Going Rogue

 "I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me; I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me..."  (Isaiah 65:1, ESV).  

There comes a time in our spiritual journey that we leave the bosom of the family and go on to maturity and search things out for ourselves, whether they are true and even work.  Our pilgrimage commences at this point of venturing out in faith as Abraham did to his call from God from Ur of the Chaldeans.  Children ultimately grow up and launch out into the world at large to fend for themselves voluntarily and gratefully, if not expectantly; likewise, we all need to test our wings and go on to find our ourselves spiritually speaking.  Just why are we here?  Where are we going?  What difference do I make?  What is my impact and do I matter?

These types of queries cannot be addressed when one is in a place of security without, but needs a bit of a challenge or push to find faith--if we never take this leap of faith, we will never find Christ as our personal Savior.  The church and family can do a lot to prepare us, but life is bigger than this, and to venture out on the day of independence; but woe is us if we are unprepared and find ourselves alone fighting the Anfectung or onslaught of Satan, who has targeted us in order to neutralize our faith--i.e., exposure to secular philosophy in academia.

There's nothing wrong with a bit of rebellion if one never loses track of who is ultimately in charge.  Keep your eyes on Jesus and wherever you go you will not be alone.  We are to question authority but recognize and respect it too. "When you pass through the rivers, I will be with you," says Isaiah 43:2.  We all need to fight our own battles or at least be prepared to and know that it comes with the territory.  When we are sure of our salvation, and this is a command, not just to satisfy idle curiosity, we can dare to be different, and most of all, dare to make a difference.  This implies we have a thick skin and know who we are, having strong faith that is not dependent on what others tell us, good or bad.  The strongest faith is in the Word of God and knowing our spiritual birth certificate, or favorite verse of assurance will keep us adrift or afloat during the flood.

The strong faith of the church father Athanasius was that, if the whole world was for Pelagius, he'd be contra mundum, or against the world!  We cannot base our assurance on what the people say and especially what our friends say, but must rely solely upon the Word as sola Scriptura or (the Scripture alone--one of the battle cries of the Reformation). Don't take anyone's word for it, but God's!  There comes a time when we are called to be a Daniel and stand alone, or take notice of the authorities and establishment and seek to reform it--there's always room for improvement, and even the church is meant to be semper reformanda or always in reformation.

No believer can survive alone without the aid of the church body--sheep need a shepherd, and some believers seem to forsake the assembly together of themselves (cf. Heb. 10:25) and go astray as a result.  We all need regular spiritual checkups and must get our spiritual batteries charged too by the body working and meeting together.  Our gifts are for the well being of the body, not just for our selfish or personal use.

Some believers are really out on a limb, so to speak, and know they are on dangerous or doubtful territory and need to be brought back into the fold--believers acting or living like goats jeopardize their testimony and this is not God's design.  They need to get connected and stay focused on Jesus, so as not to go their own way and do their own thing.  "All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way,..." says Isaiah 53:6, ESV. Christians are not meant to just look out for number one, but to meet the needs of the body--each others' needs.  We don't want to be like the Israelites in Judges 21:25, who had no king, and everyone "did what right in his own eyes."

The lesson is to get connected, to find your niche or spiritual gift, to strike some chord that will last to eternity, to invest your life in some divine mission that will outlast it, to resonate with those in your circle of friends or sphere of influence.  Church, as Christ's institution, is the vehicle and M.O. to propel to maturity and to exercise your gift, and this is where we get the motivation, fellowship, an opportunity to serve and to do its mission:  The Great Commission.  No one going rogue can do this, for this is a group activity and effort, and one must be in tune with the body and accountable to those within.

In the final analysis, don't ever go it alone without a contact person or group to stay in tune with.  Keep in touch, as if with your own flesh and blood, and remember, your church family is meant to be as close as a real family and to give you spiritual as well as family ties! There's no place for spiritual Lone Rangers or lone wolves in God's plan--get with the program, as they say! In sum, the safest place to be is UNDER AUTHORITY!   Soli Deo Gloria! 

THE BIBLE...

REVEALS THE MIND OF GOD, THE STATE OF MAN, THE WAY OF SALVATION, THE DOOM OF SINNERS, AND THE HAPPINESS OF BELIEVERS.   ITS DOCTRINES ARE HOLY, ITS PRECEPTS BINDING, ITS HISTORIES ARE TRUE, ITS DECISIONS ARE IMMUTABLE READ IT TO BE WISE, BELIEVE IT TO BE SAVED, AND PRACTICE IT TO BE HOLY.  IT CONTAINS LIGHT TO DIRECT YOU, FOOD TO SUPPORT YOU, AND COMFORT TO CHEER YOU.

IT IS THE TRAVELER'S MAP, THE PILGRIM'S STAFF, THE PILOT'S COMPASS, THE SOLDIER'S SWORD, AND THE CHRISTIAN'S CHARTER.  HERE. HEAVEN IS OPENED AND THE GATES OF HELL DISCLOSED.  CHRIST IS ITS GRAND SUBJECT, OUR GOOD IS ITS DESIGN, THE GLORY OF GOD ITS END.

IT SHOULD FILL YOUR MEMORY, RULE YOUR HEART, AND GUIDE YOUR FEET.  READ IT SLOWLY, FREQUENTLY, AND PRAYERFULLY.  IT IS GIVEN IN LIFE AND WILL BE OPENED IN THE JUDGMENT, AND WILL BE REMEMBERED FOREVER.  IT INVOLVES THE HIGHEST RESPONSIBILITY, WILL REWARD THE GREATEST LABOR, AND WILL CONDEMN ALL THOSE WHO TRIFLE WITH ITS SACRED CONTENTS.

OWNED, IT IS RICHES,; STUDIED, IT IS WISDOM; TRUSTED, IT IS SALVATION; LOVED, IT IS CHARACTER; AND OBEYED, IT IS POWER.  --AUTHOR UNKNOWN.

Throw In The Towel

"Therefore repent and turn back, that your sins may be wiped out so that seasons of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord"  (Acts 3:19, HCSB).

Some people need to have a mental collapse like King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel who became like a beast eating grass before he repented and came to his right mind after acknowledging God's sovereignty.  Sometimes we do need to come to an end of ourselves and be humbled by God before we are willing to eat our humble pie.  But repentance is more than being sorry, it is settling the score and making amends or wrongs right.  "Godly sorrow leads to repentance without regret," according to 2 Cor. 7:1.  Repentance is merely doing a 180 or an about-face.  Some see it as a U-turn.  Repentance involves turning from sin toward God, and it must be validated by fruit.  Acts 26:20 says to bring forth fruit worthy of repentance.

Salvation itself is seen as repentance or faith, depending on the angle you see.  Actually, it is through penitent faith or believing repentance.  They go hand in hand and are complementary; you can distinguish but not separate them.  We all must come clean in God's eyes and not try to justify ourselves or hide our sins.  We call a spade a spade and that means confessing them as God calls the shots.  In the process, we own up to our wrongdoing and throw ourselves on the mercy of God as a prerequisite to salvation.

 In the Old Testament, the world was often substituted with the word "return."  Job repented upon seeing God in Job 42:6, saying:  "I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes."  True repentance only comes from genuine saving faith, and genuine faith comes only with true repentance.  True repentance is a change from the inside out and is a radicalized shift of heart, mind, and will modification.

Repentance is a mandate or imperative and God commands all men everywhere to repent (cf. Acts 17:30) as a progressive or ongoing activity, as well as a one-time turning from sin to Christ.  We must renounce or repudiate sin in our lives and decide to follow Jesus and commit our lives to Him.  We cannot do it halfway but must be sincere in faith.  We don't just change our opinions, but the entire direction of our life.   Repentance is not "fire insurance" or a ticket out of hell, but complimentary to saving, genuine faith in Christ as Lord and Savior.  When we prove it by our subsequent deeds we are finally good to go!   Soli Deo Gloria!

Lukewarm Profession

 "I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the LORD; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart" (Jer. 24:7, NASB). 
 "And I will give you a new heart, ad a new spirit I will put within you.  And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules"  (Ezek. 36:26-27, ESV).

There is a vast difference between the reality of faith and the profession of faith.  Jesus said there would be many who will say on the Day of Judgment, "Lord, Lord...."  But He never knew them! They trusted in their works, not in Christ!   Lukewarm water has no medicinal or marketable value and is good for nothing:  Jesus compared this to the believers at the apostate church of Laodicea, whom He rebuked and charged with being lukewarm.

There is no such thing as a lukewarm Christian, but there are lukewarm believers, who profess but don't have a living, growing relationship with the living God.  Jesus knows where believers stand, for they have made a stand for Him and Jesus is able to keep them in the Father's hands securely.   But there are many in the church who are like Judas, who merely go through the motions and talk the talk like believers, but haven't had a change of heart to follow on to know Him.

Some Christians need revival and have gone astray like lost sheep, but they still have a permanent relationship with the Lord.  Jesus will never spew them out of His mouth, but they may need to get reacquainted with the Lord and to walk closer to Him.  We don't become Christians merely by asking Jesus to come into our hearts, but by penitent faith.  When you accuse someone of being lukewarm, you are denying that he is saved.

Being out of fellowship is not to be equated with being lukewarm, for then many would flirt with that danger repeatedly. Some need to grow up and learn the basics and how to walk in the Spirit, so that they will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.  If anyone loves the world, John says in 1 John 2:15, the love of the Father is not in him.  Even when a believer is out of fellowship, he never loses that love for Jesus deep down and knows something is not right.

The whole point of Christianity is that it's a relationship (or a walk) with Christ (not just a cliche) and this means progressing from a knowledge of a creed to a knowledge of a person!  You can be converted to the program and even be a do-gooder in the eyes of the church and still not be converted in the heart, though you profess the right dogma.  Those who are lukewarm are merely pretenders to the faith and a Christian is one who has a "sincere faith" and knows the Lord!

One needs to possess faith, not just profess it.  The "lukewarm" professor referred to in Revelation is not the same one that may be "halfhearted," and needs to get over spiritual complacency, laxity, or self-satisfaction and learn to grow in Christ; this is using two metaphors against each other and pitting one text against another. You cannot be a halfhearted or carnal Christian as a category of the believer--there's no such person, though they can be halfhearted or carnal at times.  He's not asking us to get more enthusiastic but to be filled with the Spirit as Christ lives in us.  There are no "lukewarm" genuine believers, such as referred to in Revelation, that are in danger of being spewed out of Christ's mouth or cast into hell--these are people who make a profession of faith but have no inward reality or relationship.

Nothing done in the Lord is in vain, and these "believers" are doing their works in the power of the flesh, not the Spirit.  Christ is merely comparing lukewarm water to that which is useless like the works done in the flesh.  He is not merely admonishing them to get more excited or put more zeal into their works, but to let Christ work through them as He lives in their hearts.  The Christian life is not an imitation--for the unbeliever can do that--but primarily inhabitation, whereby Christ lives in us and about the relinquished, surrendered, exchanged, and yielded life in Christ.  The backslidden Christian is never happy and this doesn't refer to him.

We tend to think that emotionalism or sentimentality is the key and those who are emotional have the edge, while stoics are somewhat retarded spiritually.  The litmus test of spirituality is not how we wear our feelings on our sleeves, nor our ecstasies, but our obedience.  Jesus said that if we love God we will obey Him. Samuel told Saul in 1 Sam. 15:22, NKJV:  "...Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams."  Bonhoeffer said, "Only he who believes is obedient; only he who is obedient believes." 

We are to love God, but the test of love is obedience.  You cannot judge believers by their emotional state; only God sees the heart and whether it's in the right place.  We are not saved by emotionalism, intellectualism, nor legalism--nothing we feel, think, nor do--but by an act of faith, which anyone can carry out.  Faith in Christ is what gratifies God: "Now without faith, it is impossible to please God..."  (Heb. 11:6, HCSB).

In sum, Christ would rather have relationships with those who don't know Him and are honest about it, and with those who do know Him, but not with those who pretend to know Him; for He doesn't know where they stand and whom they will serve.  As it says of those who refuse to stand up for the truth in Jeremiah 9:3, don't be neutral but confess Christ unashamedly.   Take a stand, stand up for Jesus, show your Christian colors--dare to be a Daniel, who stood alone!  Soli Deo Gloria!

The Newest Thing

Today's church is not really growing, in fact, it is in a state of decline, and what is happening is just a relocation of the saved from dying churches to ones tuned into the newest thing.  We refer to this as The Church Of What's Happening Now!  You may even find coffee bars selling lattes, and bookstores!   They may also be into self-promotion, marketing their ministry on the media and the church may be built upon one personality who has a reputation and this is akin to being a personality cult--especially if the pastor is "in charge"  of the one-man show.

Many churches are reverting to Catholicism in that the members don't search things out in a Berean style (cf. Acts 17:11), and accept the "authority" of the preacher much like the "cult of death" (i.e., The People's Temple) did to Jim Jones, who was said to speak the Word of God, so that you didn't even need a Bible in church anymore. What happened to the words of Martin Luther:  "I dissent, I disagree, I protest?"

Why do you think we have church history to study?  But to avoid the same mistakes and to build on the past, and also to keep that which is good (i.e., 1 Thess. 5:21, ESV, says, "[But] test everything, hold fast what is good").  A vibrant, living, and growing church have members who exercise their spiritual gifts and no one is self-sufficient or even thinks they don't need the body.  The Reformers said that the church was to be Semper reformanda, or always reforming (there's always room for improvement).  Our mindset never should alter from this focus of reformation.  We should never think we've arrived, but we are to preserve the better part.

The church has been known to turn a deaf ear to what's going on politically, and the converse, to get overly involved in partisanship.  The Bible is not a manual for government reform, but Christians should have a biblical worldview and not any secular one.  When you leave God out of the reckoning disaster is sure to follow suit.  Remember, the German church turned a deaf ear to Hitler and didn't stick up for right and morality while they had the chance.  The church is the salt and light of the nation and God uses it to dispense His grace.  You can say a lot of things about the Roman Catholic Church, but they are more involved in outreach and dispensing mercy and good deeds than any other church.  We are not just to minister to the spirit, but to the soul and body as well.  Christ has no hands but ours to reach out to a lost world.

In the modern church, we see many who are "holier-than-thou" and have forgotten what it's like to have a relationship with Jesus.  The only solution is to get into the Word and see themselves for who they are and repent.  Yes, repentance is not a one-time event, but progressive and we are to live in a state of repentance, just like we live in a state of faith.  Living by faith and walking by faith is the only way to grow in Christ.  We must keep our eyes on Jesus and to get reacquainted with Him on a personal basis.  Even seasoned believers can grow distant and become estranged.

That's why we all need the body to give us regular spiritual checkups and to stay in sync with Christ.   No one is an island, a lone wolf, spiritual Lone Ranger, or a rock in God's eyes--we are all members one of another.   Remember, one doesn't defect from Christ as a believer, but gradually slips away and before you know it, he's backslidden.  As an example, he doesn't rebel against the church, but misses on occasion and gradually comes to the conclusion he can get along without it.  "[Not] neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some..." (Heb. 10:25, ESV).

Today's mainstream Protestants are becoming apostate, buying into all the liberal worldview and agenda, even some are known as the Christian left, as opposed to the evangelical right.  The evangelicals are soon becoming outnumbered and few truly independent churches exist.  It is increasingly difficult to find a vibrant, growing fundamentalist church.  Members are transferring from one church to another, and the net effect is zero on the church at large.  Christendom is having little impact on the world because the world is having so much effect on the church.

This is where spiritual self-sufficiency or complacency gets a hold on a believer who falls away from fellowship--and this is precisely what Christ wants of us--us--i.e., to have fellowship with us.  But we must open the door--Christians are the ones who've opened the door!  There are believers who are out of fellowship, living in disobedience, but Jesus loves them and the proof of that is His discipline and rebuke. The verse in Revelation 3:20 primarily refers to unbelievers who need to repent and let Christ reign in their hearts, but it can be applied to believers to help them find the locus of their disillusionment or disenchantment with the church and with Christ.   Soli Deo Gloria!