Code Orange, another fake revival

Code Orange Revival from Elevation Church on Vimeo.

It is no wonder God has not sent a REAL Revival like He did for Davies, Edwards, Whitefield, Griffin, Alexander and Nettleton of the 1700-1800's. This video is modern Finneyism, modern Revivalism. It is nothing but a sham...false, man-made, man-manipulated, man-centered hype totally void of the Holy Spirit.

FIC Addressed by Shepherd's Conference 2011

Here's a free download from Shepherd's Conference where the Family Integrated Church movement was addressed last year. Last year when I was there, I had not even heard of this movement, but like always John MacArthur's church is on top of these things and shedding light on every fad, movement and new thing that captures pastor's attention.  http://www.shepherdsconference.org/media/details/?mediaID=5981

So, after having written a couple of posts on it, and then hearing this message, I was relieved to know that I came to some good conclusions that agree with another ministry that I have great respect for. 

Why the New Calvinism is not Revival

In our community group last night that I was leading, one of the young men in our church asked me if I considered the resurgence of what has been called "The New Calvinism" or the "Young Restless and Reformed (YRR)" Movement as a revival. That's a good question depending on what one means by revival. If revival simply means a resurgence, then sure, it is a resurgence - its finding new life all over the place in the modern church. However, if what we mean by reivival is along the lines of what happened in Enfield and Northampton, CT in the 1740's or the Fulton St. revival that took place in New York in 1857, then..no, it's absolutely not even close. The resurgence of Reformed Theology today is definitely a hopeful step in the right direction for the possibility of real, genuine, Holy Ghost outpouring of revival. Believe it or not, Revival is a Calvinistic doctrine; Arminianism is necessarily limited to “revivalism”.  Read your church history. Calvinism teaches that revival (as well as salvation) is a sovereign act of God. It cannot be worked up, but must be prayed down. Almost all revivals from the Protestant Reformation, the Puritan era, and the revivals of the early colonies were poured out among almost a purely Calvinistic church, for the exception of the Methodists.  It is only a totally God-dependent theology that can humble people to the point of begging God for it. Arminianism (and all its various forms) teaches that revival can be worked up by men's clever means and methods with the right conditions and atmosphere. Unfortunately, when there is any chatter of revival today, people automatically think of Charles Finney and D.L. Moody who were the most well known "revivalists" in the 1800's and nothing more because of their evangelistic efforts. From there, all kinds of strange and freak events such as the Toronto laughing revival and the Azusa St. Pentacostal revival have stolen the association and connotation of real revival in most people's minds. These are all Arminian and Palagean worldviews that dominate the idea of revival today in the church. So, a resurgence in Calvinism is hopeful, but it is not enough for us to experience real revival again today. Here's why the New Calvinism is not genuine revival:

1. So far as I can see, the "New Calvinism" is still very much in love with "Finneyism" or "Revivalism". They are content with using Arminian means of emotional manipulative methods in their worship and evangelism to grow their churches. God cannot and will not honor this because should He send revival, the man-centered methodology and the New Calvinist celebrity pastors will get all the glory for it. Look at the New Calvinists or the Young Restless and Reformed crowd...they are following after the Arminian methodology of theological Calvinists such as  Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler and James MacDonald. 

2. The second concern is that the YRR crowd is not even talking about Revival. I did find one small exception here, surprisingly. They probably don't even believe in it or care to pray for it. They are content with a rock concert that they call church full of people with some emotionalism and that is good enough. The focus is on church planting and evangelism through coalitions, church planting networks and all the other man-made means of organizing and growing Gods Kingdom. I'm all for doing those things...they are necessary, but they are no substitute for what God can do in a revival. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that God can do in five minutes what it has taken men 50 years to accomplish with all their crusades and evangelistic efforts. But we are content to keep on chopping away with Finney's blunt axe head!

3. Then there is the problem of indifference concerning personal holiness. Although it's encouraging to see so much interest in the Holiness of God coming from Ligonier Ministries, they are the only ones really talking about it. Even still, they don't do much to apply the doctrine of the Holiness of God to personal and practical holiness. To bring up anything about practical holiness will get you labeled as a legalist.  Even if I start giving examples of what I'm talking about, it would only get me dismissed as being a cultural fundamentalist, legalistic Pharisee, so I won't go there. John MacArthur brought it up not long ago concerning the place of drinking alcohol in the lives of these pastors and they all but crucified him for daring to touch one of their idols.

4. Prayer is hardly a concern. There's not much being talked about concerning the most essential element of revival. Very little is being written on prayer and there are absolutely no conferences of any kind where prayer is the main focus. I wrote a little bit of a lament about this a few weeks ago. Without earnest prayer, revival won't come because it only shows a lack of dependence, desperation for or faith in God for revival. 

The glimmers of hope for revival that I see in the New Calvinism does not come from the celebrity pastors fraternity.. IE John Piper,  Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll or even John MacArthur. The most faithful young Calvinist preacher that pulls no punches, fears nobody and says what needs to be said in true Jonathan Edwards fashion is Paul Washer. He IS talking about revival, he IS putting a huge emphasis on prayer and personal holiness unlike the pop-Calvinists that get all the attention at venues like the Elephant Room. And if anyone still thinks that Calvinists don't care about evangelism, Paul Washer proves them wrong there too. He heads up Heart Cry Missionary Society and is a real "soul winner" in the right sense of the term.

I really hope God does use the resurgence of Reformed Theology to usher in one more real awakening in our generation, but I have a hunch that it will be enjoyed by the no-names who take revival seriously.

FIC Film Identifies the Problem, offers Wrong Solution

I just watched a video that I found while researching the family integrated church movement. I watched it after writing the last post. This film gave me a clearer view of what this movement believes and what they are promoting. There are some big name guys who are behind this movement such as RC Sproul Jr., Voddie Baucham and Paul Washer whom I respect and admire. So, this movement should not be taken lightly. The film will definitely cause people who are not skilled at thinking critically to think twice about staying in their churches that have children's programs and youth groups. I am not the most skilled thinker out here on the blogosphere...I'd love to hear Bob Bixby's or Tom Pryde's thoughts on this video since they are much more skilled than I am. So, click on the image above and you can watch this film free on their website by signing up for their email newsletter, then come back and read the rest of this......

......No, I mean it! Go back and watch the video before reading the rest of this.....

Ah Shucks, you're gonna do what you want anyway, so here I go...

Where I agree and sympathize with the FIC movement:
1. Worldliness in the youth groups is a problem - At the beginning of the film, they go into some of the worst youth groups and youth ministry venues to show you Exhibit A  about what's wrong with Christian youth today. I actually thought it wasn't a fair analysis however, because most of the FIC churches are reformed and the crazy rock concert youth groups are not. He compares apples with oranges. Notwithstanding, I agree that these youth groups are low on substance and high on style and structure. If I was in one of those churches, I would pull my kid out too. But if the youth group is worldly and shallow, where do you think that comes from? You can trace the problem back to the pulpit (or stool nowadays) where the lead pastor sets the direction for the church. If the youth group is a mess, I guarantee that the adult church is equally sinful, if not more so!

2. Children's ministries are full of fun and games - In the last church that I served in as a lay person, I remember being frustrated with the children's ministry when I would hear them singing the most idiotic, stupid, mind numbing songs that had nothing to do with God. Puppet shows and all kinds of other things meant to entertain the kids who are accustomed to being entertained by Sponge Bob on TV are normal for children's ministries. I don't imagine that Martin Luther taught his children that way when he taught his catechism to them. I agree that children's ministries are a circus meant to keep the kids happy, so their parents will want to return to the church and give their money. After all, I was taught in Bible College, that if you can make the kids happy, that is the bait to catch the parents.

3. Irresponsible parents who are not involved in their children's lives - One of the biggest arguments in the film is that the current structure of Sunday School and Youth Groups gives the parent the unhealthy option to let the church take responsibility for feeding them spiritually so they don't have to do it. I have seen this first hand! Actually experienced it first hand! My dad will admit that this was his mentality while I was growing up. He would send me to church and Christian School so they could better instill the Christian faith in me than he could. He readily admits that was the wrong way of thinking now, but I have to ask myself...If I didn't have a Christian school or Sunday School at the church where I grew up, would I have turned out any better? Probably not, because the entire church was saturated with shallow doctrine and man-centered theology. Sitting in every service, disconnected from the youth group would not have been any better for me considering what was coming from the pulpit. This brings me to the diagnosis and solutions that they offer in the film that I find problematic...

Problems I have with the film's diagnosis and solutions:
1. The structure of age segregated classes is the fundamental problem - I think this is an absurd diagnosis. It  may aid the problem, but it is not fundamentally the problem. The kinds of churches that they caught on film with the crazy punk youth groups have a problem - age segregated classes are not it!!!  Their # 1 problem is their watered down theology and watered down, false gospel of easy believism that they are being taught regularly. The problem doesn't go back to the institution of the Sunday School, the problem goes back to the false gospel of Charles Finney that breeds every kind of rotten means to lure people to make an unregenerate decision to become a false convert! Most of these FIC churches are Reformed people and they should know this! But it's easier to trash something tangible and concrete (youth groups and age segregated classes) than it is to trash ideas in the abstract (Palagianism, Finneyism, Arminianism).  You can see with your own eyes if your church has a youth group, but if you're not theologically savvy, you can't see if your church is preaching Palagianism. Even though the film doesn't advocate for people to leave their churches if their churches have a youth group, they certainly leave that door wide open by introducing the Family Integrated Church as the other option. I see right through this as a divisive way to siphon off discontent people from these churches to make theirs grow. I have to give Paul Washer credit however for answering a guy who asked: "What should I do in my church if I do these things that I know are right? They'll kill me!" Washer answered: "Then Die."

2. That age segregated classes is part of a Satanic conspiratorial design starting with Plato and moving all the way through time to the modern educational system championed by John Dewey. I don't doubt that there may be a direct connection between Platonic philosophy and the Atheistic educational philosophy of the modern education system. But trying to make that connection to the church as if churches adopted evolutionary theory as a part of educating our kids is a stretch. Do you really think you're going to be able to put a 1rst Grade who is still learning his numbers in the same class with a 12th Grade Senior Calculus student? That's ridiculous. But this is what the FIC churches do when they make a third grader sit in a sermon where the pastor is doing an exegesis of scripture and the kid doesn't even have his vocabulary developed yet! That kid needs the milk of the Word dispensed to him in portions he can swallow! This is why we have the kids stay with us during the singing, offering, etc..to participate, and then dismiss them for teaching that is on a level they can understand. If you want to call that a pagan philosophy, then....I'll just bite my lip.

If age graded classes and youth groups are responsible for destroying families, and they have been the problem for over 200 years in the church, then why are we only now in this generation having a problem with kids leaving the faith in droves? I really think that attacking the form instead of the substance of the church is naive. This logic is the same as looking at the fracturing of the African American family in modern times and pointing back to the abolishment of slavery as the cause! You could argue that Black families were whole back then! They had a dad and mom in the home back in the Antebellum south! Logically, the FIC calling for the abolishment of youth groups is like calling for slavery again as a social structure to put Black families back together.

3. The historic timeline of educational philosophy that is shown in the film is THE leaven that must be purged out of the church. First of all, in that time line there were huge gaps like 1,700 year gaps!
This reminds me of the arguments by the KJV Only movement who string together a list of less than credible people who had their hands on the manuscript evidence and make the case that ALL Bibles translated from these texts are corrupt and the only alternative is the King James Bible (nevermind the corrupt people who had their hands in that manuscript family...but I digress.)

They portray the modern youth group culture as the only way that it can be done as opposed to the FIC model which is a false dichotomy and is ironically divisive!  Is it utterly impossible for parents to disciple their kids at home if their kid is in a Sunday School class for one hour a week? C'mon! Get real! If dads are not discipling their kids, it's not the youth ministry's fault, it's the fault of the father for not manning up. I agree that the blame can be shared with the church that does not teach the parent to do this. But that is a substance problem not a structure problem. You could hash everyone together in the same room every Sunday and still have ungodly homes if the substance being given is as weak as Willow Creek!

So, in conclusion...I am not against my friends and fellow pastors who want to structure their churches this way. I wouldn't break fellowship over it, but I just think that it is an unnecessary movement that only further fractures the church. Mark my words, the FIC churches will end up becoming their own kind of denomination and they will see themselves as the elite in Christianity and as soon as they do, their pride will kill whatever good they're trying to accomplish. I have seen this in the IFB movement and this kind of elitism is a real temptation for whatever group that thinks they have found the silver bullet.

Thoughts on the Family Integrated Church Movement

I have recently run into several ministries and people who come from churches that identify themselves as "Family Integrated Churches". Like everything else, I have an opinion about it and my blog is my outlet for expressing that opinion and educating others. So, first of all what is a FIC (Family Integrated Church)?  

According to one Family Integrated Site they state what they are: 

We believe that the biblical partnership between church and home, which is offered in what is commonly called the Family-Integrated Church model, affords a greater potential for a more effective implementation of the Great Commission ... The Church and the Home are to be in partnership with one another, and act in complementary roles to fulfill the Great Commission through both discipleship and evangelism.  

Well, what's wrong with that? Nothing. I agree totally. The family and the church are two divine institutions that God ordained that are inseparable from each other. The desires of those in this movement are good and I believe biblical. But when I read a statement like the one above, I have to ask...why do you need to start a movement, create a directory and wear a new label for something that church is supposed to be anyways?  I come from the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement where the churches in this movement wear the IFB label with pride. The FIC movement reminds me of the IFB movement and makes me cringe. Here's why... For those who identify themselves with the IFB movement, it's not enough to be Independent in your church's polity. It's not enough to believe in the Fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith and it's not enough to be a Baptist. There are other criterion that accompany this label that you must adhere to if you want to have IFB credibility and be recognized by other IFB churches and institutions. Such as: Hairstyles, cannot listen to or play CCM music, must only use a KJV Bible, must have loyalties to a Fundamentalist Bible college as well as many other things I could name. These distinctives have nothing to do with being Independent, Fundamental or Baptist, but to those in the movement, they're probably more important. 

What does this have to do with the FIC movement? Well, I see the same kinds of trappings and extra-biblical requirements that make the IFB movement so distinct. For example, what I hear from people who come from FIC churches is that there is no nursery, Sunday School classes, children's programs or youth groups. Not because they don't have the resources, but because they look down upon such programs and practices. All the kids sit in the entire service with their parents from beginning to end, even the ones who dirty their diaper and the folks sitting next to them have to smell it. Some other distinctions are that the families are adamantly against any kind of birth control and have a strictly "home-school only" philosophy of education. 

DISCLAIMER!  Let me make something clear - I am not against the kids sitting in church with dad and mom. I remember growing up most of my life sitting in church with dad and mom through the entire service. I even got saved in an adult service as a  four year old little child! I am not against home-schooling and I'm not against having as many kids as your body will allow you to crank out!  We have all those kinds of people in our church and their birth control convictions are between them and God! Their choices on how to educate their kids are between them and God. They will answer to Him about those choices. And if they choose to teach their kids to sit in the adult service from beginning to end, they are free to do that too. 

What rubs me the wrong way is that the FIC churches are making some of these practices as their primary distinctive identity. If you are in the FIC movement, just because you have all the kids in the service doesn't really mean you are accomplishing your stated purpose. A church with a youth group and an age divided Sunday School may be doing a better job at partnering with one another to act in complementary roles in fulfilling the Great Commission through both discipleship and evangelism. If you balk at that, then you're just as arrogant as the IFB church who thinks that nobody else is as pure as they are for all of their myriads of rules, standards and taboos! 

Like the IFB movement, I think that this new FIC movement is reactionary. They look at the typical shallowness of the evangelical seeker church model and realize that even with all of their programs and beautiful buildings, their families are just as fragmented, immoral and corrupt as the world. So, you're going to blame age-divided classes for this? That's about as naive as the IFB's blaming the new Bible versions for the moral decline in our country.  Reactionary movements eventually fizzle out and die as a passing fad or they morph and retard into a weird separate subculture within the greater body of Christ like an ingrown toenail. The obvious difficulties that I see in the FIC church are these:

1. By eliminating classes for kids, there will be an elitism that is created as a result. The poor parents who are not skilled enough to teach their two year old to sit still and listen to the preaching will eventually feel out of place and leave...or out of peer pressure, they will try to please everyone else by sternly treating their two-year-old like a little soldier in boot camp so the parents can appear as spiritually skilled in parenting like all the other good families. Before you know it, your ideal of little kids in the church service soon becomes a legalistic requirement and measure of spirituality. 

2. Eventually, the children who grow up in this environment may resent it, react against it and leave the FIC church in favor of the pragmatic, program-driven church which is what they were trying to avoid in the first place. Don't believe me? Just look at where most of the IFB kids end up after growing up in that environment. Either totally out of church, or in the worldly, shallow seeker churches. The majority of the ones who don't buy in to their philosophy end up swinging the pendulum to the extreme opposite side of what the IFB church and family were trying so hard to prevent.  

3. The next problem will be the inability to grow. These churches will stunt their own growth because they will only be able to grow by reaching other like-minded FIC people. Oh, they will say that they are all about evangelism, but when un-churched Joe and Jill show up with their infant, toddler, and 3rd grader, either they will have to cave into the pressure to buy in to the FIC cultural anomalies (as well as all the stuff in the Bible that's hard enough for people to swallow) or they will not stay in your church. 

4. In trying to integrate the family and the church together so closely in services and activities, there will be no place for singles to find a place to belong. One of the cultural distinctions that I see in FIC churches is that they are encouraged to have huge families. If you're a college aged kid walking into a church full of married people and little tykes, you might feel a little out of your element. All the pretty girls are already married and pregnant. The church with a college and carrier group will appeal to them. So, off they go and your FIC church won't get the chance to minister to them. 

5. This model will actually inhibit spiritual growth by taking away opportunities for others to develop and use their teaching skills. A lady who would usually teach the teenage girls in a Sunday School class will not get to use her gifts as well as she could with a Sunday School Class or some kind of ladies Bible study. 

Look, I sympathize with the FIC's disillusionment with the program driven churches. I personally think that the less programs a church has the better. We are not supposed to be a religious Wal-Mart for people to shop at. At the same time, a church that is striving to be Biblical can still do so with age-graded classes. There should be a balance. I encourage our parents who have kids that are 10 and up to stay and listen to the sermon. Kids are smarter than you think! They can understand an exposition of scripture if the pastor is doing his job correctly. Same for teenagers. They ought to be in the service with everyone else singing, taking the sacraments and listening to the sermon! There's no need for "teen church" but at the same time, there's nothing wrong with a youth group Sunday School class or for teens to get together with their own age group to play miniature golf either! 
Maybe the problem is not necessarily with these classes or groups, but rather the worldliness that is involved in them. Maybe the problem is the watered down easy believism that creates false converts, not youth groups. 

Appreciating your Wife's Many Emotions

Men are rational and women are emotional. I'm sure you've heard that one before. Recently I heard Ravi Zacharias say something that got me thinking concerning this. He said something like: 

"perhaps we as men are intimidated by women's emotional intelligence because they make the connection between thought and feeling much faster and more accurately than we do."

 So, instead of feeling superior to our wife's emotional responses, we ought to stop and ask ourselves: "what is it about this circumstance, or subject that is bringing out this emotion in her?" My wife and I had an intense discussion recently about a subject that I thought she was over-reacting to. After hearing Ravi say this, I reflected on my wife's reaction which exhibited a bit of frustration and fear and it began to make sense to me. Although the thing we were discussing was totally clear in my mind, and I have thought it out in detail well enough to win the argument from a logical standpoint; I had not been leading her or the others involved in the subject with the clearest direction. What was clear to me hasn't been made clear to everyone else. No wonder she expressed the emotion of fear. For me, fear is weakness. What really happened was that her fear exposed my weakness: Sub-par leadership!  Her emotions were acutely tuned to the information she was getting and they were like idiot lights on a dashboard telling me that there is something that I needed to pay attention to. It wasn't the thing that we were talking about necessarily, it was something deeper that I had to figure out. If I had been leading her to understand what I had already clearly thought through, and demonstrated it adequately, her emotional response would have been more confident rather than fearful. Maybe it's really true...women are smarter than men, and we're just too dumb to see it, or too proud to admit it. 

Prayerlesness, a pastor's achilles heel

If you want to witness first hand the state of corruption in modern American Christianity, just take a visit to your local Christian bookstore. The kinds of books available, the music, and the Christian trinkets are all an obvious sign of the superficiality and shallowness of the church. What is perhaps most telling of the pathetically weak state of the our spiritual strength is in the picture above. Out of all the thousands of books in a large Christian bookstore in San Jose, CA this is all you will find on the subject of prayer. If you look closely at the photo you will find that almost two of the five rows of books are written by the same author who is a woman. In fact, I thought it was very interesting that most the authors represented on this shelf are women: Stormie Omartian, Beth Moore, Beverly Lewis and a guy with a really hideous old woman's hair-do, Philip Yancey. Is this the best on prayer that American Evangelicalism can produce? Are there no men of prayer who have anything to say about it or is it that only women understand their need and dependence on God? Unfortunately, this is the sad reality - Christian leaders don't pray and they don't know how to pray! They don't need to pray since they have all the means available to them to grow their churches without any need of God's help. After all, most of Evangelicalism and even Fundamentalism is a product of Charles Finney's heretical Palagianism:

" Revivals were formerly regarded as miracles...For a long time it was suppsed by the Church that a revival was a miracle, an interposition of Divine power, with which they had nothing to do, and which they had no more agency in producing than they had in producing thunder or an earthquake. It is only within a few years that ministers generally have supposed revivals to be promoted, by the use of means designed and adapted specially to that object..." -Charles Finney, (from Lectures on Revivals of Religion)

Well, if we have no need for a miracle of God, then why would we need to pray so hard for it? There are plenty of means at our human disposal that are designed to produce what we once thought only God could do. So, walk around the other side of the book shelf and you will find rows and rows full of books about church growth and leadership by Rick Warren, Bill Hybles, John Maxwell and George Barna!

If you think my assessment is inaccurate, I would contend that it is not. Whenever I have a guest preacher  visit our church; or if I go out to lunch with a pastor; or if I am in the presence of a seasoned pastor from whom I can learn, I always ask him to teach me how I can improve my prayer life. I have not yet had one man give me any substantive advice on prayer except Steve Lawson who advised me to pray through the Scripture, especially the Psalms. What I usually hear from every other preacher is something like this:

(nervously squirming)
"Well, you know, that's not my strongest area. I pray here and there, in the car, while preparing sermons...uh, I wish I could say I had a better habit of prayer."

or 

"Ya, um....um...I am not that good at focusing my attention in a dedicated time of prayer, so I just kinda...you know...pray during the day and try to maintain a spirit of prayer."

Praying through out the day in spirit of prayer? That goes without saying!....ya right, how spiritual you try to sound! If you are one of these guys and you're reading this, I love you and want to sincerely rebuke you for dereliction of duty. The last time I checked, the Apostles stated that their main work in the church was the ministry of prayer and the word:

Acts 6:4 But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.

You are not supposed to just try and pray here and there when the Lord puts something on your heart, you need to give yourself continually to prayer! How many members of our churches go un-prayed for because their pastor is too lazy or careless to figure out how to make prayer one of his "strong areas"?!  These same guys somehow have the ability to concentrate when it comes to following their favorite football team. Prayer is supposed to be one of your strong areas, in fact, it's supposed to be your strongest area only to be matched by your skill in exegeting and preaching Scripture! Listen to the average sermon on any given church's website, and I guarantee that the preacher's prayer life is probably many times more pathetic than his little pep talk that he calls preaching.

Just the other day, I got together with some pastors who have a weekly prayer meeting and are a part of a larger network of churches that partner in mercy ministry. There were probably less than ten of us. Yet, at the annual free luncheon, somehow over a hundred of them come out of the wood work to get their free meal, but most of them never show up to the weekly prayer meetings. I appreciated one of the pastor's words of admonition by telling us that we are being hypocritical to talk about revival when we're not willing to pray for one hour a week with other pastors for it! He hit me too since I have not been as personally involved in that prayer meeting as I should. I could almost feel the Lord's holy frustration in his spirit:

Mark 14:37 Then He (Jesus) came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "Simon, are you sleeping? Could you not watch one hour?

None of us could ever claim that we pray as we ought, just like none of us could dare claim that we are as holy as we ought to be. But, there is such an apathy concerning prayer among pastors when there should at least be a deliberate, regular, exhausting exercise of prayer that at least makes an honest attempt to intercede for the membership and tap into the power of God.

Now, maybe the stone I've thrown has hit a dog who will bark at me and challenge my prayer life. Fair enough. In a nutshell, I'll share what I do and perhaps blog about it a little more so that I offer a solution instead of merely complaining about the problem - Everyday, the first thing I do is grab a cup of coffee, plug in my iPod and listen to Bach.  I take out my Bible, a prayer book called "The Valley of Vision" and a notebook. After a reading in scripture and in the prayer book, I then proceed to write out a personal letter to God for the day. I follow the structure of the Lord's Model prayer found in Matthew 6:5-15 to give me some structure and to submit myself to the rights of God while approaching Him with my requests. This has been what has worked for me. I understand that I am like many of you - getting on my knees beside my bed and wearing grooves in my wood floor with my knees like "Praying Hyde" - is not going to happen. I'll fall asleep or my mind will quickly wonder in every other direction. The pen and paper are like harnesses on my attention that lead me to real communication with God. Perhaps this doesn't work for you. Fine, whatever...find something that does work for you and give yourself continually to it! I try to ignore all phone calls and I try to care less about all the urgent business that usually needs to be done before noon. I'd rather neglect emails, letter writing, returning phone calls, errands and other necessary demands on my time than to neglect what God has called me to do. You wouldn't ever neglect preparing your sermons would you? Of course not, because scores of people will know without a doubt that you were derelict of duty on Sunday morning if you get up there unprepared. Of course, if you're a charlatan of a pastor, you could always download pre-made TV dinner sermons from here so you can do more important things like improve your golf swing. If you were to go through the week having only prayed 5-10 minutes, how is anyone going to know? They won't, and that's why it's so easy to neglect prayer. Nobody is watching you, nobody is demanding you to punch a clock, nobody is looking over your shoulder. But God watches you waste your time on the internet, Facebooking and Twittering your every bowel movement for the world to read about while the people you are called to oversee never get a single mention in prayer on their behalf by their pastor for weeks, months or years.

Anyway, why don't you stop trying to figure out the hottest new trends from Willow Creek and get on your face before God so that you can have real revival in your church instead of the fake revivalism that prayerless men are trying to produce!? I may never pastor a mega church or get invited to big conferences, but when my ministry is over, I want my church and my family to be able to have tens of  thousands of pages of my personal prayers as a testimony to my love for them and my time before the throne of God on their behalf!

Why Does Evil Exist?

Why does evil exist? If God is good, then why is evil permitted to exist?

There are only three conclusions to why God allowed evil to exist.

1. When God created the world, He was able to foresee the sin and evil, yet he created man as a free agent knowing evil was going to happen apart from His control. He would set a plan in motion that would potentially save the world, but held no guarantees. However, since He is all knowing, He knew that although he would not be able to save all, he would be able to save some, and from the beginning made the decision to create the world knowing the consequences that would come. In this, God still takes responsibility for evil since He is the initiator of creation with the full knowledge of all the atrocities that would follow. Although, God does not create evil, or cause it, he still ordains that it should eventually come into being, because he would have been able to stop it by never creating man. This view is the usual and most popular view of how God allowed evil to come into being. The problem with this theory is that it leaves God impotent against circumstances that would follow once He put things into motion. He would be able to influence the creation in His favor, but not ultimately have full control over all things. Many believe that this is what gets God off the hook: He’s not responsible, because He is not in control over it, He can’t look at it or touch it. But this view still makes God responsible, because He could have prevented it.

2. God did not know that evil would happen, and with the best of intentions, He created the world and all there is in it. He was aware of the possible risk, since he was going to make man a free agent, and went along with it hoping that it would turn out right. Eventually sin did occur and God had to adjust His plans to plan B: The cross. As time goes by and God gains more information about His creation and the choices they make, He is able to improve upon Himself and the choices He makes until He is able to make all things come to pass as He promised. This is called “Open-Theism”. It is a desperate attempt to make God innocent of all the evil that occurs in the world by limiting his sovereignty, immutability, omnipotence, and omniscience. Both of these views are attempts to rescue Christianity from God.

3. The Third and final answer to why evil is allowed to co-exist with a good God is illustrated for us in Romans 11. This chapter talks about the Jewish nation finding mercy in God’s sight, and then turning against God in unbelief. God then turns to the Gentiles and shows mercy on them and judgment on the Jews. His Grace is shown in 11:5, His goodness and wrath are shown in verse 22, His mercy is shown in verse 30, and the conclusion to the totality of His glory is seen as the chief end of this whole redemptive story in verses 33-35.

11:36 For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.

Therefore, we find that God not only allowed evil to come into being but ordained it to be. He was not the creator or the cause of the evil, but evil was created by disobedience and disloyalty first from Satan to the angels and from Adam to all men. The reason that evil must exist by necessity is for God to display His attributes and receive glory for them. This could not happen any other way. How can God display goodness without there being an evil to compare it to? How could God fully express His infinite goodness without infinite “badness” to contrast it?

Wrath

How else could God have displayed mercy without wrath? Love without hate? And how can He display wrath without an object worthy of holy wrath? What would one need to do to merit God’s wrath? To disobey and be disloyal to Him, If there be objects worthy of holy wrath, they must by necessity be only those things that are infinitely wicked for God to utterly detest them. They must be something that have fallen short of His glory. Do we know of any objects that match this description?

Mercy

That brings us to the attribute of His mercy. How could God ever manifest mercy if there be no object that is in need of it? What doth consist of an object to bear necessity of mercy? Well, it would need to be worthy of wrath because of its un-holiness and failure to meet the standard of God’s glory. Such objects would be and could only be qualified for need of mercy if they are guilty of having set themselves up for Divine wrath. For this reason, God could only express mercy to those deserving of His wrath and must need evil to accomplish this end.

Hate

The description of this is the same as wrath. God has a holy hatred for that which is unholy. How can God express that hatred if there be none that are unholy? Think of it like this: What good is it to close your eyes when you are already in a completely dark room? The shutting of your eyes to shut out light is vain if there be no light to shut out. Therefore, God hates all that is unholy, and evil must exist and be permitted to exercise its vices so that God’s full measure of holy wrath may be manifested against all that are worthy of it.

Love

Again, how can God express such deep, unconditional, passionate love to someone and transfer the knowledge of the intensity of his love if that object of love has no way to measure the immensity of that love? He will come expect that love to be normal and nothing of any special value since there is no understanding of hatred in contrast to love. The capacity of love to a thing is only measured by the hatred of the opposite of that thing. God the Father loves His Son, but only as much as He hates all that is completely opposite of what His Son is. That is why God detests, repudiates and utterly hates sin that he was willing to create a place of eternal damnation and fiery torture against the objects of his hate. By that, you can begin to understand the measure of His love. What is so amazing about our salvation, is that God would pour out wrath on the One He loves in order to save those Whom deserved his hatred and wrath because of His love for them. The only way they could be worthy of God’s love is if they could measure up to His glory and holiness. The only way that could be possible is if they were made holy by someone else who is holy and bear the wrath of the unholy upon Himself.

Righteousness

This takes us to God’s righteousness. To be righteous is to be perfect and complete in regards to an obligation. How can God prove his righteousness if there be no obligation for him to meet with full and perfect completion? For this reason, evil must exist to create un-holiness in men, so that they will be worthy of wrath, so that God may meet His own obligation to punish those worthy of His wrath. But it doesn’t end there. In God’s unsearchable wisdom, He puts Himself under obligation to save those who are under His wrath when He is under obligation to destroy them. How could God get Himself out of this impossible obligation that He has placed Himself under? That’s where the cross comes in, He sacrifices the Just for the unjust, the Worthy for the unworthy as a Divine substitution so that He must fulfill the obligation of loving, showing mercy and saving those vessels of wrath whom He has chosen to become vessels of His mercy.

Justice

This is similar to righteousness. God is perfectly just. How can He exercise justice if there be something that has no need of it? Justice is giving what is deserved to someone who has earned it. If there be only a God of infinite good and holiness, then who will give Him what he deserves? Glory Honor and Praise! There must be someone else who will give Him this glory honor and praise so that justice can be served to Him! Since He is the only One Who is worthy of this kind of justice, there would be nobody to serve Him with it. Therefore, God had to create something that would be able to give Him this glory. This was the purpose of creating man: so they may glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. God must exercise justice against the unjust if He is to fully manifest His holy justice, therefore, there needs be an object worthy of Divine judgment. For this reason also, evil must exist so that someone who may come short of His glory, may be deserving of His wrath because they have done what He hates, and they finally are worthy of His Divine justice.

Finally, when God has demonstrated His attributes to all Whom He has created and will have created all those who are the recipients of His love, mercy, wrath, righteousness and justice will acknowledge with their own mouths that God’s choice to serve them with the results of His attributes was good and just, and God will thereby receive the glory due to His name.

What to do when faced with the reality of Spiritual deadness

What do you do when you realize that you are spiritually cold toward God? Your answer reveals what you believe about the gospel. Here are your options:


1. Be Apathetic - "Oh well, I'll just have to wait for God to move me again.  Everyone grows at different levels ya know. I'm one of those spiritual snails...nuthin' I can do about  it. I'm just gonna let go and let God." 


2. Be a Legalist - "Uh oh, I'm losing it...I better re-double my efforts: pray more, read more, witness more, listen to more sermons, stop watching TV, attend church more, listen to more Christian music!" 


3. Be a Christian -  "Have mercy upon me, O God, According to Your lovingkindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, Blot out my transgressions.  Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin.  For I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is always before me.  Against You, You only, have I sinned, And done this evil in Your sight...  Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness...Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me... Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, ...then I will teach transgressors Your ways, And sinners shall be converted to You...O God, The God of my salvation, And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.  O Lord, open my lips, And my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart -- These, O God, You will not despise. ....Then You shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness...". Psalm 51:1-19


Notice the difference between Psalm 51 and the Legalist. There is witness, singing, personal sacrifice (IE the duties such as prayer, study, witness, separation etc...) but before you get to that, you see brokenness, sorrow and complete dependence on God for restoration and usefulness again. 


The apathetic person doesn't care because he's probably not saved. He apathetically took his ticket to heaven at an emotional altar call and when that wore off, he has to wait for another emotional experience to move him to do something "spiritual". This person doesn't believe or understand the gospel at all. He has no brokenness for his sin and has no delight in God. 


The legalistic person realizes there is a problem, but doesn't understand the gospel correctly. Either he is a person who is not saved or a saved person who has been taught wrong. This person thinks that sanctification is accomplished in a different manner than salvation. Salvation is by grace through faith, but sanctification is purely by his own works of righteousness in order to make him more holy. Of course, the Holy Spirit's work in this is slightly helpful too. 


Now, what  happens when a whole church or movement of churches is faced with this question: What does the church do when it realizes that they are spiritually cold toward God? Here is one pastor's advice to his church in this case. Which answer does he give? Option 1,2 or 3? I think it will be obvious enough. The answers are the same. Fundamentalist churches often recognize the need for revival and talk about it often. They want it so badly, that it's almost as if they can't bear to face the reality that even in their churches, there is also the same spiritual deadness as there is in the evangelical churches that they love to criticize. How do we respond to the spiritual deadness? Make our people re-double their efforts, coerce them to all the works that result from real heart-change hoping that it will eventually take? In this article, another pastor laments the lack of spiritual strength that he knows is in our churches by saying: 

"Why must we plead with God’s people to come to the house of the Lord? Why must invitations to church sound all too close to a sales pitch? “Will you please come to Sunday school? We have a special day planned!” I am certainly not opposed to planning special events and organizing campaigns in the ministry; yet we must realize how far removed we are from what the work of the ministry really is when we gauge the success of our service to the Lord by the number of church members who respond to our continuous begging and pleading to be on time to a service. Why must we plead with God’s people to come to the house of the Lord? It is a sad day when choir members must be urged to be faithful...It is a sad day when God’s people must be coerced into tithing in their New Testament local churches...It is a sad day when we preach prayer in church but do not practice it at home."

Yet, even though we know that there is a need for revival, too many of us are all too willing to manufacture a synthetic form of revival by turning to either modern or old fashioned church growth methods: mood music, coercive invitation methods, motivational preaching (as opposed to expositional preaching), and so on. Instead of fooling ourselves into thinking that God is moving among our man-made counterfeit revivals, we need to mourn over the spiritual condition, confess sin and beg God for a renewed spirit so that a real change can occur and God's name will be made known.  God isn't impressed with our efforts, only a contrite heart and a broken spirit will get His attention. 


Acts 3:19  "Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord" 

Still going door to door

Even though I wrote a post a few days ago that seems like I don't favor door to door evangelism, I still do it. In fact, in the past few weeks, I have been going out with one of our church members every day. It has been a joy to share the gospel with at least one person every day. We have been able to witness to Muslims, Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and totally un-churched people in the last few days. The approach we've been using that seems to be doing well is to tell the person at the door that we are there to find out if there is anything that we can pray for that they are concerned about. Most people are very skeptical when someone shows up at their door, but when I tell them them the church I'm from and then say:

"I'm just here to find out if there is anything that we can pray for you about, or if there is anything that concerns you about our community?"

Most, just look stunned with amazement that I'm not there to get something out of them and if they don't have anything they can think of, they thank me for the kind gesture and so far, 99% are willing to take a gospel tract. I carry a notebook to write down any requests and sometimes someone actually confesses that they or one of their loved ones is ill, lost a job or is in a difficult relationship.  Most would otherwise just say they're not interested and bid you leave. When a person seems open to conversation, it opens up great opportunity to share the gospel.  Every once in a while we come across another believer and we share some fellowship with them and often pray together. It's like finding a little oasis while traveling through the desert.

So here's the benefit of this approach:
1. I get fresh, first-hand contact with the people in my community
2. The church leaves the impression of a willingness to serve instead of looking for converts.
3. Sooner or later, I'm going to come across someone who is desperate at that moment who will recognize their need for Christ immediately.
4. It will set the pace for other's in the church to be actively witnessing to others.

What I don't intend to do is...
1. Create a means by which my members can artificially be "spiritual" by going "soul winning".
2. Use this method of evangelism as "the standard" that makes a person think they are superior to others who don't go door to door.
3. Free myself from the awareness of gospel sharing opportunities in every-day life because I have already checked off my evangelism requirement by having gone out door to door.