I don’t feel like I am doing much of anything.

I asked some questions on Tuesday that hit close to home.  I believe that we all have problems fulfilling the great commission.  If we think we don’t we are probably deceiving ourselves.  I have been serving Jesus for seven years now and I have personally not had one person that I have asked actually come to my church.  I have not personally led anyone to accept Christ as Lord of their lives.  I can’t even convince my kids that God is worth serving.

With my limited ability I do my best to teach two classes a week at church.  I read the bible a lot, read all sorts of forums and blogs and try to interact with both Christian and non Christian to a degree.  I pray.  I will discuss God and the Kingdom with anybody at anytime.  I write these blog articles and try to promote it and my brother’s blogs also.  I pray before meals in restaurants and in hospitals while visiting family.  I try my best not to even make a promise that I am not sure I cannot keep, much less lie.  I am not ashamed of the gospel or my Savior in any way.

But is any of this in any way really going out and making disciples?  Is it still possible to even do that in the hustle and bustle of life in the good ole USA?  (Read Mikes comment on the previous post.)

To answer my own last two questions from Tuesday is inextricably tied into my own personal mission.  If I am not doing it then to some degree my church is not and if it is not then we are not seeing the growth we should.  We will knock the seeker sensitive churches, and rightly so in a lot of ways, but if they are growing by the thousands and our growth is in single digits, what is really so bad if only ten percent of their growth is real. Ten percent of thousands is much more than 100 percent of nothing or even ten.

We live in a world and at a time that is way too busy.  But Jesus did not say “go when you have the time.” He said leave it all and follow Him before we are told to go.  Have we and are we willing to strip down to the necessities and fulfill our mission?  Are we really ready to forego some traditions and styles if it will keep the few visitors we have long enough to start the discipleship program?  I just don’t know.

Shannon talks about relationships more than anyone I ever met before.  He has it right.  In his last comment on my site he brought up the thoughts about being the church instead of doing church.  This the biblical approach.  I think I had a post in the past also about this but you will have to search the archives.  Being the church is relational at the very core.  Going out to make disciples is relational.

So I do know that it starts with relationships.  We absolutely must start new ones and grow deeper in the relationships we have.  And since we must do everything on the go, we must figure out how to do relationships on the go.  How and what would that look like?  Here is some food for thought.

The most obvious is right here.  The internet.  Reach out with blogs and forums.  There are loads of free resources out there.  Satan definitely uses the internet in a number of ways but why can’t we use it to reach out all over the world and talk about the fact that Jesus is King.  That is the heart of the gospel.  Satan has no control except when we let him.

Look at all the ways we stay in touch with everybody, all the time.  Are you texting, tweeting, IMing, emailing, etc.?  Are any of those instant communications about Jesus’ love?  Could they be?  We must engage the communications mediums of the day and learn to use them effectively.

When you go in a store or a restaurant, do you greet the cashier or waitress or do you sort of just ignore them?  These are relationships even if they are only momentary and temporary.  Being a witness, the traditional understanding of what we are to be, is much more than just praying before that meal while eating out.  Being a witness is also relational.  Letting someone know that you notice them and appreciate them is one way to impact the world even if it seems so small.  But add them all up.

Does anybody even know their neighbors name anymore?  Do we care?  There are relationship opportunities all around us.  At the mailbox, at the gas pump, at the dry cleaners, at the ball parks.

We have to develop strategic approaches to create relationships in the world of today.

Going and making disciples in our busy world will not look like it did a hundred years ago.  Life is tremendously full and busy and time still passes by at the same pace it did thousands of years ago.  I, for one, wish I had more even though I have a lot at the moment.  We have to get creative in our methods of fulfilling our mission.  We cannot afford to just let it go as we have been.

And I must start, myself.

Love you all

Thanks to Shannon and Mike for much of this post.

Tags: blog, Christ, Christian, Church, great commission, King, Kingdom, Lie, Life, Love, mission, neighbor, Personal, Relationships, traditions, USA

Divide and conquer.  I am sure you have heard the term.  It is a term for a tactic that is used to defeat an enemy.  The concept is that if you can successfully cause a group of enemies to turn on each other it is easy to sweep in and conquer them.  It is the oldest battle tactic of all.  The enemy used it in the beginning to divide the created from the creator and it has been used ever since.  And very successfully.

One aspect of using this tactic successfully is to deceive your enemy in a way that they do not always see the division.  Until it is too late.  Our adversary has continued to use this tactic since that first epic division with great results.  There are many that have entered into an eternity without God because of it.

I am following a lot of discussions and situations in the body of Christ that are causing dissension, distrust, confusion, and anger between the participants.  It seems most are not even aware or concerned with the harm that is being done or how the arguments over things that are either not essential to the mission or just blatantly wrong are helping to divide us.  When I try to determine essentials as it concerns the Gospel I actually see it as rather simple.

Joh 3:16  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Mat 22:37-40  And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Mat 28:19  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

These three things are the essentials.  These three are all we really need to know to stay on mission.  The rest of the bible can be seen as instruction on understanding and learning to apply these three.

God loved us so much He was willing to become one of us in the person of Jesus so He could rescue us from the clutches of the enemy that we had allowed to enslave us, then He instructs us to love Him and each other, and finally to go and tell all about this great love of His and to show them how to spread it also.  So the real essential is the mission of spreading love.  And nothing else.

I see more dissension being sown than love being spread as I look at the body of Christ.  One of my main objections to God even existing for most of my life was that I saw very little love, hardly any sacrifice, and only token agreement within Christianity.  This is a historical and a present reality even now.  I am a part of the body now and still see the same things.

Luther, Calvin, Arminius; no agreement there.  Spurgeon, Moody, Wesley, Finney; no agreement there.  Piper, Wright, Pinnock, Conn, Spong; no agreement there.  Baptist, Episcopalian, Catholic, Pentecostal; no agreement there.  COG member and another COG member; no agreement there.  Not only is this sad, not only is this divisive, this is dangerous.  Hatred is being spread, intolerance is being observed and souls are being lost.  The mission is not being done because we are too busy telling the other how wrong they are.  We must wake up to the tactics of enemy that is walking among us.

The arguments and the view of essentials in my own denomination and even my own church are very disconcerting to me.  Tongues as initial evidence, alcohol consumption, missional or Pentecostal, and a misplacement of love are just a few areas where lines are being drawn and the enemy sits back laughing while watching us pound on each other.  I am sorry but I can’t even find the scripture where Jesus spoke in tongues, I can show you where He drank wine, His focus was wholly missional and relational, and He point blank told us who to love.  Take notice where our love is supposed to be applied.  It is to persons and not things.

Instead I am reading declarations of steadfast love for a denomination while those same advance no attitudes of love or outreach for the ones outside the Kingdom.  In fact, some of the things they are arguing against in their unyielding traditional, denominational defenses cause those we should be reaching from even giving us a chance to spread the love we are supposed to be spreading.

The Church of God is an institution, an organization, a denomination; and I do not love it.  I love the people in it.  I also love the people in the Assemblies of God, the Baptists, the Methodists, the Catholics, the Muslims, the Hindus, and the list goes on and on to include even the agnostics and atheists.

We have people that won’t accept anything but the style of preacher that they want, the music that they want to hear, the order and method of service they grew up with, and even the times the services must be done.  When are we going to wake up to the machinations of our enemy?  When are we going to realize the necessity of unity even if it means sacrifice?  When are we going to discern our own self-centeredness?  When are we going to apply our misplaced love appropriately?

If the lost in my community want to sing reggae, country spirituals and this will keep them in church long enough to become disciples, then shouldn’t we be willing to throw out the hymnals and praise choruses?  If the lost in my community want to sit on couches with the lights turned down a notch and have a spiritual discussion instead of a pulpit pounding, corn shucking, belt jerking, spittle spewing preacher yelling at them, then shouldn’t we be willing to give it a try?

Mat 28:19  Go therefore to church, sit on the pews, sing only what you like, keep a pastor and stand behind him only if he preaches to you and only if he does it the way you want him to, and do not in any way suffer the person that does not agree with you, in the name of (insert your own name). (Self-centered interpretation)

This is how we read this commandment today for the most part.  Isn’t it time we went to war, got back on mission, and at least tried to do what Jesus said?  It will take sacrifice.  But He sacrificed Himself so you could sit there on that pew and be wrong.

What if that lost person that won’t come to church because of your self-centered requirements is your grandchild?  Will you sacrifice then?

I love you all (and hope you can still love me)

Tags: atheist, Body of Christ, Calvin, catholics, Christianity, Church, Church of God, Creator, dissension, Enemy, eternal life, Eternity, Holy Spirit, Love, muslim, Pentecost, piper, Self

A couple of days ago I asked some questions about alcohol and whether the bible condemns all consumption of it as sin.  On the face of this it seems pretty certain that it is not.  Any casual reader of the stories of Jesus would recognize the fact that His first recorded miracle was turning water into wine.  And there are other direct references of His very own consumption of it.  Yet I have read and heard many arguments about it being sin.

There are those that will use all kind of pretty far out excuses to say that this is not really saying what we think.  The scripture is not saying what it seems to say.  Grape juice?  Really?  Are we to believe that God is just trying His best to confuse us?

There are those that, in the past and probably still today, say that it is even wrong for a Christian to serve or sell alcohol.  Again, I point to Christ’s first miracle.  If I should not serve or sell it then why in the world would Jesus turn water into it?  We seem to still have tremendous problems with self-righteousness.

These thoughts and questions are not really the reason I raised this question though.  For some very thoughtful, adult insights about the consumption argument in general, please read Tuesdays post and comments.  Everyone who responded made points I not only believe to be correct but I hold to them myself.  And I especially think that when you vow or commit to something as Heath and Jason did as ministers, then you should adhere to those commitments like they pointed out that they did.

If the organization you join says you have to stand on one foot for 30 seconds and face east at 8:00 am every third Tuesday and you agree, then you must do it whether it makes sense or not, if you are a person of integrity.  The health and danger issues are also valid reasons why not drinking makes sense, and the witness in a culture that definitely glorifies alcohol as the means to get drunk is not one the Kingdom really needs.  I don’t drink myself for some of these reasons.

As I stated though, I brought it all up for the same reason I have brought up other things recently.  If we spent as much time as some do on defending these obviously unbiblical beliefs such as drinking being sin, with as much zeal and commitment, in reaching out to those outside the Kingdom, we could really glorify God. Instead we waste tremendous amounts of time on our own legalistic views and arguments.

Alcohol is only one small part of a whole host of things that some Christians seem to want to focus on in spite of the fact that they have a mission to do.  Appearances are important as some believe when talking about drinking, but what about the appearance of condemnation we portray that is not even biblically justified.  When the lost of this world see us bickering and fighting and even bringing the charge of heresy against a minister that obviously is not heretical, what do they think?  I will tell you what they think because it was not that long ago that I thought it.  They think that there is no God.  And if there is He is not that big, not that great, and not that powerful because His whole family is so hypocritical and unloving of even each other.

We must reach out in love to a lost and dying world and to do that we have got to stop adding our own lists of sins to Gods.  That is what Jesus condemned about the Pharisees and the bible even warns us about adding to His word, but we just don’t seem to get it.  This world of lost souls is not concerned about our petty arguments and disagreements about alcohol, about divorce, about creation, about (dare I say it) initial evidence.  What this worlds lost souls are concerned about, whether they even know it or not, is the eternal destination of their very being.  And even if they are not concerned, we must be.

As I said on my post about creation recently, let’s stop all the arguing about pet doctrines and interpretations in front of the kids, so to speak, and wait until we get behind closed doors.

Love you all

Tags: alcohol, Appearance, Belief, Bible, consumption, Creation, Culture, God, Interpretation, Kingdom, Love, Righteousness, Self, Sin, witness

I just want to say Happy Valentines Day to you all and especially to Tammy.  I know I don’t always show it but she is the one person on this planet I can’t do without.

I hope all of you have someone as special in your life and if you do, let them know it.  Have a great day and spend some special time with your loved ones.

We can only learn to love by loving.
~ Iris Murdoch

Love you all

Tags: Life, Love, Tammy, Time, Valentine