Archive for September, 2008
“sin that so easily entangles”
The “Independent Christian Church Ministers” question of the week is about sin, specifically sins we don’t talk about as a church – if I understood correctly the question. And this is a great question because too often Christians act like they’ve “got it all together” and have no problems or sin and everything is hunkeydorey.
But from the beginning this has not been the truth. The truth is that Christians too commit sins. We also need God’s continuing forgiveness and grace and mercy. The Apostle John wrote If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. (I John 1:8-10) And the Apostle Paul wrote Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. (Colossians 3:5-10) Both John and Paul recognized that as Christians we have a lot of growing to do and part of that is in facing our earthly nature and “putting it to death”. Both of these passages were written to CHRISTIANS, folks who were already in the church, had already received forgiveness for their sins – and yet needed to be cleansed from their earthly nature. In fact, “the disciple Jesus loved” (John) included himself in the issue by using first person plural.
So, what can we as a church do about sin in our midst? In the past (and present in many cases) the custom was to throw out anyone who didn’t “toe the line” and who was thought to have “kicked over the traces”. And indeed it is important to not wink at sin and we SHOULD practice church discipline when folks refuse to repent and insist on continuing in sin when confronted biblically with the issue.
But I believe that we must start with ourselves. Each and every christian must learn to look critically AT HIS OWN LIFE and to seek out the earthly nature which leads us down to perdition and eradicate it systematically from our own life. Each and every aspect of our person and character must be held up before the powerful light of God’s word and examined critically – do I indeed measure up to Him or must I continue eradicate the sin that holds me back? Paul wrote to the Romans “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:1-2)
It is easy to “conform to this world” because we see how this world works all around us. It is easy to imitate that which we see all the time. But God is calling us to a new vision – one that is only possible when we learn to renew our minds according to God’s Will and His Word.
Traditionally the church has been quite hard on visible sins. The drunk, the homosexual, the adulterer or fornicator has been an easy target because their way of life is obvious to all. It is the subtle sins that cause most problems in the church however. Wrath, malice, envy, hatred, gossip, lying, deceit, pride – these are the ugly secrets that cause divisions amongst us. The greatest common denominator amongst them is the issue of egotism. When “I” am the center of the universe then nothing works as it should. When Christ becomes the center then I can fulfill my proper place and I can learn to allow others their proper place as well. When Christ reigns supreme in my life I can submit to Him and renew my mind in all ways – giving up those sins that so easily entangled me when I was still seeking earthly things and learning to run the race He has set before Me.
The “worship wars” and other recent issues are sins which we as a Church have allowed to break the unity that Christ seeks amongst His people. When each side insists on doing things their own way without seeking a common ground for agreement then we have open warfare amongst us and the winner is the enemy. When we learn to love each other and to seek ways to work together than reasons to separate we can gain victory over the enemy of our souls.
There is no panacea for the sin that besets us because it is an individual issue that we as a congregation must help each other to face and over come. The closest we can come to a “one size fits all” answer is to learn to love each other as the Word teaches us to do and to help and edify each other in love so that Christ is exalted over all and all are submitted to Him in love and obedience.
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The Testament
Recently I re-read the book “The Testament” by John Gresham. For those of you who are not familiar with it, it’s a story about a rich man who commits suicide after writing a simple will leaving everything he owns to an illegitimate daughter who no one knows who is or where she lives. It’s an interesting tale and an interesting look at how folks view money and wealth and earthly power as the various other children the man had sired vie for a piece of the eleven billion dollar estate. It turns out that the missing daughter has become a missionary to a tiny tribe in South America and lives a life almost completely severed from the modern chaos that our world has become.
Now, I won’t go and spoil the plot for you any further, you’ll need to read the book if you want to know how it turns out. But I wanted to address the idea of an eleven billion dollar bequest to a mission agency. This is a “dream come true” for many and I’m sure that most folks can imagine “all the good” they could do with “limitless funds”.
For me, however, the issue is – what is mission work about any way? Is it really possible to do that much more REAL christian work with money than what can be done while depending on the Lord and His people to provide? What is christian mission work about any way?
For me, the issue of missions is of vital importance. I was raised in a mission home and grew up to dedicate my life to mission work. It has been a privilege and a learning experience to observe various approaches to mission work from a variety of people from diverse backgrounds and denominational affiliations. But one thing that has stuck in my head is the difference in results between those who “throw money” at problems and those who seek the Lord’s guidance and allow Him to work through them according to the gifts He has given them.
Rarely does a “money missionary” produce more than a group of parasites who depend on the “God of the North” (from a South American perspective) rather than raising their eyes to He Who gave His very life for them and Who provides according to the riches of His mercy for His children’s needs. Tremendous battles are often waged over mission resources and lands and vehicles and tools and other material items while souls go to hell because they’ve never seen the Gospel lived.
The most effective way I’ve seen to change lives is to live the Gospel message in one’s daily life. When we walk with the Lord, seeking first His Kingdom and His Righteousness, then He will provide for what we need. And as we live out our lives in the presence of those He brings into our lives, we show them that they too can have victory over sin and that they too can learn to walk with God in His paths – and that they don’t have to have a boat load of money to do so.
When we first moved to Brazil following our marriage, we lived on $75 a month. We were able to hold to this budget for some time with the Lord’s help. It wasn’t easy, but He provided. Even now we have the lowest budget of the missionaries from our movement who are working in this nation – and yet the Lord has blessed our ministry and has allowed us the blessing of seeing lives turned from sin to righteousness and to see families restored. There have been setbacks and problems – but none which more money would solve.
Is it wrong to have abundant monetary resources? I don’t believe so (contrary to what some detractors may think) but rarely will abundant monetary resources provide real solutions to life’s real problems. When it comes to poverty we have seen that the root of the problem is in the mindset. Two people with identical backgrounds will have opposite results in their lives – due to the approach and the mindset they have when facing life’s trials. One will sink into poverty and the other will receive abundant blessings of an earthly riches character – due to the difference in the way they approach problems.
The greatest tool in overcoming poverty is education. By teaching folks to think and reason and make intelligent choices we can help them avoid the poverty trap. This is not an easy task – nor is it one that can be helped by merely forking money at it. To teach someone to think is a lifelong process – and one must struggle against the fallacious thought patterns that have too often dominated the person’s life.
In Romans the Apostle wrote “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” – this is an admonition that should be taken to heart in many parts of our lives. The obvious first understanding comes from a spiritual perspective. God wants us to renew our way of thinking in a spiritual sense so that we can withstand the attacks of our spiritual enemy. But renewing our way of thinking will effect a change in our way of living in all areas.
Yes, it’s kind of fun to daydream about what one would do with a huge inheritance. But the real question is – what are we doing with what we already have? The Lord said “He who is faithful in little will be faithful in much.” Are we faithful with what we already have?
Thinking about what happened seven years ago…
It’s been a while since I’ve taken time to just write “something”… or anything, for that matter. 
I guess getting old is tough – it took me a whole month + to do it in. 
Today the topic is due to thoughts generated by the horrific occurrences of September 11, 2001. It is inevitable that our minds should turn to such thoughts on the anniversary of that event. Many are remembering “where I was” when they heard “the news”. Me? I was visiting Deane and Bijie in NE Colorado, getting ready to head out for a speaking date at a Bible college up in Nebraska. I walked upstairs and found them sitting with coffee cups in hand, watching the news. “One of the Twin Towers was hit by a plane!” they informed me. “One of the WHAT?” is the unspoken question the flashed in my brain. I’ve never held NY to be “the center of the universe” as some do, much less put much importance in most of her “landmarks”, so I’d little idea of what they were talking about.
They handed me a cup of coffee and we sat there watching the news unfold. I’d been there just a bit when we saw the second plane strike the second tower. At that point I knew we were at war and that the world would never be the same as it was before. Later that day as I headed north I stopped in most towns along the way to top off the gas tank and saw the prices steadily climbing into regions that would not be normal for several more years. The news kept drifting in via the radio. The President is somewhere unknown. The vice president is also hidden away. All air traffic is shut down over the entire nation. Another plane has hit the Pentagon. Another plane has crashed. The immensity of the event was slowly increasing in the national awareness – but I knew that our lesson was not learned.
That bit of knowledge was confirmed a few days later as I headed back home to Colombia. As I sat in the airport in Miami talking with an elderly couple I found out that my premonition was right. They had confiscated the EMBROIDERY NEEDLE and the 1/2″ SEWING SCISSORS of a white, protestant, grandmother missionary on her way back to her station on Colombia’s Caribbean coast (but ignored the more potentially lethal sharp steel ink pen in her husband’s shirt pocket) . Not only that, they were wanding women’s brassiers and acting as if EVERYONE was a potential terrorist hijacker – ignoring the commonality of ethnic and religious background of the perpetrators – an ethnicity and religion that is foreign to the typical US citizen and not too hard to spot. But as a nation we put our head in the sand and started to play the “I don’t really know who my enemy is” game.
Prior to September 11, 2001 I regularly carried my usual 3″ bladed pocket knife on board airplanes. At no point did I ever feel the urge to cut throats and crash the plane into a towering building, it was just a tool, an instrument for peeling oranges, opening letters, trimming string, cleaning fingernails and myriad other mundane daily tasks. But there is a mentality, Jeff Cooper – deceased – called it “hoplophobia” (the fear of instruments), that believes that inanimate objects cause violence and mayhem. I saw this yesterday as I read an article in a newspaper from Cali about the sport of Olympic Trap shooting. The “reporter” asked “don’t you ever get the feeling that your ‘wires may cross’ when you pick up a weapon?” (referring to “getting the urge” to simply shoot someone) This is the mentality that refuses to accept that some people have a deeply seated problem called sin – that it is the PERSON who makes the decision to do harm, not the inanimate object. As much as some people claim to be “enlightened” and “educated” and “modern” – they still hold a superstitious fear of “talismans” that supposedly by themselves can cause harm. The calm and rational analysis of this situation reveals that the item itself is incapable of doing ANYTHING without the intervention of some person. A knife or a gun or a baseball bat or a chair leg or any other potential weapon will merely lay there until some PERSON picks it up and uses it – for good or for bad. People are the problem, not objects. And learning to discern WHO is probably going to cause harm would do us a lot more good than a bunch of mindless knee jerk rules to prohibit objects.
It has been shown that the majority of crimes are committed by a minority of the criminals. When a house is burglarized or a woman or child is raped you can lay a fairly safe bet that the perpetrator is a prior offender. They may not have been caught before, but the odds are that they have done this crime before. And when it comes to the type of crime that was committed on September 11, 2001 there is yet another factor – that of religiously inspired hatred. It has been shown that there a number of similar atrocities that have been committed over the decades prior to September 11, 2001 that can be linked to people similar to those who committed the acts of terrorism against the United States on that date. They were all committed by Muslim men between 18 and 40 years of age. By pointing out this fact I’m not attempting to engender racial or religious bigotry or hatred, but rather raising a red flag. When you see bombing after bombing committed by the same demographic – does it make sense to stick your head in the sand and pretend that EVERYONE will do the same type of thing? Think back to 1941 to 1945. Who were the “Kamikaze”? They were not white protestant women. They were not italian catholic men. They were not even German Third Reich soldiers – they were Japanese soldiers trained and prepared for this type of attack. Interesting to note – they too were inspired by their religion to give their lives to take out others.
So, seven years later, we are now treating everyone as an enemy when they go through the airport “security system.” We are pretending that the arthritic grandmother from Racine Wisconsin is at least as big of a threat as the young Arab man with a one way ticket and a tourist visa. In fact, our rules and regulations FORBID screeners from noticing that someone is a muslim male and treating them to well deserved scrutiny. Many occurrences have shown that screeners “randomly” choose an obviously NON muslim to fondle while a group of possibly radical extremist muslims waltz through the “security” checkpoint – just to prove that we aren’t “profiling” and are “being fair”.
Along with the varied thoughts on airway travel and taking down buildings with planes come thoughts about the upcoming election. Many are saying “If so and so becomes president the world will end, our nation will be destroyed and all hope is lost!” (Both sides of the political turmoil claim this) But the truth of the matter is – no matter WHO becomes president they will have arrived at that position with the consent and assistance of the general populace. No matter which way the winds blow they will NOT arrive at the White House “from nowhere” nor from another planet – they will have arisen from amongst the entire nation. The problem is not “who’s President” or “who’s going to be President” but rather “who are the people who are choosing their candidates and ushering them into office?” I’m amazed at the general lack of godly characteristics of the majority of the candidates this time around. Is this really “the best” we can do as a nation? If so, we are indeed in deep trouble – because we have allowed our godly principles to sink into virtual oblivion. This year, once more, we will choose from amongst ourselves the person we feel best represents who we are as a nation. Our choice will reflect what we have become – for good or for ill. Our choice will NOT “signal the end of all we are” – it will merely reflect what we have become.
Our only true hope as a nation is to repent from the sin of turning away from our Creator and to turn back to His Paths and His Will in our daily lives. We can not live for the devil and expect God to bless us when we choose a leader. We can only expect our daily life and our daily choices as a nation to be reflected in the leader who is finally chosen to govern over us.
The big question is – what will this year’s election say about what we have become as a nation?
