the real battle will be with us. In some corners they exclude themselves from the spiritual fight, refusing to see their own need since the extensive error in others obscures their vision of self. That is very unfortunate and leaves the work undone.

To combat the mystical onslaught we must not only identify error, we must deepen the stakes and lengthen the cords of our own spiritual tents. To be sure, spiritual revival is significantly more than rearranging the furniture in a worship service; or reinstating some ancient practice; or presenting some avante garde ideas concerning what spirituality looks like today. The silly and ridiculous philosophies are worthless and men like Peter Rollins, who holds a masters degree in philosophy, say nothing in very creative and thought provoking ways. In the end he says nothing that can be remotely considered Biblical.

We are entering a new dark age in Christianity and men like Rob Bell who continue to gain notoriety are providing platforms for teachers like Doug Paggit, Phyllis Tickle, and Peter Rollins. This is not some game and it surely is not to be ignored. Churches all over the nation are watching and listening to these people and are believing they teach a new way to communicate redemptive Christianity. And when questioned about being more clear, they and their supporters strongly defend their words as orthodox and Biblical without the open evidence that would support that defense. Little phrases or obscure sentences still shrouded in uncertainty and doctrinal intangibles are usually what pass for evidence of their belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ. “The way of Jesus” or “Following Jesus” or other nice sounding words have replaced the “Repent and believe the gospel” call for which many in years past have died.

I am not sure what is possible at this late date, but I do know that just rejecting and exposing these false teachers will never stem any tide, and in the end God will require much more at our hands. Perhaps the horse is already out of the barn, however we as individuals can still glorify our Father by a deeper and more passionate devotion to follow Jesus Christ. Exposing error is infinitely easier than living truth. Three years ago I would ask a fellow believer what he thought about the emergent movement and most would not even be aware that there was such a thing. And I would ask about MacLaren or Bell or Paggit and most had never heard of these men. Today mainstream evangelical churches are using Bell’s material and leasing buses to attend his tours.

You may desire to continue to sleep but your faith will be taken from you while you slumber. This end time falling away has been predicted by the Apostle Paul himself, and yet the church seems passive and unconcerned. Our own spiritual lives are so indifferent and undemonstrative, and many consider political involvement as proof of the depth of their discipleship. But we here in America have been devoured by this hedonistic western culture, even from the most orthodox reformed to the most seeker sensitive format. We are more concerned about proving our Calvinistic credentials that we are about all night prayer meetings and extended gatherings of repentance. Many churches are places of entertainment rather than sukkots of God’s presence.

We need more than harsh words that attack men’s persons; we need more than redundant examples of doctrinal mischief; and we need more than a continuing stream of discernment that beats the same doctrinal horse without ever addressing our own spiritual malnutrition. We need to receive strong rebukes aimed at our own powerless situation that so often exists unnoticed in a godless community. Being politically conservative has proven to be worthless in God’s kingdom, and the relentless drone of talk show hosts have piped a shallow song to which so many believers have danced. These are all childish things that must be rejected in favor of the higher calling of seeking Christ with all our hearts. No longer can we afford to be sidetracked by nationalistic endeavors; the time has come to leave behind our sin and all the unnecessary weights that keep us from running the race to which we’ve been called.

Abortion continues in the millions and the church continues to believe we can stop it with legislation and education when in fact only a sweeping move of God’s eternal Spirit can invade the gospel hardened hearts of American sinners and illuminate them to their sin. And before we wield God’s judgment on lost sinners, let us take inventory among ourselves as we realize that most of the problem must be laid at our evangelical doors. It is us who have lost our saltiness, and it is us who have hidden our lights under political and denominational baskets. It is us who have blended in with the Babylonian culture and it is us who wear the garments of Babylon. It is us who feel so vindicated by preaching against the sins of the lost among us and in that we are comfortably diverted from addressing our own sins. We cannot even hear God’s voice that says to Joshua, “Get up from off your face” because we are not even on our faces. Tens of millions of believers exit the morning gatherings on Sunday with dry eyes and with smiles directed at each other as they make their way to dine sumptuously and perhaps catch the soon beginning sports event. And we claim we have just done business with the Creator God. Who indeed are we fooling?

The world believes this is all there is to Christianity because this is all they’ve seen. And our children have been raised in an atmosphere of playtime and fellowship, but they not only have not seen the power of God move through drastically desperate believers, they do not even realize that such a thing is possible. And should Jesus tarry they will nestle down comfortably within a local assembly and hear beautiful exegetical messages that soothe the conscience and assure that nothing will change. We will continue to draw from the “us verse them” well which nourishes us with the self righteousness we crave. Billions of God’s dollars will continue to flow to secular banks and mortgage companies that support and finance the very institutions we so emphatically say we oppose.

The endless parade of “how to” sermon series will provide a Home Depot format that instructs as to how we can better our cultural existence. Believers will continue to watch more television than they do watch and pray. Night after night the church house will be dark and locked up without a hint of spiritual desperation. Prayer remains a doctrine rather than a way of life and the core of our gatherings. We, like Samson, do not even realize that we have lost our power and we have replaced the Risen Christ with an ecclesiastical mannequin. We can continue and be oblivious to the extent of our own embarrassing commitment and in so doing we pass on a legacy of spiritual impotence that presents a form of godliness but denies the power through contented human shells that dance like marionettes to ecclesiastical constructs, but are neither hot nor cold in God’s penetrating eyes.

The day is well spent and the time is far past. Awaken to the Spirit’s call to modern day Gideons that must both watch the horizon and yet drink from the river of God’s Spirit. Having read this post, or having written this post, what then is our response? Are we challenged or are we changed? Have we been stirred or resurrected? Is our Lord worth defending or is He worth living and dying for? Is our mission one that extends far outside our little evangelical cliques, and if so, where can we receive the power that is necessary to fulfill our commission?

Step into the Refiner’s fire this day and let Him melt you down and remold you completely.

Be advised, though, spiritual pain is part of the process, and humility is the ingredient that will harden your image into a useable servant of the Most High God.

The time must be now.

The Implications of Grace

At the heart of the Christian gospel is grace. And yet no other word has been so bandied about and so misunderstood than grace, and in fact, to completely understand God's grace is to misunderstand it. The boundaries of God’s redemptive grace can never be fully defined or understood, and to experience that grace only allows another incomplete level of understanding. The fallen comprehension of grace is so often tethered to some form of work, either before or after saving faith. It seems almost impossible for humans to believe completely in the unvarnished and raw definition of grace that stands forever quarantined from any hint of works. And yet grace and works are revelations of life and death, each abiding at opposite ends of redemption, and each mutually exclusive.

And so we come to an understanding of grace. Not just a simplistic definition that satisfies a Bible college theology test, and not just a pragmatic explanation that transforms grace into a wieldier doctrinal instrument among the ecclesiastical proletariat. Grace, God’s redemptive grace, is the longest journey and the priceless treasure to any seeking soul. How expansive is grace? How deep are the foundations of this grace? How inclusive is this grace? To whom is this grace given and from whom is it withheld?

We who have received of God’s infinite grace are often those who restrict and confine the grace that was bestowed upon us so freely. Our fallen natures refuse to allow a more expansive view of God’s grace built upon the definition of grace itself. We seem so incapable of seeing grace apart from human works of righteousness, either before or after a sinner’s profession of faith. We continue to cling to a ministry of evaluation and inspection that can only come through a prism of subjectivity and self righteousness. Blind to the depths of our own sin, even the damnable accumulation of one day’s transgressions, we suggest we are able to see the sins of others with spiritual clarity and even aided by the discerning ministry of the Paraclete Himself.

It has become fashionable to teach that a sinner cannot be saved and still commit certain sins. One of the most pronounced issues is that of gay sinners who profess Christ. The orthodox suggestion is that if a gay person believes on Christ and becomes born again he or she will most definitely be awakened to their sin and leave their gay lifestyle behind. Many gay people have indeed followed that pattern. But millions of sinners have received Christ, entered a local church, become active in their fellowship, and yet continue to practice their sinful lifestyles.

Some come in with a hatred toward a family member or some other person, and they will live their entire lives practicing that inward hatred. Some have become believers having been consumed with success and wealth, and they will to one degree or another continue in that vein. Millions of professing Christians now follow a sinful theology and lifestyle that suggests that God desires everyone to be rich. Is it possible for a person to be truly saved and continue in that hedonistic lifestyle? Millions of believers overeat and are overweight, is it possible to be saved and continue in that temple destroying lifestyle?

How can we confidently pass such judgments when almost all believers in America live a culturally compromised lifestyle in one way or another? We have projected to the world an “arrived” status, and we collectively pronounce moral judgments and condemnations upon a myriad of sinners from all corners of the sin committing world. But the church, the true spiritual church, must be the living, breathing redemptive life of Jesus Christ. To preach the message of redemption without a living expression of that gospel is hollow. The Chinese language comes forth from a Chinese man, and the gospel should come forth from a living gospel dressed in human flesh. Like touching the hem of His garment to be healed, so should sinners experience the divine healing and forgiveness of Jesus Christ when they are in our presence.

Too often we have touted a message of redemption that is incongruous with our lives, and in so doing we have made the gospel nothing more than religious rhetoric. The influx of morality into the church’s message has been both counterproductive as well as heretical. Grace with a caveat is not grace. The disarming and dangerous message of the gospel is that purely by faith any sinner can have eternal life. For instance, in the abstract no gay man has to relinquish his lifestyle in order for grace to be effective in the same way no sinner has to give up anything to be saved.

And this inspection process by other believers renders them blind to their own predicament of grace. It is necessary to surround yourself with a compliment of human targets so as to insulate yourself from any introspection concerning the depth of your own sin. The same believer who energetically quotes Corinthians concerning homosexuality will explain away the command of Jesus concerning saving up retirement treasures. In the end, much of the church has become a source for self gratification concerning a list of stances against sin and a list of orthodox tenants that we espouse to buoy our self righteousness.

A man rapes and murders your two year old little girl. As you sit in the courtroom waiting to hear the sentence of death on this monster, a man walks forward and tells the judge he will die for him. You are outraged since you demand that this murderer gets what HE DESERVES. You will not agree to any deal that lets the man off the hook.

The greatest compromise in history was the cross. It provides a way for every sinner to “get off the hook”, including you and me. It completely compromises God’s justice and without any restitution it eradicates your guilt. It is called grace, and we have yet to plumb the depths of its power. And yet why can that man, guilty before all, receive that grace and leave a free man, only to use his freedom to castigate other guilty men? Why does that free man of grace find a ministry in reading the indictment of others instead of singing the praises of the One who took his place?

The cross has done away with the law, and let this good news be spread, by faith and faith alone Jesus Christ will save the vilest among us with no past, present, or future strings attached. And if the body of Christ was living and breathing that in everything we do, sinners would run to us, as they did Christ Himself.

I am presently juggling many “what ifs” in my pursuit of redemptive truth. If a sinner cannot believe on Jesus Christ and receive eternal forgiveness by grace alone without producing a certain set of works to crystallize that grace, then it is not grace. What sins and how many sins result in either the forfeiture of grace or the revelation of the absence of grace?

Millions upon millions of professing Christians throughout the centuries have practiced sin and taught others to do likewise. Martin Luther was a rabid anti- Semite and actually taught that hating Jews was from God. Was he saved? Most southern believers before the Civil War practiced racism and taught others that it was God’s will for the white man to be superior. Were they saved?

Many if not most American believers save up thousands upon thousands of dollars for their own consumption and use and they teach others that this is God’s will for everyone’s finances. Are they saved? Many if not most American believers attend motion pictures with nudity and vulgarity and watch questionable television and they teach others that God approves. Are they saved?

My point is that many, if not most, believers are blind to some of their sin, even teaching others that the sin they commit is not sin, and they live their entire Christian life deceived about their particular sin. Are they saved? Many believers teach that baptism saves, are they saved? My point is this: If no one can be deceived about some sin in their lives for the duration of their Christian experience then no one will be saved. And if grace cannot cover that deception then it is no longer grace.

Grace is not defined by compliance, it is magnified by disobedience, regardless of what kind of disobedience is approved or disapproved. A practicing gay believer cannot be welcomed forever in a local fellowship, at some point he must be confronted in love. However, a practicing gay man can still be saved. It is curious though that in most American congregation’s believers are practicing hedonists and are actively teaching others to be greedy and pleasure oriented. In fact, many are leaders and preachers.

How many orthodox preachers lead and profit by “Christian cruises” and teach others to spend thousands of dollars on such frivolity while millions starve? Are they saved? They even teach that spending God’s money on such hedonism and overeating is God’s will. Have you any idea how much food is wasted and thrown out on these gigantic cruises that are called “Christian”? Are they saved? I refuse to let homosexuality be the justifying piñata that soothes the conscience of orthodox sinning believers.

If we are going to set man made guidelines based upon the Scriptures then that judgmental net will capture all of us. Without sin grace is meaningless. Without disobedience grace is invisible. Without transgressions grace is without purpose. And grace is not just activated because of our sincere attempt to refrain from sin, for that in itself would be a reward for works and at odds with the essence of grace.

The greatest sin the church has continued to commit is its projection of a grace that is conditioned on anything other than faith. Broken down to its final residue, that is the sin of self righteousness. The fruit inspectors are legion; the fruit bearers are few. Even the most orthodox believers among us would have been considered as compromising and even false brethren by our Puritan forefathers, and yet we quote them and assume they speak to others. In every generation there those believers who stake out the moral and theological higher ground, and from that vantage point they live in a land with many telescopes and no mirrors.

No one can be saved without faith in Jesus Christ. If the New Testament teaches anything it teaches the exclusivity of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of sins through faith in the cross and resurrection. We are saved by grace through faith. But just how deep and how comprehensive is this grace? Is this grace powerful enough to account for every sin? Is this grace strong enough to withstand the open expressions of a deceptive lifestyle by some who claim Christ as their Savior? The issue of open participation in local assemblies is another issue, but the salvation of sinners who struggle with truth about their own sin must be addressed within the glories of God’s infinite grace. Sin, including our own, cannot be taught as divinely approved, however sinners inside the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ have already been accepted in the beloved, even if they are rebellious children.

And so the implications of grace in Christ Jesus are unsettling to our self righteous natures. But if we are linguistically and theologically honest, and if we are transparent concerning our own experience, we will find that God’s grace remains resistant to our attempts to restrict its power and relentlessly elusive to being captured by our limited earthly perspectives. One day, on a hill outside of Jerusalem, grace was released upon the earth. Religion has tried to arrest it; good works have attempted to replace it; denominations have tried to own it; systematic theology has sought to define it; and believers have attempted to dispense it.

But the grace of God will never allow itself to be captured by the will of men. Its implications are profound and its expanse is beyond our intellectual horizons. In the light of God’s grace, should we not be people of grace?

Seeking You, Jesus

Where is the Lord God of Elijah? And where is the pursuit of the Risen Christ that burns the heart and is a holy irritant that relentlessly creates a discomfort with our present spiritual state? How is it we can live and breathe without the glory of His presence that both quenches and creates a thirst for Him? While the strength of things of this world chain us to this kingdom, we will never walk in a kingdom whose King makes Himself known to His following subjects.

God’s people are consumed with issues and morality and politics and money, and while we are entangled with the temporal the eternal is a lifeless musing expressed upon paper but void of the personal experience that might generate living manifestations that are completely at odds with this present world. In effect, we have become what we are supposed to help rescue. Why would a person in chains accept a key to those chains when it is offered from another person still in chains?

When and where did we lose the axe head of our pursuit to know Him? How could we be satisfied with meeting Him and receiving His redemption and then, as did Joseph and Mary, leaving Him behind? Does He receive honor from our weekly gatherings, scripted and time constricted, and never allowing the Spirit to move in our midst and most certainly in our hearts? Can a little more than an hour provide the necessary season for God to plow up the fallow ground that has been set aside in our hearts? When have we ended the day and slipped into bed only to realize we forgot to eat that day? And when have we slipped into bed, closed our eyes, and fallen fast asleep without even realizing, much less caring, that He has waited for us only to be disappointed?

Jesus, forgive and help us.

Who have I in heaven but You, Lord Jesus
What in this world can capture my heart but You, Lord Jesus
To whom shall I go to receive forgiveness but You, Lord Jesus
How can I live but through You, Lord Jesus
My comfort comes from You alone, Lord Jesus
All creation draws me to You, Lord Jesus
I have nothing but You, Lord Jesus
There is none like You, Lord Jesus
My breath comes from Your Spirit, Lord Jesus
My life is in You, Lord Jesus
All my hopes, all my dreams, all my desires, all my cravings, all my wants, all my needs, all my yearnings, and all my everythings are in You, Lord Jesus

I was, I am, and I will be nothing without You. It is no secret that You alone have made me into something different, someone that can actually know You, and someone who can actually serve You, and someone who can actually worship You. Apart from You I am a dead man walking in the midst of other dead men without a place to rest. There is nothing to return to, nothing at all.

So I will seek You with a thirst for You and Your presence. I realize some cannot understand and cannot comprehend the depth and meaning of Your presence. But one moment in Your tangible presence is worth more than living with kings and queens, and worshiping You is worth more than many ships of gold. Jesus, so often we speak and write of You as if You were still in history and stand far away, detached and observing as a disinterested spectator.



But in this post I speak directly to You and You alone.

I do not care who does or does not read this, and I am not embarrassed to come before You as a foolish child who is uncomfortably attached to his father. I desire You to take my heart of stone and create in my a heart of flesh that cannot help but seek Your very face. I have met You and I have spoken with You, but it is never enough and my spirit cries out for more, more of You. Captured within the confines of this world only strengthens my desire to be with You.

Houses and cars, money and things, and everything good that has come my way in this life vanishes as nothing when I am in Your presence and when my heart is completely set upon You, Jesus. When I first met you in 1975 it was so transforming that I could not communicate fully what had happened and Who I had met. You have been faithful to me through these 34 years and even through the worst of times You have been my stronghold and even my friend. I am consumed with being with You both here and someday in Your dwellingplace.

We have asked for signs and experiences that could serve as motivations for our spiritual journey, and yet what sign could be greater than the sign of the bleeding Messiah hanging dead on two Roman planks? All the far flung galaxies and all the wonders of this world could never approach the glory of your atonement. Let that atonement possess me in a way I can never imagine. I must only see your face through the crimson prism of your wounds and in my longing gaze I not only feel love, I see love; I see My Love. And that Love is my life.

I cannot be content with speaking about You or speaking about Your truth or even sharing Your gospel message, I must have You in my life as a spiritual reality, one that pursues me relentlessly and both draws me and creates a hunger for You as well. And all the daily tasks of this world as well as the sometimes endless Christian discourses do not satisfy, and in fact so often hinder me in my walk with You. I cannot enjoy this life without You and You ARE in a divine mystery my life completely. Everything seeks to tear me away from You, and even my own mind desires to wander around the worthless things of this world. Forgive me, Lord Jesus, you deserve total surrender from such as me who has been lavished upon with Your endless grace.

All these things I have written are genuine expressions of part of my heart, but in a part of my heart they are lies. But I will continue to pursue You, even in part, hoping that along the way my life will be consumed by the fire of Your presence and the reality of all You are. There can be no other way…

but You.