 I don’t want to be a Christian…
Maybe I need to explain this statement. Over the next three weeks I want to address three different categories of modern religious experience that we should not want to be. I do not want to imply that I believe that there are different kinds of Christians, but there are those who are labeled as “Christians” but the fruit of faithful obedience is lacking from those lives. None of us should want to be a fruitless Christian. I don’t want to be a casual Christian. The casual Christian is something that I simply do not understand. Christianity is built on the reality that there is a just, holy, sovereign, and loving God who has made everything and everyone for His own glory. Furthermore, human beings who have been created in His image have rebelled against His character and become sinners deserving of punishment with an infinite debt of transgression and iniquity. However, this God who is both just and gracious has chosen to save sinners through His own sacrifice to pay the penalty for their sin. The Father gave His Son the Lord Jesus Christ to pay the sin debt for every person who will believe. So it makes sense to me that a person who doesn’t believe this is true would go on about their life being unaffected by the wonder of what has been done, because to them it is but a fairytale or myth. The lost sinner still captive to their depravity and dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1) is as responsive to the things of God as a corpse at a rock concert. No matter how loud or exciting the entertainment is, this one is dead. Hearts of stone are hard by virtue of their being and so the sinner is hardened to the truth and beauty of the gospel. One final analogy: the blind person is unaffected by the transcendent beauty of both the mountains and beach because they can’t see the obvious glory. Also, it makes sense to me that someone who does believe this good news would be not only ready and willing, but compelled, to give their life to the purposes of glorifying and proclaiming this to the nations. When I read the accounts of heroes of the faith from former times I am amazed at the providence of God. However, the obedience of believers ought not to amaze us. The reason is that they believed. We should expect incredible sacrifice from people who truly believe in the loving and sovereign God described and communicated to us in the Scriptures. The efforts and exploits of these courageous saints are the natural consequences of real faith. The Apostles, the early church fathers, the Lollards, the reformers, the puritans, and the early leaders of the modern missionary movement are all examples of Christians who were not extremists but rather simply genuine believers. The only position that simply does not make sense is the one that seems to be the most common one expressed around me. The person who affirms that these things are true but seems to be unaffected in either passion or action. How can we be truly convinced of the amazing and miraculous accounts in the Bible and yet face our world in purely materialistic terms? How can we believe in the mercy, love, and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and yet engage our world with such indifference? How can we be filled with the Holy Spirit and experience the peace and joy of the Lord without that affecting our whole life? Casual is defined as something happening by chance or without definite or serious intention. So if our Christianity is casual, then it is just happenstance and definitely not serious. But no one could honestly read the Bible and come away believing that the faith in the sacred text could be described as casual. No, I don’t want to be a casual Christian.
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 Stamina
Last week, I reflected on the frantic pace of our modern lives. Living in the fast lane also means that everyday requires enormous amounts of energy. But it is not enough just to have intermittent bursts of dynamic output. We must continue to put out energy day after day. This reminds me of the Energizer battery commercials. The mascot electric bunny just keeps going and going and going because he has the right power source. The secret to having stamina over the long term is really about finding that pace that we talked about last week. But, over time that pace can and should increase as we get into shape. Stamina is not a weekend project, but rather, the result of incremental changes over the long term. This is not only true in regard to our bodies and our schedules but also our spiritual walk. Power I’m sure that most of us can point to mountain top spiritual experiences in our lives when God caused us to grow in dramatic ways almost overnight. However, the testimony of Scripture and the path of experience have taught me that spiritual growth and vitality come through daily discipline in the means of grace that God has given to us. Even the Lord Jesus told us to take up our cross daily (Luke 9:23). There is no path to experiencing and knowing the truly all powerful God apart from His prescribed means. So what are these means? First of course is that we need to avail ourselves of His communication to us. God has revealed Himself to us in the person of the Lord Jesus and we find this revelation in the Scriptures. That’s a long way of saying read and study your Bible. Second, we must be people of prayer. I know the busier and less energetic we feel makes us think that we do not have the time or strength to pray. But when we are busy and tired is when we most need to turn to God and cast our burdens on Him (1 Peter 5:7). Third, we need to go to church. In this one many means are bundled together. We need to hear the word of God explained and exposited for us. We also need to be exhorted and spurred on toward obedience. We also need to be encouraged and comforted by the loving relationships we have with our local church family. We also need to be nourished spiritually when eating the Lord’s Supper as well as physically breaking bread in fellowship with our brethren in the church. We need to hear testimonies and witness baptisms and experience the fullness of church life with God’s covenant people. Only when we are using God’s provide means can we expect God’s promised provision. Scripture, supplication, and saints are at the heart of God’s good gifts given to us to participate in the grace that we have in Jesus Christ. Rest God ultimately gives us rest! Rest is what God promised His people. This is not lounging around on the beach but rather the rest of the need to earn God’s favor. In the days of the Old Covenant what was proved conclusively is that fallen man cannot and will not achieve righteousness according to the law. But God has promised rest for everyone who will cease their pitiful working and trust solely in Jesus Christ as our only righteousness (Hebrews 4:1-13).  The Fast Lane
These days it is not uncommon for most of us to feel like our lives are moving at a frantic pace. This seems almost ironic coming from the pastor of a rural church in a small county in Arkansas, but gone are the days of slow country life. Please don’t misunderstand. I'm sure that the hustle and bustle of the big city is far worse than it is around these parts. However, the interconnectivity of our lives whether we are in downtown Manhattan or way out in Wyoming has meant that most of us are dealing with more information, decisions, and demands than ever before. Maybe this is just the inevitable march of progress that brings a quickening of our steps as we proceed through the adventurous future. It is rather ironic that most of the time saving and productivity improving technology have actually led us to have busier lives than our hard working and hard living ancestors. The Sprint The problem with going all out is that no one can sustain maximum effort forever. Sprinters clearly run faster than endurance runners but they could not keep that up for the duration of a marathon. Our modern age seems to have drawn us onto a hectic schedule that is difficult if not impossible to maintain over a lifetime. It is also possible that our insatiable appetite for youth has caused us to miss the natural and God ordained rhythms of life that come with different stages. For example, parents with young children and still growing families are in a different segment of life than parents of teenagers or even empty nesters. So often we seem to be trying to form all of society into a common mold where not everyone fits. This is particularly dangerous because many well intentioned believers, especially pastors, will burn out trying to keep up the pace. Or…. even more tragically, many Christians even pastors, may blow up their relationships, ministries, or local churches trying to prod more complacent believers into their olympic pace. The Long Way The reality is that often the better way is the longer way. I mean that it maybe to the advantage of both our current race (our earthly life) and the Kingdom of God for us to keep after the hard slow work of cultivating fallow ground, sowing good seed, and watering in faith knowing that in His season God will bring the growth (1 Corinthians 3:5-9). My point is that we need to find a pace that we can run at that matches our stamina so that we can stay in the race as we press on toward the goal of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Philippians 3:12-16). In this text Paul explains that this kind of forward progress is a mark of spiritual maturity among the servants of God. I do not mean that we are not supposed to be persuasive in evangelism or fervent in prayer or compassionate in our fellowship or passionate in our preaching or diligent in our studies. But I do mean that as we endeavor in all these important areas we must be mature and walking in the fruit of the Spirit in our lives (Galatians 5:22-24). Our lives must reflect love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control. Nothing that we do apart from the working of the Holy Spirit will ever be of any spiritual benefit to us or to Christ’s church. Keep Going So what now? We all need to find our pace and keep going. It’s not ok to sit it out and just wait for heaven. We must be actively seeking to draw near to the Lord. We must be about the work of seeking to bring the needed restoration, reformation, and revival that our local churches desperately need. But we must be ready because this usually won't happen because of one single passionate appeal or a single loving gesture or a single tactical change. Rather God does this work through us as we engage in clear consistent teaching over the course of years, faithful compassionate care over those same years and diligent devoted fellowship over those same years to bring about the fruit in its season.  Sheer Grace
Last week we discussed the limitations of our knowledge and the sheer grace of God who listens to us and answers our prayers. It really is amazing to fathom the kind of love and compassion which motivates the LORD to condescend to us for our good. We know that He has glorious eternal purposes in all the things that He is accomplishing in the universe but He chose to bless us in the course of those pursuits. Certainly we could imagine that God could have done things differently but the gifts and blessings as well as the trials and hardships that we are experiencing are for His glory but also our good. Got Questions? Because we are naturally inclined to want to learn, it causes us to be curious creatures. We therefore begin to formulate questions that need to be answered. In fact the whole discipline of scientific enquiry is really just about asking questions and seeking redundant answers. The biggest questions are those that pertain to the purpose and point of our lives and existence. These questions are about the metaphysical realities of ontology. Questions like “Who am I?”, “Where did we come from?”, and “‘where are we going?”. The point of these questions is greater than the relative answer for the individual because these philosophical realities extend out to everyone else. One of the problems that we have living in a time period infected with so much postmodern thinking is that many are accepting the premise that many different and even contradictory truth claims can be valid at the same time and in the same way. Got Truth? However, for most of us we want to know about the things that are affecting our lives. As we move away from the theoretical and back to the practical our concerns about politics, economics, and even religion are about what we need to think, believe, and do. It is at this point that we need to realize the centrality of having an epistemological standard. Epistemology is simply the study of how we know things. What I mean is that we need a source from which to get the truth and from which we can measure all other truth claims. Many people want to make this epistemological standard one’s own reasoning capabilities or one’s own experience or one’s own preferences. However these are all subjective standards, and as such, they cannot provide a sure and steady point for real knowledge. If we are going to have the ability to actually know anything then there must of necessity exist an external objective source of truth. The Source The necessary source is of course God and the epistemological standard is His revelation found in the 66 books comprising the canon of the Old and New Testaments. Just to be clear I am arguing that all true knowledge is dependent on the existence of God and His own revelation. Without Him no knowledge is even possible. The things that we call scientific facts belong to God who made the universe where those things are true. The things that we identify as inalienable rights belong to God who is the one with authority to grant those rights. The things that we know by nature to be universal moral truths belong to God who establishes justice as the display of His own righteousness. God has given us a standard for truth, knowledge, and wisdom in His Word. The Bible is the standard for what we can know to be true, because it has been given to us by God to reveal truth to us (Deuteronomy 29:29). God gave us the Bible to bless us, direct us, correct us, instruct us, warn us, and even as the means to save us, through the preaching of the biblical gospel about Jesus Christ and the application of this truth to our hearts by the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 3:14-17).  In The Know
Welcome back to the blog! I hope you have enjoyed the series of posts by my friend Cary Cox. The sovereignty of God is a deep subject, but also one of great importance for the practical way we live our lives. One of the things that probably makes understanding God’s sovereignty over all things is our own finite knowledge. We just don’t know everything. Of course, we have probably all met many people who think they know everything, but in reality even the most intelligent and educated among us are more ignorant than knowledgeable. What I mean is that we all know less than what we do know. It could be the inner sense of ignorance that causes us to have such an insatiable appetite for information. Most of us are compelled to learn new things and find out about the lastest news. This is easily provable by simply looking at how much news media and social media that most of us consume. In our day we even have terms for this phenomenon such as “fomo” meaning the fear of missing out. We want to be in the know. The Unknown At least a part of this is because we are often afraid of the unknown. One of the most common fears that human children have is a fear of the dark, why? Because we don’t know what could be lurking in that darkness. We struggle to know how we can face the future because of the uncertainty of what could happen tomorrow. Sometimes the questions are not just about the future but about right decisions in the present. We struggle to contemplate what we should do next about the important decisions in life. Oftentimes this traps us in a fog of expectations, possibilities, and assumptions. However, no amount of education or experience is going to equip us to anticipate every possible contingency. We cannot base our contentment, joy, or hope on our own knowledge but rather on the fact that we know the one who does know the future and has power over it. Who Knows In Psalm 116, the Psalmist confesses his love for God and states that this is because God has heard his prayers and his pleas for mercy. So often we are seeking peace through information when what we really need is confession. God hears us. That is an amazing sentence. The God who created the vast expanse of the universe hears you when you pray. That should be humbling to realize that God listens and takes note of what we bring to Him in our prayers. More than that God wants to hear His people pray. He even commands us to pray. When Jesus taught His disciples how to pray He assumed that they would pray simply because they were God’s people (Matt 6:5-14). The point I am making is simply that we can and should draw near to God in prayer. This should serve to elevate our love for God who listens to us. We should be amazed at the grace of God toward us even to hear and heed our prayer. Thankfully, our amazing God listens and answers our prayers. Let us not forget to praise God for His kindness in meeting our needs and answering our prayers.  Active Control
The Lord in Scripture credits himself with sovereign control over the heart of man, even a great king: the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, who turns it however he wills (Prov 21:1). The inspired book of wisdom goes on to teach us to acknowledge God’s control over every part of our lives: “The answer of the tongue is from the LORD” (16:1); “The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps” (v9); “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD” (v33). Far from leaving life to our choices, God happily takes credit for even the roll of the dice! Far from leaving the world to natural laws of nature, “You cause the grass to grow” (Ps 104:14)! His control stretches over the minute details of everything that happens! “The LORD has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all” (Ps 103:19). “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Ps 115:3). After God humbled the great king Nebuchadnezzar, making him think and eat like an animal, God let his reason return to him, and he cried out in praise to God, “for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘what have you done?’” (Dan 4:34-35). Full Control What about Satan? Though God allows him a measure of authority in the earth, Scripture demonstrates that God is sovereign over Satan and his demons. He is on the leash of God’s control, as Job demonstrates (Satan must ask permission, and is given limits over what he may do). In 1 Peter, the apostle writes that the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour; we are told to resist him (1 Pet 5:8-9). But earlier in the letter, Peter attributed this suffering of Christians, not to Satan, but to the will of God (“It is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil” (1 Pet 3:17), and “Let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good” (1 Pet 4:19)! God allows enemies against us, and calls us to fight them, according to his will, his plan, which will ultimately demonstrate God’s glory and serve for our eternal joy. What of Judas Iscariot? The Bible says that Satan entered into Judas as he carried out his plan (Luke 22:3-4), but all of Satan’s fury could only result in carrying out God’s will – “The Scripture had to be fulfilled…” (Acts 1:16). Satan demanded to have Peter, to sift him like wheat, but Jesus said “when” Peter turns again (not “if”), he must strengthen his brothers (Luke 22:31-32). Christ's Control As for Jesus, he shares the same essence, nature, and will of God the Father! Yes, he came healing sickness and disease, casting out demons, and doing mighty things, to demonstrate that the kingdom of God had broken into this world. But he did not bring the full consummation of his kingdom yet; that awaits his return, where every knee will bow, and all of his people will receive full healing in the glorification. In the meantime, the Lord disciplined his church in Corinth for their misuse of the Lord’s Supper by making them sick and killing some of them (1 Cor 11:30). And it is Jesus, the Lamb, in the Revelation – a NEW TESTAMENT book – who disciplines his church by throwing “that woman Jezebel,” a false prophetess leading the church astray by saying, “I will throw her onto a sickbed…and I will strike her children dead” (Rev 2:20, 22-23). It is Jesus who is breaking and opening the seals in heaven, unleashing death and destruction upon the earth! The people of earth understand this. They do not blame the devil, but call on the rocks to fall on them and hide them “from him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb” (Rev 6:16)! As for God’s will, Christian theologians have for centuries noticed that God’s will can be seen as a Revealed Will – what he makes known to us in Scripture (such as, “Do not murder”), and his Secret Will – which includes everything that happens (such as God’s desire for Jesus to be murdered for our salvation). Some have used different names for these wills, but Scripture clearly describes both. Our job is not to pry into God’s secret will, but to obey his revealed will. As we do that, we take encouragement that all that happens has been allowed to happen by our good and faithful God, who loves us in Christ, and has promised to make all things happen for our everlasting good and joy in him.  This is now the second week that we are considering the writing of our Bro Cary Cox about God's sovereignty especially in our suffering. It is important that we have this truth down before we go through our trials and hardships so that God's promises in our suffering can serve as an anchor for our souls.
Sovereignty in the Scriptures Again, consider the multitude of examples in Scripture of God not shying away from his sovereignty over bad things. In the flood, he drowned to death thousands of lives (“I will blot out man” Gen 6:5-7). Or the firstborn children in Egypt – God says “I will kill your firstborn” (Ex 4:22-23; 12:29). Or consider the conquest of Canaan. It was Israel who killed the men, women, and children who lived in the land. But God takes the credit – “I will give over all of them, slain, to Israel” (Josh 11:6), or “It was the Lord’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction” (Josh 11:20). Or when God killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night (2 Ki 19:32, 34-35). The selling of Joseph into slavery was a tremendous act of evil by his wicked brothers, but Joseph understood that, though they meant it for evil, “God meant it for good” (Gen 50:20). Good Intentions It doesn’t say that God used it for good, or turned it for good, or somehow made it work for good, but that God “meant it” for good. It was his purpose that they sin. God is able to be sovereign over sin without himself doing sin. This seems like a contradiction, but is not. We make real choices, and are responsible. But God is somehow working in and behind those choices, directing them according to his will. That’s just how good, wise, and powerful he is! God is sovereign over our real choices. An illustration of this is the crucifixion of Jesus. The greatest evil ever committed by man! To murder the very Son of God! The Jews made real choices to cry for Jesus’ death. Pilate made a real choice to hand him over to the cross. The soldiers made real choices to drive the nails. But the Bible makes it clear that it was God’s will to crush him (Isa 53:10). Acts 4:27-28 leaves nothing unclear: “for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus…both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” The apostle Peter speaks of our suffering according to “God’s will” (1 Pet 3:17). Paul told the Philippian believers that we should work out our own salvation (we are responsible), “for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 4:12-13). God works in us to will! !!!!!! James instructs us to leave all our decisions up to God’s will – don’t say you will do this or that, but say “if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:13-15). If God wills, we will live!  The next three weeks we will be working our way through Bro. Cary's treatment of the complex and glories truth that God is sovereign even over the bad, the ugly and the hard things in our lives. May we be blessed by the Lord as we are instructed from His word.
All Things Jesus said that not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of the Father (Matthew 10:29). God is sovereign over the death of every bird in the entire world. Was Jesus intending us to believe that this is the limit of his sovereignty? No, he was encouraging his disciples as he sent them out into a scary and dangerous world, that God is in control over all that happens, even, and especially, the dangerous and bad and deadly. Would we be more encouraged that the devil sometimes wins against God and is able to bring danger, sickness, and death to God’s people, with God wishing that he was able to somehow stop it? How could we sleep at night if that were the case? No, the encouragement is found in the Biblical truth that whatever happens has been decreed, sent, or allowed by God himself, who is good, kind, trustworthy, and for his people in Christ – so that we may trust that temporary sufferings serve our eternal joy in him! Therein is our hope! Jesus told his followers not to fear man, who can only kill the body; “But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:5). Here is Jesus, in the New Testament, telling us that God kills. More than that! He sends to hell. Our fear is not of the devil, but of the Lord. Our times are in His hands! God is not ashamed of His sovereignty over human suffering, pain, sickness, disease, danger, or death. He freely takes credit for it throughout the entire Bible. Though He uses secondary means, such as Satan, humans, or nature, He clearly and continually declares that He is in ultimate control of all that happens, directing it toward an end that is for our ultimate good in Him, and for His glory (though our limited understanding may not see how this is so; that’s why it is by faith). Yes, He is the God who “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph 1:5). All things! The Good & the Bad Things The Lord freely confesses to Moses that it is he who makes man “mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind” (Ex 4:11). He does not cower in shame when he declares, “I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal” (Deut 32:39, see also Isa 41:4; 43:10, 13, 25; 48:12; 51:12). Paul declares to the Greeks that it is God who “gives to mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). It is God who opened Sarah’s barren womb (Gen 21:1-2), but Scripture also says that it was God who had closed her womb in the first place (Gen 16:2)! He had a purpose when he closed her womb, and a purpose when he opened it. Naomi, when she lost her husband and sons, knew that it was from “the hand of the Lord” (Ruth 1:13). Job understood that, when he lost his children, was smitten with sores, and lost his possessions, that – even though Satan was the tool in God’s hand – it was the same Lord “who gave,” who had now “taken away” (Job 1:21). And Scripture makes it clear that Job was correct (“In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong” Job 1:22; and the book ends with the inspired Scriptures declaring that Job was comforted “for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him” 42:11). God does not owe us pleasure and life; the wages of sin is death. It is appointed unto man once to die, and this will many times happen through sickness and death, even for the believer. Otherwise, the early church Christians would still be walking around in good health! At least one or two of them? No, death came to all men through Adam’s sin (Rom 5:12, 18). Life and healing are ours in Christ, but, just as our full sanctification will not be realized until glorification in heaven, so will our healing not be complete until we receive our new body in glory.  Continued…
Last week I included this sentence in the blog on conviction. This kind of brokenness should result in us being more faithful in fellowship, more fervent in prayer, and more fearless in our evangelism. This week, I would like to go a little deeper on each one of these aspects and make some practical applications of what these concepts look like in real life. Faithful in Fellowship By speaking about fellowship, I am specifically talking about the relationships we have and cultivate in the local church. The Bible describes these relationships in covenantal terms. This means that these relationships have definition, privileges, and responsibilities. We are not called to loose and transient connections as Christians, but rather to deep bonds of love and commitment (Ephesians 4:1-6). Remember that in the Scripture we are instructed to weep and rejoice together (Romans 12:15). But we will only do that if we are truly connected to one another, loving, and caring for one another. Covenant relationships are not just about the definition; they also require investment. We must begin spending quality time together speaking with and focusing on one another. If the only time we spend together is the time when we are all focused on worshiping the Lord in song and scripture then we will not develop these relationships. We need to talk to each other and eat with each other and enjoy one another's company and comradery. This means that you need to linger when the service has ended and visit with others. This means that we need to have one another over to our homes for meals and games. This means that we need to attend the smaller gatherings of our church with less formality and more authenticity. By smaller gatherings, I am referring to Sunday school, Thousand Hills, and our Wednesday evening meeting. Of course, if none of those work for you then gather some brethren and create a group! The point is that we need each other! Fervent in Prayer In this we need to be more vulnerable in our times of corporate prayer. What I mean is that we must be willing to dispense with the meaningless language of vain repetition and cry out to God together. We must begin to confess to one another and pray for one another without even a hint of gossip or slander. I long for a day when our church is marked by times and seasons of passionate prayer. This kind of prayer should be fueled by our conviction that our sovereign God has already ordained the ends, and, by the means of our heartfelt prayers, He is going to save the lost, heal the sick, and build His church! Remember we are told by God that fervent prayer is effective! It really works (James 5:13-18)! We also need to plead with God in private prayer. I know that we are all different in the way that we process and express emotion but we must beg God to move among His people. When we read the Psalms we hear desperate pleas for God! I started to refer in the last sentence to God’s love or grace or protection, but the cry of the Psalmist is for God and thus it should be for us! Fearless in Evangelism Boldness is necessary in sharing the gospel. We know this because even the Apostles were in need of boldness (Ephesians 6:18b-20). This courage means that we must love people enough to put relationships in danger to proclaim the message of the gospel to those who see it as a message of judgment and condemnation. But if we truly love the people and not just ourselves we will tell them the truth. However, there is one kind of fear that should motivate us in evangelism and that is our fear for what will happen to the unbeliever. Paul states that because we know the fear of God we persuade men (2 Corinthians 5:11). We ought to persuade men that God’s wrath is coming on all the ungodly in retribution for all their ungodly deeds (Jude 15). We ought to persuade men of the kindness and love God has demonstrated toward them to lead them to repentance (Romans 2:4). Finally we ought to persuade them that hope and peace will only be found in and through the Lord Jesus Christ!  Integrity
We all have some way that we think or hope that other people see us. I don’t mean that we are all so fraudulent or disguised, only that we want to be perceived in a certain way. As a matter of fact, to truly live without any type of social inhibition would actually make a person a psychopath. What I’m talking about is the “you be you” philosophy. In Scripture, we are not told to aspire to just be ourselves, but rather, to be conformed into the image of Christ (Romans 8:29) and to be holy like God (1 Peter 1:14-16). However, who are we when no one else is around? Integrity is the level of honesty that we have with ourselves and with God. We need to be people who are not driven to an ethic of pragmatism that conforms to the shifting standards of culture. Rather our lives as believers must have foundations that are built on the bedrock of God’s revealed truth in the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ (Matthew 7:24-27). This kind of genine integrity is only the result of cultivating a biblical fear of the Lord. So long as we continue to presume upon God’s grace to excuse selfish and sinful lifestyles we cannot be people who have real fear of God. Without this kind of biblical fear we will be ignorant and foolish because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7). Passion But, for integrity to bring forth true conviction and not just mere opinion, there must be a genuine pathos. By using the term pathos, I mean that this must go beyond just the intellectual level to the emotions and the will. This kind of intense affection can be motivated positively or negatively. On the positive side we can be deeply moved by our love for others. We can develop a firm conviction based on a proven relationship that we have with someone. This is also true of the way we can have trust in the honesty of an individual. For instance, we have infinite evidence of the truthfulness of God and so we ought to have a conviction whereby we trust in the Lord and His promises regardless of our situation or circumstances (Hebrews 6:13-20). However, conviction can also be the product of deep brokenness. When we look around at the sin and godlessness of the world and even our own culture we ought to be moved to plead with God for mercy. Do we not believe that God will judge us? We ought to be broken over the rampant abuse, wickedness, pride, and evil that has become common in this evil generation. This kind of brokenness should result in us being more faithful in fellowship, more fervent in prayer, and more fearless in our evangelism. Unction As a preacher and teacher I am often asking God to grant me unction. This is the convergence of solid truth with power conviction. When we share the good news of Christ or the great truths of Scripture what should be evident to everyone is that we truly believe what we are saying. I have heard a story that a famous atheist was on his way to hear the great evangelist George Whitfield preach in the open air and someone asked him why he was going since he did not believe in Whitfield’s God. He responded that he was going to hear Whitfield because Whitfield believed in God! The point is simple: we must be utterly convinced of the truth and veracity of what God has revealed in the Bible if we are to be any earthly good to the heavenly goal! |