God desires that we live a full life in the fullness of His Spirit.  What follows from this point in most presentations of this reality is filled with so much falsehood that it has led people like me to be shy of speaking about the Holy Spirit.  Fullness of life in the Holy Spirit is framed either materially, physically or psychically so that walking in the Spirit or being filled with the Holy Spirit is made to look like your best life now as defined by you.  It is seen as either not getting sick or always getting healed when you do get sick.  As was announced in a full page advertisement in our local paper:  healing belongs to you.  There it was.  Right in front of me.  Heresy of the grossest sort portrayed in the language of the Spirit.  And those who would buy into that heresy would not be bothered by the picture of the woman pastor or elder neither of which is known in Scripture standing beside the slogan I guess to guarantee its truth.  All that the picture guaranteed was a double dose of the devilish displayed on the same page of the newspaper.  Not only is life in the fullness of the Spirit seen as physical but also portrayed as material.  We can use the Spirit like the advanced cash use of our credit card.  Ask and you will receive.  Pray with passion and the prosperity will follow.  Now any who believe this travesty of truth would at this point trash this entry and me because it is obvious to those of this ilk that I either do not have enough faith or that I have none at all.  In fact, some may be bothered that I am on the border of blasphemy here but the truth is biblically that I am on the border of nothing here.  I am standing in the center of what it means to live life to the full in the Holy Spirit and it has nothing to do with physical well being or material abundance, nor does it have to do with psychical wholeness.

Jesus was accused of being possessed of demons and dominated by the prince of demons (Mark 3 [+/-]Mark 3 [3:1]Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. [2]And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. [3]And he said to the man with the withered hand, "Come here." [4]And he said to them, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?" But they were silent. [5]And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. [6]The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. [7]Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, from Galilee and Judea [8]and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him. [9]And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him, [10]for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him. [11]And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, "You are the Son of God." [12]And he strictly ordered them not to make him known. [13]And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. [14]And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach [15]and have authority to cast out demons. [16]He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); [17]James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); [18]Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, [19]and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. [20]Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. [21]And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, "He is out of his mind." [22]And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, "He is possessed by Beelzebul," and "by the prince of demons he casts out the demons." [23]And he called them to him and said to them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan? [24]If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. [25]And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. [26]And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. [27]But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house. [28]"Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, [29]but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"-- [30]for they were saying, "He has an unclean spirit." [31]And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. [32]And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you." [33]And he answered them, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" [34]And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! [35]For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother." (ESV)
).  Why?  Because he challenged a religious system that was the resource for life for so many while at that time robbing them of what life really is.  The major issue for those who accused Jesus of being demonic was that His casting out demons was for the glory of God that led to people who lived for the praise of God and the pursuit of His purpose even when doing so was hard.  Remember the man in the cemetery from whom Jesus expelled demons and when this man wanted to go with Jesus which was the easy road to travel, Jesus sent him to his home where they had once mocked him to make known among his family and friends what Jesus had done.  This is what life in the Spirit is.  It is not our having what we want and desire to help us and to make us happy.  It is our being so saturated by God in His power that we proclaim in every place the Good News of Salvation.  We don’t quench the Spirit by channeling the fire of God in the way that is best for us but we let the fire of God burn and if it consumes us and others are converted then so be it.  We do not grieve the Spirit by using the Spirit for our own goodies but we bring delight to God by desiring that the Spirit so consume us that we be used of God to deliver the goodies to others.  This is real life in the Spirit.   And it is really hard and I guess that is why the only way to live this life is by the power of the Spirit.

This is now the third and what I hope will be the last installment of my reflections on how I believe the most religious but unrighteous generations among modern Americans is found among the builders (born prior to 1946) and the boomers, my generation (born between 1946-1964).  My focus for these reflections is remarkably narrow and thus could be way off base.  But this is very personal with me as what I am addressing has been brewing inside me since around 1974.  That is when I began to notice that my age group (I was 22 then) and my parent’s age group who would be the age group now from 65+ were remarkably religious but not really righteous as I was seeing that defined biblically.  And this conviction has not diminished at all in me over the years; there was a time when I hoped that it would, but it in fact has grown much stronger with the years.  I think that somehow in the providence of God it is exactly why on the one hand we see many in my age group and their children having left the church not to return.  I have a family member who for a long time has fought against God and so much of the fight generally has to do with what he saw in the church growing up and what he saw in me during my liberal years when I was so intensely religious but so far from being really right with God.  And I believe even more strongly that in God’s providence it is why so many twenty and thirty somethings among whom God is moving mightily reject the traditional church and her traditions because they have seen what that produced in their parents and grandparents and they want no part of it.  It is my prayer that their number and passion will grow greatly in the years ahead.  They are the only real sign of hope that I see for the church in America.

One more thing before I set before you the final five descriptors of what I have seen that have caused me to conclude that the boomers and buildres are very religious but not righteous:  I just finished listening during my workout this morning to a sermon by John Piper where he cited the thousands of traditional churches all over America that are closing and the large number of church plants that are taking place.  If we understand what God is up to, then we should not grieve over these church closings.  It is my conviction that many more thousands need to close and give their resources which in some cases are enormous to the causes of the Gospel in reaching the world.  And we must rejoice at the changing shape of the church where biblical fidelity is being married to doctrinal integrity and it is producing churches with a truly missional mindset.  But that is not happening in most of our traditional churches.  And the reason is the power base that is held in many of them by intensely religious builders and boomers.  In fact, I am convinced that the only traditional churches that are making a real Gospel impact any more are those where the power bases by whatever means have been broken and splintered so that those who once ruled according to their desires have all but lost their voice.  Now with all of that, let me turn to the final five:

Number five:  the privatization of the relationship with God.  Builders more than boomers but certainly among boomers as well see their relationship with God as a purely private matter.  That is not only detrimental; it is demonic.  A relationship with God is the result of the miracle of the grace of God being so manifest to us that our world is turned upside down and inside out.  The outcome is a passion to know God and to make Him known.  We could no more hold in the news of the new birth than we could the news of the birth of our first grandchild.  Nothing has hampered evangelism in so many communities and churches where I have served quite like this very perverted and entirely unbiblical notion about what a real relationship with God looks like.  It has led to people among both boomers and builders who have lived their entire adult lives thinking that they really are believers while never ever having told a single soul about what it means to be saved.  That reality speaks volumes about why the traditional church in America is and has been in trouble for a long, long time.

Number six:  the above view is often welded to a thorough misunderstanding of the precious doctrine of the priesthood of every and all believers.  This truth is a precious teaching of Scripture which simply means that we are responsible before God to communicate His truth to the world and to care for one another in the church.  We do not need a preacher to proclaim the Gospel to the world for us nor do we need a pastor to care for us.  We communicate the Gospel to the world and we care for one another in the church.  The pastor is called of God to oversee the flock of God with the help of other elders so that his priority purpose can be prayer and study so as to teach the depths of the declared Truth of God in the Bible.  But the priesthood of the believer as often understood and practiced by many builders and boomers has come to mean that we can interpret the Bible for ourselves so that it means whatever we want it to mean.  The outcome is that we go to church on Sunday to hear another take on a text that may or may not be different from our own.  I see and have seen this one for some time as one of the most atrocious developments in our SBC life.  It has produced so much perversion.  For example, and I can only site one; it has led us to believe and individual can be saved by saying a prayer and walking down an aisle regardless of whether there is evidence of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in that person becoming an active part of the life of a local church.  That is why we have SBC churches that will boast of 1,000 members while having under 200 in attendance on any given Sunday.  That is the tragedy of the triumph of heresy over truth.

Number seven:  This perversion of the priesthood of the believer led to the democritization of the church.  We in SBC life turned the church into a democratically governed body.  We would have monthly or quarterly business meetings or conferences in which members would come to discuss all matters of business and to vote.  Now this produced two major issues:  first, there is no biblical model for this way of being and doing church, but when you have privatized religion and a perversion of the doctrine of the priesthood, it is easy to make any model of managing a church fit.  Secondly, in many churches that I served we would have people come to and speak out in business meetings that never came to Sunday night worship and in some cases only came to church to participate in business meetings.  And in some cases they were powerful enough to sway the people toward their way of seeing in doing church which in now almost forty years of experience was never, ever what would have been the biblically right path.  And what is most horrific to me is that we still have churches that hold the Bible high as the inerrant word of God and still do Kingdom business this way!

Number eight:  Add to this democratic way of doing church a leadership body called deacons that saw themselves as a board of directors.  Seriously.  Men got to be deacons by being men of influence and power in the community.  Spiritual intergrity and bibilcal fidelity did not mean much if anything.  One of these men who served as a deacon in the fifties in sixties in one of the churches that I served told me after God had turned his life around that when he served as a deacon he never went to Sunday School or Sunday night church and only attended worship occasionally.  He drank at parties with the other deacons and the pastor of the church and saw his role on the “board” of the church in the same way that he saw it when he served on the “board” of the bank.  In his words, “the church was a business to me with its product being the production of good, decent, morally responsible people.”  How horrible is that?  And yet there are still builders and boomers that see the church this way.

Number nine:  Do not underestimate the radically wicked influence of racism among the builders and boomers.  Many who were baptized members into the church among both generations were also those fighting hard against integration.  Members of churches in the south were the leaders in the establishment of institutions both educationally and otherwise whose express purpose was to create environments where their kids would not be in the same classroom or on the same athletic fields as black people.  Now how odd is this mentality?  God is redeeming a people for himself from every tribe and tongue and people and nation and we come to the church house to sing to this great God and to say that we want to be involved with Him in His work and then Monday comes and we say, “not really; we want to be involved with God in His work of reaching anglos.”  The church I am in now is the only church I have ever served where I was not given in the early weeks a private audience with a few power boys who tole me what I was to do if a “black person” came forward on Sunday morning.  I have responded to them all the same way and I can assure you that it stuck in the craw of these men who from that moment forward looked for some other reason to come against me, terrified that I was going to seek to bring black people into “their church.”

Number ten:  Boomers and builders are very vocal in every church I have served.  They want what they want and they believe that they are entitled to it.  This entitlement mentality is tied to the reality that most of the grumbling and complaining I hear always comes from these age groups, far more now from builders than from boomers and some of  it in my current situation I understand fully. I do not agree with it and listen politely (most often) but I understand it.  They see the church they knew changing and in some ways radically.  And that is deliberate because the church they knew was rigorously religious which is exactly what I used to be.  And those churches for reasons ordained of God are dying and ought to.  So, I understand why those who are tied too much to what used to be and too little to Him alone who is would grumble and complain.  But underneath is this sense of the church belonging to them.

God revive Your church in our land.  And teach me I pray that is not my church or our church.  It is Your church.  Build Your church, Lord Jesus; that is your promise.  And I stand upon that promise.  Amen.

Here is my argument:  I believe that the generation born in America prior to 1946 is by far the most religious generation in modern American history but at the same time by far the most unrighteous as true righteousness is defined by the Word of God.  And I believe that my own generation known as the boomers born from 1946-1964 are not far behind them.  I see few signs of hope of a real revival of what the Puritans would have described as true religion among either of these age groups; I see encouraging signs of hope among twenty and thirty somethings all over this country.  This group that is radically redefining church wherever they are in abundance will either be given liberty by the traditional church or they will do as they should and leave the traditional church on her trash heap of traditional religion in order to form new forums for the focus of their very passionate faith.  But yet again I go astray from the purpose of this entry.  What I want to do in this entry and the next is give ten reasons for my belief that the builders generation and the boomer generation are by far the most religious while being at the same time by far the least truly righteous.

Before I list and comment on the ten reasons I need first to say that both these generations have made stellar contributions to society.  They taught us about the value of hard work and  the discipline of staying with a task during tough times.  They fought wars on foreign shores and defended the cause of liberty.  They built the infrastructure of so much of small town America from the east to the west coast and from north to south.  The builders made money and saved it to give their children (the boomers) a better life than they had known thus teaching us the value of one generation providing a foundation for the next generation.  And yet in far too many cases the operative pronoun in all of the above is “I” or “we.”  The focus is far too frequently on what we did and what we gave and what we produced that has yielded over time an entitlement mentality in every area of life, even in the church.  So that many builders and boomers look at the local church as their church so that what is to be done there is to be done their way and if they do not get their way they grumble and complain and if that doesn’t work they keep themselves and their money at home.  That may be an entrepreneurial way of expresing power but he shows the virtual absence of true piety.

Let me do one other thing here.  Let me frame my argument because my focus is frankly quite narrow.  Others will have to see is this applies to their contexts and thus enlarge the focus, but I am writing this assessment from the perspective of a Southern Baptist Pastor having served in county seat town First Baptist Churches for almost thirty years and the other nine years of pastoral ministry have been in rural churches in the South.  So, my purview for proclamation is very small.  This is simply what I have seen in these kinds of SBC churches for now almost forty years of ministry.  With that said, I will now give you five of the ten reasons for saying that the builder and boomer generations have not helped us in understanding what true religion really is.

Number One:  Most builders and boomers grew up in a time when a relationship with God was defined as a public profession of faith usually made some time before adolescence that was signified in walking down a church aisle to join the church and then having that decision sealed later by baptism.  Joining the church on the basis of a profession of faith quickly became in the early fifties the equivalent of being saved or of giving your life to Jesus.  It was during the late fifties and through the decade of the sixties that many in fact made this “decision.”  They were immediately counted as both children of God and church members.  And when they dropped out of church after tenth grade or dropped out altogether during the college years, nobody thought to conclude that by biblical standards these people who were by any standard the vast majority most likely had never been saved.  What this produced during this period by the adults who practiced this perversion and the young people who participated in it was a fully false view of both conversion and the Christian life.  It resulted in communities all over the south filled with pagan people who really, sincerely consider themselves to be saved because they joined the church and were baptized.

Number Two:  This false understanding of faith was tied to a false understanding of faithfulness.  Godliness as defined by the Bible was replaced by goodness as defined by the mores of the culture.  There was a certain list of “don’ts” and a certain list of “do’s.”  As one man put it to me recently, “we just wanted out kids to grow up to be good, moral people who would enter the world and make good, right decisions.”  It was for me one of the most clearly communicated cultural definitions of Christianity I had ever heard.  It came from a boomer brother.  He was serious.  But so are so many who see being good and doing good as the essence of what it means to be a Christian.  So, if you joined the church as a child and lived right as an adolescent and are not a good contributing member of the community with good moral values, it must mean that you are a Christian.  It does not mean that at all and some who read this may be shocked at this conclusion.  You are one who really needs to keep reading.

Number Three:  It was during this period that there emerged a programmatic way of measuring piety.  Now it is here that you would have to be a Nashville notched Southern Baptist in order to understand what I am about to say.  Nashville is headquarters for Southern Baptists.  It is to us what Rome is to the RCC.  That may push it over the line but not too far in the fifties and sixties!  All of our literature for both Sunday School and Baptist Training Union came out of Nashville and a Southern Baptist Church that did not use this literature was suspect of being charismatic! Southern Baptists were shaped by the programs produced out of Nashville so that a real Christian was one who went to Sunday School and Church on Sunday morning and if you wanted to be a really good Christian or you had been really bad and needed some extra points, you went to BTU (if you think that stands for British Thermal Units, you are probably a Methodist and need to repent any way!).  But the point is that participation mattered.  It was the way we stayed saved and the annual or bi-annual revival meeting is the way we got saved.  It was all carefully constructed and particularly programmed.

Number Four:  The liberalism that was ruining our seminaries was alive and well in the 1950’s so that most SBC churches that were of the FBC variety were getting these men as pastors who were liberals.  They told stories on Sunday morning.  They turned the inerrant truth of God into instructive material for a morally meaningful life.  They did not preach the depravity of man and the sovereignty of God; they preached rather that humans are basically good and God is all loving so that we just need our kids to join the church and do the right things, and they will be ok.  The parents liked it because it got their kids into heaven.  The kids liked it because they could be assured of going to heaven even though they were partying on Saturday night. It was the preaching of human goodness as the meaning of salvation and it gutted the Gospel and truncated the Truth of God.

Number Five:  Worship was reduced to a traditional routine of rather formal liturgy.  First Baptist Churches began to mimic the Methodists except for saying the creed and emulate the Episcopalians except for kissing the Bible.  The service began with a very formal prelude and ended with an equally formal postlude.  The choir no longer sang special music, but anthems.  And the prayer to begin the service was called the Invocation.  The sermon because it was preached for the most part by men who were not inerrantists was reduced to twenty minutes and no longer than thirty and the Bible was barely present.  This was the time when many people came to church on Sunday without a Bible.  It is no accident that when I make observations about this I find that the builders and the boomers are still the least likely to have Bibles with them on Sunday morning but the twenty and thirty somethings have them and they are open with highlighter lines and markings all over the place.  I can still tell today when I am dealing with the religious types when they get all exercised about the elements of worship and what we call them and particularly when their main focus is either how long I preach and when we “get out.”  I do not ever this kind of thing from the twenty and thirty somethings; either they are sinister gossips behind my back or they have a different perspective on what worship really is.

Well, that is one-half of the reasons that I see.  I could see it all wrongly.  I hope I do.  I’ll give you the other five next time.

I went to the first church I would serve as pastor in the Fall of 1970.  The church called be to be their interim pastor.  I had no idea what that meant.  What I knew was that God had called me to preach and the Word of God was like a raging fire in me.  It was coming out either on the streets or in the sanctuary, or both.  So I was delighted to go to this church that I still admire for putting up with me in those early years and sitting under some horrible preaching.  I am not being self-effacing and falsely humble; I read some of those sermons some years ago as I was tossing them in the dumpster.  That is just the truth.  Now I have told you that not to begin a blog chronicling what has now become almost forty years of ministry but to give you the long term perspective out of which this blog emerges.  If you were to ask me today or had you asked me after two years at that first church, “which generation of people does the most grumbling and complaining?” I would give you the same answer then and now.  In fact, the extent of the grumbling and complaining and the nature of it (it is never about Kingdom issues) caused me as a young preacher to go to an older preacher and complain to him, seeking his wisdom about how to respond to it.  I will never forget his words, “when you get to be their age, you will understand and you may be worse than they are.”  Well, the age of the group when I went to the older pastor were the forty plus people, what is known generationally as the builders or those people in our generation born prior to 1946.  I am now well into the age range of that age group and see and hear the same thing in 2010 that I heard in 1972 and I still do not understand.

Now let me say several things here that are important to hear.  First, the second group generationally that has most distressed me is my age group.  We are called boomers.  We were born according to the demographers between 1946 and 1964.  We were raised by the builders born prior to 1946.  We were raised with the mentality that our lives were going to be better than theirs and that we deserved it.  We were raised to think that the measure of measures for meaning in life was monetary and material prosperity fueled by a high quality education.  And we were raised to see these things both as what we deserved and as the declaration of blessing from on high so that we look at our “stuff” and say, “God has blessed us,” which is true and conclude, “we must belong to God,”  which is a horrible conclusion to make.  Boomers are so much into building our kingdoms that we have little time for His Kingdom except at the level of giving.  We give.  But it is hard to get boomers to do much beyond that because we have rested our salvation in our profession of faith and baptism and have failed to see that though we are saved by faith alone we are not saved by faith which is alone.  We do not really like James:  faith without works is dead, being alone.  Now I know that everything above is a generalization but it is a close characterization of many in my generation.  We passed this legacy of living on to our chidren born between 1965 and 1980 and you will have found many of them actively engaged in churches during their childhood and through about the tenth grade, pulling away when they got drivers license and not involved at all during and after college except when they “come home.”  Many boomers are not bothered too much by this reality since they have the same understaning of salvation for their children that we have for outselves.   I see this a lot.  I hear parents who are boomers speaking of their children who are living like pagans and saying, “well, I know that he or she is a Christian . . .”  I am never shocked because what the parent is saying about the child is what the parent believes about himself or herself.  Both have reduced a relationship to God to a religious ritual.

My hope in these days really does rest in the generations emerging after 1980.  I see and sense a lot of hope in these young men and young women.  They do not want anything as it used to be.  They see the good looking shell of outward appearance but the emptiness inside of that shell that they see in so many lives is disgusting and distressing.  For example, they see traditional church and its forms and routines and then watch the lives of those who grew up in the time in which church was done by ritual and routine, and they do not see real and radical life change.  They see people who are concerned about things that do not matter:  what a person wears to church, what kind of music is sung in church, where something comes or does not come in the order of worship. whether there is mistake in the bulletin or the newsletter, whether the room is too cold or too hot, and I could on and on ad infinitum ad nauseum.  They see this kind of thing and they are not only repulsed by it, as they should be and as I am as well, they want so much more.  I see a hunger and thirst for Jesus among them that I have not seen in my entire ministry.  It is what stirs me and thrills me in our day.  For example, for every builder that wants to tell me how far past twelve I preached are two or more from this younger generation who have no concern about those kinds of meaningless matters.  They want more meat from the Word of God.  They want to drink from the fountain that quenches and never runs dry.

But here is my question:  what happened among the builders and the boomers to produce the kinds of people that populate so many of our churches?  What was going on to create this condition?  Now I want it understood that some of the most godly men and women I know are from both these generations.  I am blessed by them.  But I am also deeply concerned that we pay attention to the blowing wind of the Holy Spirit across the landscape of the life of the church in our day and it is not coming from either my generation or the one beyond me.  That means that neither of these generations can define who the church is or what the church is to be.  Fresh wind and fresh fire from the Spirit of God is falling on the twenty somethings and thirty somethings all over the world and we had better listen.  Can that wind and fire fall on my generation and the builders?  Absolutely.  But we must know what created the conditions in which we have found ourselves for far too long and we must be willing to repent of our pride that for far too long has held the church captive to our cultural concerns.   And I will speak to that in the next blog.

One of the most fulfilling and yet frustrating realities about expository preaching is that no text is ever treated totally and thoroughly.  Such a treatment would require either the choice of smaller units of Scripture for each Sunday or much longer sermons.  The former would mean far too much time spent in any one book of Scripture; the latter would mean far too few people participating in the worship time during which we are doing a thorough examination of the text.  We live in a day and a culture when only a few churches are really serious about Scripture and thus would not tolerate longer than 45 minute sermons. This blog is not about how revealing it is that we can watch a television program for an hour and find it far too much to listen to a 45 minute sermon.  It is about the good food that is often left on the table at the end of every examination of a text.  For example, the goal of the sermon this Sunday was to set before us the reality that we are all born with basic desires.  These desires emerge out of our flesh so that means that these normal desires are naturally sinful since we seek to gratify them on our own terms and in our own way.  We are sinners by nature and by choice so that the way we seek satisfaction of these basic desires is sinful.  Paul calls them “the works of the flesh” since we invest time and energy (the basic meaning of “works”) in the satisfaction of these desires.

We listed four of these basic desires this past Sunday:  relational intimacy, religious stability, feeling good about ourselves or self-esteem and freedom.  These are four desires with which we are born.  We want these desires satisfied.  But since we are sinners, we seek the satisfaction of these desires in the ways of the flesh and are always left either unsatisfied or dissatisfied.  For example, we seek relational intimacy in members of the opposite sex and we seek that intimacy in ways that are sexual.  Paul calls it “porneia” or sexual relationships outside of marriage.  The word that he uses covers all sexual activity outside of marriage because all sexual outside of marriage is sinful.  It is an affront to God.  So the boy who sleeps with his girl is not lavishing her with love; he is lusting after her and motivated by the need for relational intimacy.  He goes on the date to go to bed with her thinking that it is what he needs.  He succeeds to get her into bed and is left fully unsatisfied.  This is how the flesh works and this is what is meant by the works of the flesh.  The works of the flesh are simply our pursuing natural desires in ways that are directed by our feelings.

Now it is right here that we come face to face with a fundamental issue in our culture:  we are taught that pursuing our desires as determined by what we feel that we need to be happy is a good thing.  I mean, we have developed a whole branch of “science” and an entire educational system based on this belief.  The social science of psychology both in its base form (psychology) and in its higher expressions (psychotherapy and psychiatry) are built on the baseline of our knowing what we want and need.  When these needs and wants are frustrated, we are left unfulfilled.  And our frustrated and unfulfilled states take us toward all kinds of bipolar disorders that when rightly diagnosed can provide for us the necessary medication to help us to feel better about ourselves so that we can get back at the pursuit of what we sense that we need and want.  In biblical terms it translates something like this:  we are born sinners whose basic desire to feel good about ourselves which we do in the pursuit of our sinful desires.  When we cannot have what we want or when we get what we want and still do not feel good about oursleves, that is God’s way of showing us that something is wrong with us or that we are sinners and the help we need is not found within us or around us but beyond us as it comes from God by His grace and through His Son.  Does anyone else see the dilemma here?  Follow the flow of our system and you will be assured that your problem is not sin and the solution is not God; follow the flow of Scripture and you will be assured that your problem is sin and the only solution is God.  Does anyone else see that what we have in our churches is people who are trying to swim in both rivers at the same time?  The end result is that we look to the therapeutic and medical community to give us what we really need and we look to God as the clean-up hitter whom we need only when the other does not work and whom we surely need when death is coming and we want to go to heaven.  My fear is that this kind of view creates for us the kind of God that is no help for us at the door of death because this kind of God is not God who through His Son has defeated the power of sin and death and gives to us daily in His Spirit what we need to live godly lives in Christ Jesus, lives which are not at all about us having what we need and want to feel good about ourselves but lives that are consumed by Him so that we crucify ourselves so as to live for others which really makes us feel good about ourselves.  Most of us don’t need shrinks; we need contact from a sovereign savior.

Can we talk about Sunday?  I am writing this entry on a Sunday afternoon after a marvelous Sunday morning.  We do a little differently here on Sunday than many contemporary churches.  One of those differences is that we still believe that Sunday doesn’t end right after the middle of the day.  We still have a full worship and teaching time on Sunday night.  We simply believe that the Lord’s Day is the Lord’s Day in its entirety.  It is not biblical truth that has led us to redefine the Lord’s Day in terms of what it is and what we do with it; it is our contemporary culture and our consumption with the need for leisure time that had led us to this redefinition.  So, one thing that we do differently is that we do have Sunday Night Church.  And people come.  Lots of people come.  They understand what the Lord’s Day is and when it begins and ends.  Another thing that we do with the Lord’s Day is that we treat the four fifth Sundays that come each year in a different way than we do the other Sundays.

We only have one morning service on Sunday morning and then on Sunday night we observe family night.  Family night is simply a time when we cease from all other activities that normally go on on Sunday night and gather as one large family.  We sing, we pray, we give praise to God and we eat; usually in that order.  It is a time to testify to the goodness and grace of God in our lives.  I am writing these words on a fifth Sunday anticipating our Family Night tonight.  We have just had a wonderful time in the morning with full house and full service followed by a wonderful meal.  But my point in all of these words until right now will be made right here:  we did not begin this morning until 9:45 with Sunday School and we were done with the morning service around 12:20.  Earlier this morning as I had already completed at least a half days’ worth of work before 9:45 rolled around I began to ponder what people must be thinking when they think that because they came to Sunday School and then endured a worship service that went past twelve that they must have delighted God on His Day.  Some would think that they have demonstrated their devotion to God through such an investment of their lives.  Some are sure that it is a sign of their love for God and their desire to deliver Him praise.  Come now!  How could we wade around in such shallow water and think we are swimming?  How could we mount such a mole hill and consider it a mountain?  Seriously?

God gave us one whole twenty four hour day in seven for the purpose of rest from ordinary labor and for the worship of His great Name.  It is to be set aside in its entirety for “religious exercises” and I mean that phrase in the Puritan sense of the practice of what is proper to give good and right praise to God.  The time in which we are to engage in religious exercises is the entirety of the day.  It would look something like this:  the early morning would be spent in private and family prayer in preparation for the public worship of God.  The bulk of the morning would be spent in public worship followed by a fellowship with food in which the conversation would be salted by reflections on how to live out the preached word which would then be followed by a time of rest and then the Lord’s Day would end with the public worship of God followed by retirement to our homes where we would gather the family to reflect on the day and give thanks and praise to God for the good and right gift of this day.  How does that sound to you?  Be honest now.  You see, I believe how we see the Lord’s Day and what we do with it is very good barometer of the true marrow in the bones of who we really are. I hope our Sundays here say that we love God, His glory and His Word more than we love anything else.  And I hope that we say that we are glad to gather to give glory to His Name, even saying that we do not do it for long enough time in the morning and the evening.  What a day Sunday is!  What does your Sunday say?

I do believe that the doctrine of Scripture to which we are all the most resistant is the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of God in all things.  I remember when this now to me very precious and sacred truth hit me squarely in the heart, I did not like it.  I wanted to prove that it was not true.  My argument was simple:  if God is truly sovereign in all things then I am not sovereign in anything.  I make choices that are designed to have an impact on the lives of people and produce a positive outcome but if God is sovereign even those choices are directed, even governed by His hand.  Such teaching was offensive to me.  I know now that it was offensive to me because I liked being and playing “god.”  I wanted to think that God needed me as a part of the work of His Kingdom and must be delighted that I had chosen to join Him in His work.  It was overwhelming at first for me to recognize that God needs no one or nothing.  God is completely perfect in and of Himself and it is the greatness of His grace alone that invites me into a relationship with Him on the basis of the death and resurrection of His Son.  Now if this doctrine scared me, what am I suppose it does to those who are attracted to churches that preach the full counsel of God but are wanting to reach people who are not attracted to the traditional church?

I have been able to learn something recently about what happens in these kinds of churches.  One of the churches that I really love where one of my heroes preaches the unsearchable riches of Christ has in recent years made a concerted effort to be more inviting to seekers.  The church has adjusted the forms of its worship as well as expanding its outreach to various campuses.  Thousands have responded being attracted by the power of the music and the penetrating perceptions of the preacher, but now some are beginning to waver.  Should we stay?  Should we walk away?  And it would not surprise you that the issue that is causing the stir is the issue of God’s sovereignty and particularly as that issue relates to salvation.  The question that is being raised that is rankling people is the question of the initiative of God vs. the initiative of humans.  Where does salvation originate?  Does it begin with God who for His glory and by His grace comes to us or does it begin with us who out of an intelligent choice choose to come toward God?  What disturbs those who are currently observers from the sideline is the teaching of John 6 [+/-]John 6 [6:1]After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. [2]And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick. [3]Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. [4]Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. [5]Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?" [6]He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. [7]Philip answered him, "Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." [8]One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, [9]"There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?" [10]Jesus said, "Have the people sit down." Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number. [11]Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. [12]And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, "Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost." [13]So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten. [14]When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, "This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!" [15]Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. [16]When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, [17]got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. [18]The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. [19]When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were frightened. [20]But he said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." [21]Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going. [22]On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. [23]Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. [24]So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. [25]When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?" [26]Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. [27]Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal." [28]Then they said to him, "What must we do, to be doing the works of God?" [29]Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." [30]So they said to him, "Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? [31]Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'" [32]Jesus then said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. [33]For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." [34]They said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always." [35]Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. [36]But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. [37]All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. [38]For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. [39]And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. [40]For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." [41]So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." [42]They said, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?" [43]Jesus answered them, "Do not grumble among yourselves. [44]No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. [45]It is written in the Prophets, 'And they will all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me-- [46]not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. [47]Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. [48]I am the bread of life. [49]Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. [50]This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. [51]I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." [52]The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" [53]So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. [54]Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. [55]For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. [56]Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. [57]As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. [58]This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever." [59]Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum. [60]When many of his disciples heard it, they said, "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" [61]But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, "Do you take offense at this? [62]Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? [63]It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. [64]But there are some of you who do not believe." (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) [65]And he said, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father." [66]After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. [67]So Jesus said to the Twelve, "Do you want to go away as well?" [68]Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, [69]and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God." [70]Jesus answered them, "Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil." [71]He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was going to betray him. (ESV)
that no  person can come to the Father unless that person is drawn by the Son.  Some in this particular place of which I am speaking are really struggling.  Some have already walk away, just like they did when Jesus taught this in John 6 [+/-]John 6 [6:1]After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. [2]And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick. [3]Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. [4]Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. [5]Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?" [6]He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. [7]Philip answered him, "Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." [8]One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, [9]"There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?" [10]Jesus said, "Have the people sit down." Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number. [11]Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. [12]And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, "Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost." [13]So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten. [14]When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, "This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!" [15]Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. [16]When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, [17]got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. [18]The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. [19]When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were frightened. [20]But he said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." [21]Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going. [22]On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. [23]Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. [24]So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. [25]When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?" [26]Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. [27]Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal." [28]Then they said to him, "What must we do, to be doing the works of God?" [29]Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." [30]So they said to him, "Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? [31]Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'" [32]Jesus then said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. [33]For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." [34]They said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always." [35]Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. [36]But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. [37]All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. [38]For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. [39]And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. [40]For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." [41]So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." [42]They said, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?" [43]Jesus answered them, "Do not grumble among yourselves. [44]No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. [45]It is written in the Prophets, 'And they will all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me-- [46]not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. [47]Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. [48]I am the bread of life. [49]Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. [50]This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. [51]I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." [52]The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" [53]So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. [54]Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. [55]For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. [56]Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. [57]As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. [58]This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever." [59]Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum. [60]When many of his disciples heard it, they said, "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" [61]But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, "Do you take offense at this? [62]Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? [63]It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. [64]But there are some of you who do not believe." (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) [65]And he said, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father." [66]After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. [67]So Jesus said to the Twelve, "Do you want to go away as well?" [68]Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, [69]and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God." [70]Jesus answered them, "Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil." [71]He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was going to betray him. (ESV)
.

Know what the irony is to me?  If God is sovereign in our salvation then there are no seekers after God except those who have already been found by Him.  No lost person seeks God because they can’t.  Only those who have been saved by the grace of God seek Him.  And oh how we seek Him.  It is one of the most sure signs that we are His.  Those who think that they are seeking to be His who are not already His may be further from Him than they know.  Maybe that is why just the hearing of the teaching of God’s sovereignty sends them scattering from the light of the absolute Truth of God.

I want to tell you and talk about three blogs I read recently that are disconcertingly connected and tie the three to one conversation that I had recently.  Blog number one was an assessment of a recent report released by the Kaiser Family Foundation about the use of electronic media by children from the age of eight to eighteen.  The report was that children in this age range in our culture spend more time in some form of electronic media than in any other activity:  7.5 hours daily, seven days a week.  That is the bulk of every day spent in some form of electronic stimulation where the images are fast moving and constantly changing.  It has the potential to produce a population whose activity is frenetic for whom we must prescribe medication without ever thinking that they may just need to read a book or go for a long walk.  Blog number two was a reflection on a book by Diana West, The Death of the Grown Up in which she argues that we have not only in our culture shifted from adults to children as the center of the world but also have concluded that the children have greater wisdom than the adults.  We should not only pay them more attention but also pay attention to them.  We should shape our world around what they want and desire.  Let me reserve comment here because any comment at this point would either make me or some who read this feel stupid.  The third blog was about the sad state of preaching in our culture.  Now there is some preaching that is in a sad state but the blog was about the fact that too many churches are squeezing out preaching because it no longer seems to be either useful or relevant.  Some churches have given it a very restricted twenty minute time slot and others have reduced it to even less. Given the above, it may be that we will soon listen to the wisdom of children and divide the sermon into part children’s sermon and part for adults.  Now there is an idea given the great wisdom that resides in children:  that was my toy, not it was mine, I had it first.  If you don’t give it back to me I will hit you over the head with my tootsie pop; now that is great wisdom.  But I digress.

The conversation happened with my son-in-law while he was here.  He told me that he sensed that to listen to my preaching, a person had to be willing to think.  And then he told me about two preachers at his church:  one that was like me that many people his age did not like and often did not attend church when he preached and the other who as a story-teller with little of the story telling tied to the Bible that people his age loved to hear.  They went when he preached. But then he made an interesting observation:  those who like the guy who tells the stories tend to me really self-centered and shallow in their understanding of the Bible.  I perked up.  They tend to like this guy who tells stories because he really makes them feel good when he preaches.  He preaches in a way that helps them in practical ways toward getting what they want for themselves.  I’m really listening now.  And the other guy:  well, he just tells them what the Bible says and how God really wants to change their lives.  They don’t want to hear that.  Neither do I frankly.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if life were an unending sandbox where I could play with my toys and you could play with yours and I could get yours when I wanted them and whine to heaven when you got mine!  It would be the world of the child and it would be really childish.  But to stay in that world we would need people who would represent God to us in such a way that He would be pleased with our sandboxes  and give us more toys with which to play while we are in our sandboxes.  It is the kind of world that we are rapidly creating and it is why genuine biblical preaching is falling on such tough times in this kind of world.  At least that is what I learned from those three blogs and one conversation.

Long time, no posts; and I have missed it.  So, here we go for the new year.  I want to post twice a week.  That will be my goal:  Sunday or Monday and then again near the end of the week, always reserving the right to add another or two depending on issues that crop up or just my need to share my heart.  I begin this year with some simple reflections on yesterday.

It was a holiday for many.  It was for my bride and so I took the afternoon off to travel with her to Augusta for shopping where I had two very new experiences.  But before I talk about those, let me just let you know that I always feel a sense of guilt on Martin Luther King Day.  That guilt is because our office is open.  We are not open, I pray; in defiance of the day but because we only get so many holidays and we have chosen Good Friday over MLK Day.  I think that it is a good choice but I still feel guilty being open on MLK Day.  I think we ought to close the office simply as a sign of respect for our black brothers and sisters in the body of Christ.  I understand institutions whose origins and continued existence is rooted in racism being open for business on this day.  It is not defiance for them but a declaration of freedom from whatever oppression was felt historically by them during the days of  the Civil Rights Movement.  I was a young teen during those days and still remember the distress I felt when I saw and heard white men who were respected businessmen berating and beating black men.  Many of those white men were prominent citizens in my home town; many of those black men were my friends.  I still remember the confusion I felt as a young man not yet saved as I heard white men being praised by other white men for excommunicating entire black families from their homes and properties.  I understood just enough about Christianity and common decency to know that what they were being affirmed for was neither Christian nor common decency.  But I was a young buck then who was told by my elders, my grandfather being one of them; that one day I would understand.  Well, I have no idea when that day will come.  I am fifty seven and see today sitting in this seat  what happened then in the sixties as sinister and as sinful.  There is nothing right about it in my eyes now; in fact I see it now as a greater travesty of justice and tragedy of human abuse than I had ever seen it during those days.  That is why even at my age I am very sensitive to cultural issues that have no biblical base; many men and women who in those days treated black people as fodder were not mean and ugly people; they were captured by a culture and not controlled by the Holy Spirit.  They really thought that they were wise but they were fools.  I do not want some young person to say that about me when and if I get concerned about issues that are important to me but have no biblical warrant.

Well, enough of that.  Here are my two unique and new experiences from yesterday.  First, we are in the mall and Anne asked if I minded walking down to “sketchers” with her.  I don’t mind walking anywhere with her.  It makes me look better to walk with her.  Now I don’t know what “sketchers” is.  Never been there.  Assuming it is an art store or a craft shop, I walk in to a shoe store.  Boy was I surprised.  I have wondered for some time where some dudes like John Veldboom got their shoes.  They are cool and funky.  Well, now I know.  These are most unique looking shoes.  I was enthralled by looking at them and learned something new.  Second, Anne asked me to go with to “hobby lobby.”  We had just been to “buy buy baby.”  I love that store.  I love it second to “bed, bath and beyond.”  So I thought that this venture into ‘hobby lobby” would be fun.  I walked around that store, count them now; three times.  I walked out.  Jesse Palmer’s sister and her daughter were walking in as I walked out and asked me what I was doing and I told them, “I just walked around that store three times and for the first time in my life I have found a store in which there is nothing for me that is useful; can you tell me why all that stuff is in that store?”  Can you?  Happy New  Year.

I want to believe that Christmas is about family, and I do believe that families ought to gather at this season of the year. Some need to gather to celebrate what they share together; others need to gather to remember what it means to be family. Some have forgotten with full-grown brothers and sisters battling with each other while bathing themselves in baskets of food and gifts, all in the same house while not in the same room. And some families like the one that I am privileged to be a part of needs to gather just to give thanks for what we enjoy. Anne has a Mom and Dad who love Jesus and are faithful to the church. They are still here away from home but doing as well as they can do. She has two sisters who are still married to their first and only husbands and both have children that are doing well. So, we should gather and we should celebrate what we share. It is good. But it is not the essence of Christmas. It is the essence of an American Christmas and is the center of the culture of the South, but it is not the center of Christmas.

Long ago and far away a very poor couple with very meager means made a journey to the town of their birth. They could not find a place to stay the night. She was fully pregnant with contractions coming more rapidly as the moon came up on that star filled night. He was fully faithful to his God and to his wife. They have travelled a long ways together. But on this night these two poor people would find lodging among the animals and she would give birth to the baby who long before had made the animals that inhabited that stall. The King of Kings was born in the middle of poverty to people who knew this pain all too well. That is why the center of Christmas to me is not family gatherings with far too much food and far too many gifts most of which are not needed at all to those to whom we give them and most of the food is tossed at the end of the day. Such gatherings cause me so much grief because they miss the point of the whole season of Advent and Christmas. I mean, who should be giving and serving more this season than those of us who serve the Savior? Who should be looking more for opportunities to give and share than us? And so many are doing that for which I give great praise to God. But so many don’t. It is much more likely that you find too many of us in the mall at Christmas than in the messy marketplace among the masses of hurting humans. I encountered one of them just today.

What a story she had to tell. She has been in and out of jail. She has been “had” by a so-called preacher. She is not old by any stretch but she has lived a long, long time already. She was free with her confession about “rippin and runnin the streets.” She has been diagnosed with sickle cell and needed some medication. A very dear friend of mine and I helped her to get it; Ithought it was funny hanging out with her at Wal-Mart as I am sure that some were wondering what I was doing with her, or maybe they were wondering what she was doing with me! But it felt like Christmas to me. What better way to celebrate Christmas than this day to serve communion to people I love, to spend some time today with a dear friend who has been a strength for me in the years that I have been here and to help a struggling soul in part by just hanging out with her for just a little while in Wal-Mart. It was for me the height of Merry Christmas!

“Santa Claus is not the only one who knows who has been naughty or nice.” I saw the sign. I was stunned. I made a left turn at the next possible place to turn and rode back by the sign sitting in front of the church just to make sure it said what I thought it said. Now let me issue a caveat here: I know the pastor who put the words on that sign and he is one of the most conservative people I know and a very gifted pastor/preacher. I know that for him it was an attention grabber to point people to the absolute omniscience of God. I know that at some level given his quite jovial nature that he was just having fun. He was being playful. But I read those words in the context of what I see in our culture in terms of what we have done with Santa Claus and within five years will have done with the Easter Bunny. We take them both seriously! Smart people taking seriously what is clealy a made up myth. But the problem is even greater than this travesty.

If I think that Santa Claus really exists and knows who has been naughty or nice then I have either elevated him to the status of God or I have lowered God to the status of Santa Claus. And then I have made it seem as if good things come to us based on the good deeds that we do. I have emptied God of grace and made of God one who is watching and weighing what I do to determine if I get the eternal toys. So, what do we as believers do with Santa Claus? What should make us distinctive from the world?

I believe that we as believers are faced with three options only two of which have any real viability for us. The first one is not a viable option for us. It is simply to join the world at the hip and to act as if he is a real being doing real things: reindeer flying through the air on one night of the year delivering toys and other goodies by landing on rooftops and descending a chimney. Tell that story to the starving kids in refugee camps all over the world. Yet, it is this kind of craziness that casues professing Christians to act like pagans at Christmas. Can I preach just a second: I am all but fed up with the fight over whether it is “happy holidays” or “merry Christmas” because some I hear saying “merry Christmas” as if it is some BIG DEAL are spending out the wazoo for Christmas gifts given to people who already have more than enough. Let me tell you what would be a BIG DEAL: take all that you are going to spend on gifts and gift and equal or greater amount to the missions offering of your church. Then you will have it close to what it really is all about. This option of acting as if it is all real is silliness if not sacrelilgious.

The most extreme option that I did not take but I surely admire is to make sure that your children know the truth about this made up man in the red suit and that they do receive some gifts at Christmas but it is from real, flesh and blood people. Anne and I did not do that. Do I wish now that we had? Well, yes. But we were classic liberals during that time and lived for the most part to be quite honest like the world was living. It was no big deal to us. Some of our younger parents in our church have chosen this option. I admire them so much. I can at least assure them of this truth: your kids won’t grow up and have any right to think, “well if Santa Claus isn’t real, maybe God isn’t either.” There is one other option. It is the one that we chose.

Join in with all the fun of the Santa stuff. But make sure that it is kept at the level of story and not history. Do not even begin to act as if this man is really a real man living at the north pole making toys and feeding reindeer. Tell the truth at the level of story. Compare his story to Dorothy on the way to the land of Oz. Read, “Twas the Night Before Christmas” but make sure that what is emphasized is that it is simply a story. Stories fascinate children and fire their imaginations. They can live in the world of a story and exit it when it is time without damage, but when we treat all of this stuff as if is real, our children exit this with some puzzlement about what else we may have “fibbed” to them about. So, I simply want to warn you because whatever you are doing at Chrsitmas with Santa is what you will do at Easter with the bunny. And that phenomenon is so recent that my recommendation to believers is that we get together and bounce the bunny into a far away land. Let’s say very clearly, “there is no such thing but there is a babe born in a manger, a Savior crucified on a cross, and a Lord and Christ raised from the dead.

Music matters. I have heard that all of my life. I have attended conferences where speakers have exhorted us to pay attention to both the lyrics and the melodies of the music; they have an impact on the mind and the soul. Let me tell you a little secret: I have not really believed that, I mean really believed that until very recently. And what convinced me of its truth is experience and not something somebody said or wrote. This was my experience.

I love the Advent and Christmas season but for years found it very frustrating as we moved toward Christmas Day. I would come to Christmas Day even as an adult and get more and more depressed as the day moved forward. It is over, I would be thinking; Christmas is over. Then I discovered the Advent model with Christmas Day being the first of the twelve days of Christmas as Christmas walked toward the season of Epiphany. It made me happy. I held on and hold on to that model. I come now toward Christmas with joy knowing that Christmas Day is not a culmination but an initiation, a beginning and not an ending. That solved one problem. But I had another one.

I love Christmas music. I mean I could begin listening to Christmas music on July 4. I just love it. Therein is the problem. I love the secular variety from Andy Williams to Frank Sinatra to shake a leg now Elvis. But some years back I noticed that the more I listened to that music the more I got captured by the wrong kinds of things at Christmas. Don’t laugh at me here but I would drive to Augusta just knowing that I was going to be frugal in my gift buying and keep the reason for the season in focus and then I would hear that song about the little boy buying his dying Mama a new pair of shoes and then I would hear Alabama singing, “Another Tender Tennessee Christmas . . . and before you know it I had spent far more than was necessary and was on way back to the Boro listening to Chestnuts roasting on an open fire and wondering what kind of nut I was for preaching about the real meaning of Christmas and then spending money like a drunk sailor, and all of it by impulse due to my feelings. Well, I started seeing the issue and started listening to very classical Christmas music and limited my radio listening at Christmas to WAFJ. Guess what? I was able in recent years to maintain focus. Now let me be clear: I am no scrooge. Scrooges are people that I don’t like. I love Christmas still and all that it stands for but I do not like the way we spend money at Christmas: too much of it on the wrong kinds of things. But something happened earlier this month and thus my musiological education.

I happened onto a secular radio station that was playing all Christmas music and I started listening. Boy, did I ever start listening. Please don’t laugh at me but I would be on my way home some nights and would drive around the block a time or two just to hear more of it. And before you could say, “here come Santa Claus, here come Santa Claus . . ” (Elvis, of course), I was thinking like I used to think. I was about to be on the wagon again until one day I got up and turned from 104.3 to 88.3 and within a day had regained my perspective. Boy, was I blown away. I was wrong. Music does have an impact. Do you think the people in the Mall know this yet?

I just love “God things.” Let me share just two of them with you that have been such a blessing to me in recent days. The first one happened the other day while finishing checking my email at home. I have had some recent encounters with men who are just having a really tough time with internet pornography. If you own a computer and can get to the internet, you know how easy it is to get to unsavory sites. So, I was thinking I was clicking off how serious a problem it is and then I saw what I see every time I click off the internet: the full blown picture of my grandson’s smiling face. I usually say as I get ready to get up, “have a good day, buddy; stay warm in Cleveland.” But today I said something different: “Grayson, I don’t know much about being a grandpa and don’t really see you enough to make that work too well and because I don’t see you a lot I don’t have much impact in showing you what a good husband or father looks like, but I know this: I want you to know me until I die as a godly man who loves Jesus. I do not want to disappoint you.” I got up after praying briefly and walked out. The phone rang. It was my daughter calling from Cleveland to tell me that just before she called she had done something new with Grayson, she let him choose one person for whom to pray and he chose G. Al, me. Wow, God. At almost the moment that he was on my mind as one for whom I wanted to live a life of purity, this little two year old was praying for me as his grandpa. That is a God thing.

That same day I drove to Metter for a meeting about the Guido Christian Training Institute. I had been telling Larry Guido that we needed some help from somebody to help us know how best to use various media to get out the message about what God is doing through the Guido Christian Training Institute (GCTS). I walked into the meeting that day to be greeted by Bo Fulginiti. He just recently moved to Metter because God told him to move to Metter. It gets better. He has a degree in communicatins and has been working in professional sports organizations to help them sell their product while also serving as a sports announcer. He got saved by the glorious grace of God and was called by God to move back to Statesboro where he had graduated from college and there began to seek God. He was simply praying and digging into the Word of God when God called him to get on a train and go visit his sister. He was on the train trip when a woman sitting behind him was so impressed with him that she wrote him a note that read, “you have the makings of young Michael Guido.” She did not give him the note. But then on his return trip, she sat beside him and was so stunned by this that she gave him the note. It was after his return home that God called him to move to Metter where he immediately found a job and visited the gardens for the first time to find that for us he is the man for whom we have been looking and needing and God just sent him to us. Isn’t that neat? And it is God. It is a wonderful God thing.

What happens when a group of special people come to a special place for a very special purpose? Well, when that place is the top of a mountain devoted to prayer and the study of God’s Word and that people is a group of believers who enjoy being together and are seeking the glory of God and that purpose is the praise of God, then what happens cannot be captured in words but will not be forgotten. That is the character of the experience that I had this week at The Cove in Asheville, North Carolina with a group of Senior Adults from our church. I told one of the pilgrims who made the journey with me just today that I hoped that everyone who made the journey would come to recognize that we had just been a part of something very, very special. This was no ordinary trip. This was no ordinary conference. We laughed and we cried. We were lifted to the heights in our worship of God and we felt, really felt His awesome presence. I knew by Tuesday night of the week that we were a part of one of those marker moments in life when we just want to hold on to what we are experiencing. I do not exaggerate that this week I got just a small taste of heaven and there was nothing bitter about it. It was all so sweet.

Yet coming home brought me face to face with the reality of life in this world. I had been away from television and telephones. I had spent a few days with no need for a calendar and little need for a clock. I heard no complaints only cheers but then I had to come “home.” I decided when we arrived in Waynesboro that I would go by the office and check my voice mails. I heard not complaints but one message after another from hurting people. One was sick. Another had heard very bad news and another needed some help. All sounded stricken and most were in need of urgent attention. The real world hit me. And the contrast was great. I had left the mountain and now I knew it. But this is where I live my life most of the time. So do you. And it is also why we must go to the mountain from time to time for it is from there that we see more clearly what we really face down here and it is up there that we see where we really want to be. That little taste of heaven for me was just that; it was not nearly enough. But it was enough to enable me to hear the hurt when I arrived at home and to see the pain and undestand that for all who know, love and serve God “we’ll soon be done with troubles and trials.” Having been to the mountain I could now understand some of what we really do face as suffering for the Gospel in this world. Living in this world without the Gospel is very hard. Living in this world as those who are faithful to the Gospel is very difficult if from time to time we do not get to that very special place with very special people for a very special purpose. And do you know what is so tricky? You don’t ever know where that place and people and purpose are going to intersect; it did for me in the first few days of this week and I will never be the same because of it.

I was asked an interesting question tonight. I am at the Cove with a group of Senior Adults from our church. The question was about my being here. It was not asked skeptically but was asked in order to get information: why have you come with your church group to this event? Well, the truth is that the question has several answers. First, I come because I love this place. There is here that which I do not find at other places. There is a quiet and a calm that is refreshing. I find this when I go to Guido Garderns and I find it here. So I come because of what I found here last year and am finding here already again this year. I come becasue I love Phil Waldrep and the way he does conferences. He does such a great job. I love hearing him preach, and he did a fabulous job tonight. But ultimately I come because I love being with my church family. That may sound “hokey” to you; but it is true for me. It is real. It is deep. It is the reason that I come. I love each one as if each was a member of my own family. They are. They are my brothers and sisters in a way that biological family cannot be and will not be. I love laughing with them and sharing with them. I love listening to them and spending time with them.

I sat at dinner tonight and we talked about a time when our country was more moral and thus far more decent than it is now. They lived their lives during this time and they have watched with dismay and disgust the deterioration of our culture. They are sad and they are mad. And it was during this conversation that an insight came to me. It was one that I really needed to see. You see, I often see Senior Adults as self-centered and selfish. I see them wanting church to be the way they want it to be and not at all accepting of any change. But it hit me tonight: they have seen a lot of change and a lot of it is not good. They lived in a more decent time and they want that time to return and it will not if they do not resist some change. They want their time to be recognized for what it was and it was a different time that was better morally than now. Far better. They simply do not want to be left out nor left behind. It was a good thing for me to see. I needed to see it. Maybe in God’s providence that is why I am here in Asheville this year at the Cove.

Tiger Woods has made the news in a way that nobody wants to make the news. Some have waited for this kind of episode to happen; others are stunned that such a thing could happen to Tiger Woods. I have two areas of concern in connection with the events as they have unfolded over the last week both of which I want to address in the context of two caveats. First, Woods is arguably the greatest golfer ever to tee up a golf ball. There has been one better to date. He has set a standard for the golfing world that makes it at least possible that someone might appear in the future that is at least his equal. Second, no one wants to see this kind of thing happen to anybody and only a few know all that is involved in his accident. It seems at least clear now that the blood in his mouth and elsewhere came from something other than a car accident and that Tiger was “shopping around” for treasures in addition to his wife. This reality should not shock or surprise us and it will be explained for him as with Clinton on brain chemistry that makes him have a more active libido than others. It was written of Clinton as it will be of Woods that this reality is just the truth with men of this kind of activity and accomplishment. Bah! Humbug! Some will even believe such garbage. Whatever happened sexually with these men outside marriage is due with them as with every man to sinful hearts and haughty spirits. Plain and simple. Now having issued these words let me address the two issues that concern me most.

First, we need to pray for Tiger and his family. This may well be the opening that was needed to bring him low enough to cry out for the grace of God. Tiger has spoken often of the inner strength that is his. No athlete short of Michael Jordan has shown the mental determination that is seen in Tiger, but mental determination and inner resolve will not be enough for him now. He cannot think his way out of this dilemma and no matter how much inner resolve he has, it will not be enough to sustain him in this storm. So, pray for him that God will use this storm as a way of bringing him to bow before Jesus as Lord. And why is that important? Well, just go to the “first tee” sites all over the world and ask young kids who they want to be like when they grow up and the answer is always the same: Tiger Woods. So what if Jesus got Tiger by the tail? Wouldn’t that be something and particularly if while on the golf course he had John 3:16 [+/-]John 3:16 [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. (ESV)
or Philippians 4:13 [+/-]Philippians 4:13 [13]I can do all things through him who strengthens me. (ESV)
plastered on his golf bag like Tebow does under his eyes. So, pray that God will use this mess for His glory in getting a Tiger to bow before the true King of the jungle.

Second, some of my generation and the previous generation gloat over this kind of thing with words like, “you never heard this about Arnie and Jack, did you?” Well, no; but not because they are believers. There is no indication that either is and if you know otherwise, please let me know. I would want to set that one straight as quickly as possible. They both group up and played in a period when public personna meant everything and they worked hard to produce that public personna, to put it on display and to protect it. They portrayed themselves and portray themselves publicly as good and decent people. Who knows what their private lives are? I do not believe that they have had anywhere near the scrutiny that modern athletes get because one of the realities of modern athletes is that they do not work as hard to create this public personna as athletes once did. And that is a good thing. Public personalities that are different from private personalities is hypocrisy. That is why I would much rather have Terrell Owens be who he is than have someone who is really nice in public but has a reputation of being really rough in private. Anyway the point I am laboring to make is that we not be too quick to say that Tiger is different from Jack and Arnie. He lives in a different day when private lives are put on public display. I don”t think that is a bad thing because the divorce of the private life from the public life leads to duplicitous living that can be devastaing if it is thought to be an acceptable and even appropriate way of living.

What you will read below is a rough draft of a presentation that I am making to the Exchange Club in Waynesboro, Georgia. I would love comments and suggestions to make this stronger. Thanks a bunch.

These words are written in Psalm 33:12 [+/-]Psalm 33:12 [12]Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!
, Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom He has chosen as His heritage. There are at least three things that we need to know about this text in order to understand it. First, it occurs in a context that affirms the absolute sovereignty of God over all things, acknowledging that since God is the creator of all things He is the only one who has the right to control all things. And He does. So that secondly the nation that is blessed is the nation that recognizes this reality as the premise upon which we pursue our work and live our lives. Thirdly, the word blessed does not have monetary and material associations. It simply means that God gives to those people who acknowledge Him as Creator and Sovereign all that we need to function in the world so as to fulfill His purposes. Thus, this text has to do with any people at any place during any time who by acknowledging God as Creator and Sovereign are given by this God His blessing as they are used by Him to fulfill His purpose upon the earth. So, the blessing of God upon a people is tied to obedience to God by the people. Now in the light of what this text teaches I want to look briefly at our reality in our culture in the light of a historical recognition about our founders as a foundation for our reflection during this Thanksgiving week.

Let me begin with our reality. It is really simple: we are in serious trouble. Now I will leave it to others to address our economic woes and the health care crisis; I want to go to what is underneath all of that: the virtual moral collapse of our culture. Although there are all kinds of ways that we can come at this issue, I want to approach it by looking at the life of a child in our culture from birth into young adulthood and make clear what our culture is communicating. Let’s begin with birth and recognize that in our culture many births do not happen. We are the culture of choice who in the instance of killing babies in utero have not been influenced by the rest of the world but are influencing the rest of the world. We have killed more babies in America since Roe vs. Wade than Jewish people exterminated in the holocaust but would be aghast at any comparison of our culture to his. His was a culture of death for the development of the most fit; so is ours. And it is not only abortion that is the issue; many babies born in our culture are born to single moms without a husband or a father. Not to mention babies born to moms who were alcohol, drug, and nicotine users during pregnancy and would not stop because the centerpiece of our culture is radical individualism. I will be what I am going to be, think what I am going to think, and do what I am going to do because it is my right as an individual to do so.

But let’s get the baby here. And from day one in our culture our parenting is driven by the needs, wants, and desires of the child. The child is number one. And whatever the child wants the child gets. And we dare not discipline by way of corporal punishment lest we face the wrath of our peers who see that as abusive. So, we do not deprive so that the child can thrive. By the time the child is two, there are two things that are clear: he or she is surrounded by more stuff than is remotely necessary and the child has learned that he or she is the most important person in the universe. We call this in our culture the building of self-esteem; a psychological theory that did not even exist until the late sixties coming to full life during the seventies when Penelope Leach’s book Your Child’s Self Esteem replaced Spock and the theory to date has no data to demonstrate its viability. In fact, the pushing of the self-esteem agenda has produced frustrated parents, frustrated children, and frustrated teachers. And all of it because we tell lies to our children: you can be whatever you want to be. You can do whatever you want to do. You can do whatever you set your mind to. No child left behind. Every child deserves and education. I could go on. All of these fundamentally untrue and birthed by the self-esteem movement which in order to thrive requires a culture that is fully focused on the individual. Take Radical Individualism and marry it to Self-Esteem and the outcome is a culture of persons with rights who when those rights are violated become victims. And in our culture we have this in full force by the time the child hits school age.

Now let’s fast forward to adolescence where in our culture we are saying to children who cannot behave in school or at home that their problem is in the brain. They have a chemical imbalance. We are even treating young kids now for depressive episodes. So, we have a school population that is heavily medicated so as to be able to function but the message that they get every time they take the pill is that it is not their problem. It is in their brain. So when the boy gets to be fourteen and his brain sends signals of sexual attraction to the girl across the aisle, he just listens to his brain. Since the girl has been taught that she must feel good about herself and finds rejection so difficult, she just gives in. And what is the big deal? They are just doing what is natural and normal. So, sexual activity and sexual awareness starts earlier than ever. Unless of course in our culture you determine that you are genetically programmed toward male to male or female to female attraction, and that is just who you are. And by the time you get to middle school and high school you have learned that if this is who you are, you ought to express it: radical individualism plus self esteem leads to a plurality of ways of living and here is the real issue in our day: and the most backwoods, bigoted people are those who have not learned that the key to our life together is tolerance. We must tolerate all kinds of lifestyles. It could produce a culture in which we work hard to treat terrorists terrifically when they are at Guantanamo and show them the best in fine living when they come to New York City!

Let me very quickly now take our child turned teenager off to college or vocational school and into the work force. By the time they hit college they have learned that life is all about them and that they have a right to succeed. Early on in college they are indoctrinated deliberately with an overdose of evolution. It is made clear to them that only the ignorant believe in a world deliberately designed by God for His glory and brought into being by His word. It has always amazed me and still does and always will that a theory of origins that has increasingly less and less data to support it and has to keep stretching the time frame to make it work, even to the point of changing the dating procedures for fossils in order to make the procedures fit their practice; a theory that admits major flaws, gaps, and still cannot explain how one species becomes another is taught as intelligence by people to people who think themselves by believing it to be intelligent! It mystifies me. Yet, many of your children and mine who go to UGA or Georgia Southern or Georgia Tech or Mercer will be taught this theory as scientific fact. The result is an increase in self-centered, narcissistic living where life becomes increasingly about the person, about me; because in an evolutionary world the pinnacle point is the human and everything exists for him. Then finally you take this college grad and you send her into the work force and her focus is on how much and how often. How much am I going to make and how often do I get off? And the young adult enters the world of work driven by the promised fulfillment of their monetary and materialistic dreams that become the essence of human happiness. And when it doesn’t materialize instantaneously, frustration comes and brings with it a search for happiness wherever it can be found: alcohol, drugs, deception, sexual immorality, credit card abuse and increasingly self-inflicted death. What we are producing in our society is the inevitable outcome of lifestyles that are radically me-centered. A better economy is not going to change that. A better health care system is not going to change that. The finest of educational institutions are not going to change that. You would expect me to say what I believe with every fiber of my being will change that, but even our churches have become too consumed by the world and by the consumer mentality of the world.
Change will come in part I believe when we have some sense of recognition about our history as a country. Most of the founders of this country were not bible thumping conservative evangelicals. George Washington loved more than Mrs. Martha! Some of those guys whose names or on the Declaration were like some of us; they were scallywags! Some were very conservative in their Christian commitment; most were Deists who believed that God created the world and then handed over to us to run. That is why they were so careful at such an early stage in the establishment of the balance of powers in the operation of the government. But there was one thing that they all held dear and was the foundation for all that they said and did: the law of this land must be founded upon the law of God, and the law of God is given by God for the good of the people, plural. In other words, they believed that a country could not survive if it departed from adherence to the law of God. So, they established for example a pluralism that was to be expressed in the context of the affirmation of monotheism: there is one God and His Name is Yahweh; He is the Lord God Almighty the maker of heaven and of earth. Religious pluralism as understood by the Constitution was not the right to worship any God but the right to worship the one God in a variety of ways. Or, remember that our founders were committed to the sacred character of the Lord’s Day and feared violating that Day with any activity except the worship of God and the rest from labor. And even the penal system and the punitive laws of justice were rooted in the law of God. But they also believed that the law of God was for the good of the people and that the good of the people superseded in importance the rights of any one individual. You remember that Alexader de Tocqueville came to America to look at what made America great and his conclusion was that America is great because America is good, and America is good because the concerns of the individual are subservient to the concerns of the community. And it was DeTocqueville who would write prophetically in Democracy in America “the genius of America will be lost when she loses the focus on the concerns of the community and begins to focus on the rights of the individual.

We could see change even in our own community if those who lead our churches and our community and our schools and our law enforcement would recognize our rich history as Judaeo-Christian Country whose founders made it foundational that we acknowledge God by observing and obeying His Law both in our relationship to Him and in our relationship to one another. It would change the way we see life. It would change the way we live in relationship to one another. And it would be a great cause for giving thanks.

The Bible commands the children of God to pray.  Yet, I find that I always struggle with prayer.  I do not mean by this that I struggle to find the time to pray or struggle with investing energy in prayer; my struggle is with the issue of how to pray. It seems to me that I am always learning how to pray.  It is the one school from which I will never graduate and at this stage in my life I feel that I am still in elemenary school.  I am always on the lookout for good books written by godly people about the whole issue of prayer.  And what I am learning along the way is as much about what prayer isn’t as I am learning about what prayer is.  Let me share just a few of the lessons that I am learning.

Prayer is conversation with God but the part of that sentence that demands clarification and in our culture is the cause of much confusion is the definition of “God.”  It is not that we need help in talking, it is that we need help in understanding the God with whom we are speaking.  Truth is that if we understood the core characteristics of His character we would be reduced to silence in His presence. We would speak only when we sense that He was speaking, and even when we would speak we would do so with a sense of our inadequacy.  That we can come into His presence at all ought to overwhelm us and that our way of access is through Jesus ought to remind us every time we pray that His Son had to shed His blood in order for us to come to Him.  Our depravity ought not ever to be far from us when we pray.  It is what would produce a more genuine humility in our praying and would mitigate against some of our bold audacity.  One of my struggles is that some of the boldest praying I hear is from people whose boldness is not all about the glory of God but about their own needs.  Such praying reveals a heart that may not have been bathed in the blood of Calvary.  Going there reminds me when I pray that I deserve nothing and need mercy more than anything else.  I can write like this and pray like this when life is good but when it turns bad, I pray like that person who has not been to Calvary. I want help for me and I want it now.  That is why I am glad that the God to whom I pray is not only a God of great glory but also of God of infinite grace.

Prayer in the words of J. I. Packer is asking for our desires in accordance with His Will with the latter taking precedent and giving shape to the former.  Here is where I really struggle.  I hear so much about the prayer of faith put forth as asking boldly for what we want and desire and expecting (translate that demanding) that what we pray for is going to come to pass.  Hold on, brother; I am told. Keep praying and God will give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37 [+/-]Psalm 37 [37:1]Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers! [2]For they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb. [3]Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. [4]Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. [5]Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act. [6]He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday. [7]Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices! [8]Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil. [9]For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land. [10]In just a little while, the wicked will be no more; though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there. [11]But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace. [12]The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes his teeth at him, [13]but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming. [14]The wicked draw the sword and bend their bows to bring down the poor and needy, to slay those whose way is upright; [15]their sword shall enter their own heart, and their bows shall be broken. [16]Better is the little that the righteous has than the abundance of many wicked. [17]For the arms of the wicked shall be broken, but the LORD upholds the righteous. [18]The LORD knows the days of the blameless, and their heritage will remain forever; [19]they are not put to shame in evil times; in the days of famine they have abundance. [20]But the wicked will perish; the enemies of the LORD are like the glory of the pastures; they vanish--like smoke they vanish away. [21]The wicked borrows but does not pay back, but the righteous is generous and gives; [22]for those blessed by the LORD shall inherit the land, but those cursed by him shall be cut off. [23]The steps of a man are established by the LORD, when he delights in his way; [24]though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the LORD upholds his hand. [25]I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread. [26]He is ever lending generously, and his children become a blessing. [27]Turn away from evil and do good; so shall you dwell forever. [28]For the LORD loves justice; he will not forsake his saints. They are preserved forever, but the children of the wicked shall be cut off. [29]The righteous shall inherit the land and dwell upon it forever. [30]The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks justice. [31]The law of his God is in his heart; his steps do not slip. [32]The wicked watches for the righteous and seeks to put him to death. [33]The LORD will not abandon him to his power or let him be condemned when he is brought to trial. [34]Wait for the LORD and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land; you will look on when the wicked are cut off. [35]I have seen a wicked, ruthless man, spreading himself like a green laurel tree. [36]But he passed away, and behold, he was no more; though I sought him, he could not be found. [37]Mark the blameless and behold the upright, for there is a future for the man of peace. [38]But transgressors shall be altogether destroyed; the future of the wicked shall be cut off. [39]The salvation of the righteous is from the LORD; he is their stronghold in the time of trouble. [40]The LORD helps them and delivers them; he delivers them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge in him.
).  But what is the desire of the heart of any person who is devoted to Jesus?  Isn’t to live in such a way that our devotion to Him is both declared and demonstrated?  And where else is my devotion to Jesus more clearly declared and demonstrated than in the midst of the dilemmas of life?  So here is my dilemma.  If what I wrote just above is true then why am I praying in the midst of the difficulty for God to deliver me if in fact it is in the fire that His faithfulness is most fully known and felt?  Yet, if while in the fire I am not praying for the fire to go out, then I am perceived to be one who does not truly believe in God.  I am helped immensely by Gethsemane where Jesus prayed for deliverance while committing Himself to what He knew was God’s will.  He prayed His desires in the context of His devotion to doing the will of God.

And I by God’s grace just keep learning more and more about prayer.  It causes me grief when I recognize that so much of what we call prayer in the modern American Church is not prayer at all.  And it is not prayer because of our failure to see God as He is and see prayer for what it is.  So much of what we called prayer has turned God into Santa Claus and the one who prays as the one presenting his wish list to Santa, “Please, please do this for me . . . “  This way of praying is very popular in our day.  And very prevalent in the church.  It accomplishes little or nothing beyond its helpful revelation of where we really are spiritually.  Maybe I am not the only one who needs to be enrolled by the Spirit of God for the cause of the Gospel in the school of prayer.

I love preachers.  I love preaching.  Put that in place at the very beginning.  Anything that I say in this segment that seems to be a criticism is first and foremost a criticism of my own life and ministry.  Listening to other preachers preach causes me to reflect on my own life and calling so as to desire to be a better preacher and to do better preaching.  And this week at the Georgia Baptist Convention I heard some outstanding preaching from some outstanding preachers.  I heard for the first time a young thirty year old, David Platt; who may well be among the best preachers I have ever heard.  I heard Johnny Hunt and Steve Gaines.  I listened to Bucky Kennedy give a wonderful Convention sermon and Dan Spencer who is the new president of the Georgia Baptist Convention speak a really powerful word.  Yet, in the midst of all that I heard I was reminded yet again of two realities that I do not want to forget.

First, I was reminded that it is the Bible that is inerrant and infallible not those who preach the Bible.  His Word is absolute Truth; the word of the preacher is not.    Second, whether I like it or not, my theological perspective does more to shape my understanding of texts than I or any other preacher would care to admit; and the extent to which I get defensive about that is the extent to which that is really true.  The preacher had better get his theology or his thinking about God from the Word of God but having done that, the preacher must always be open to changes in his theology lest his theology become his textbook rather than the Word of God.  If we adopt a theological system too tenaciously we can become guilty of “always learning but not coming to a knowledge of the Truth.”  I may be very different in this regard but as God has grown me in my own sanctification, I have been all over the map theologically.  And I am convinced that God is not done with me yet.  I’ll write about this one later but right now He has me all mixed up about how much dispensationalism has effected me over against the clearly covenant theological teaching of the Bible.  Dispensation itself is a non-biblical term; Covenant (Testament) is a very clear biblical term.  So stay tuned for that one; God is doing a number on me about that one and it bothers me; I was “settled” in that one and now I am all “shook up.”  I’ll let you know where it leads when it all shakes out.

I saw an example of the above in an otherwise powerful sermon, one of the most powerful that I have heard.  But the preacher wanted to make the point about Jesus’ death being for all the world with the accompanying point that all the world could be saved with the implication that if they could be, they would be if we would just do our job.  There is some hopeful universalism in that kind of approach that is disconcerting to me in the light of what Jesus teaches.  Now it is true that Jesus died for all in the sense that nobody will be saved outside the way of Jesus through the shed blood of His cross.  But it is also true that when Jesus went to Calvary He was actually purchasing through His shed blood a people for Himself whom He knew from before the foundation of the world.  Now the names and identities of those people are known to God and not to us so that we go into all the world among every people group and preach the Gospel with the assurance that through the Gospel God will save His people.  This particular preacher obviously did not see it that way so he took us to the text in 2 Peter 3 [+/-]2 Peter 3 [3:1]This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, [2]that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, [3]knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. [4]They will say, "Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation." [5]For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, [6]and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. [7]But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. [8]But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. [9]The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. [10]But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. [11]Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, [12]waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! [13]But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. [14]Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. [15]And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, [16]as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. [17]You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. [18]But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. (ESV)
where Peter says that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.  Well, go read the text in context.  Do not ignore the context.  Peter is speaking to the church and his point is that God wants His church to live a life of complete and full repentance.  The term translated “come to” (choreo) means to “reach fullness.”  Peter is speaking to people who had fallen away and was exhorting them to come into the fullness of repentance.  Then he took us to 1 Tim. 4:10 [+/-]1 Timothy 4:10 [10]For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. (ESV)
where Paul says that Jesus is the Savior of all men, especially those who believe.  Now what does that mean?  Does it mean that Jesus saves everybody and then there is special salvation for those who believe?  Does it mean that Jesus died for everybody but His blood is applied only to those who believe?  Could be, or does it mean that Jesus died for “all kinds of men” and that is those who believe?  And the Greek text lends itself to one of the last two but the preacher did not make that point because it did not help him to make the point that he wanted to make.

I prayed this last Sunday, “Lord, do not let me ever mislead this people.”  I mean that for my preaching and for myself as a preacher.  And yet I learned again this week that preachers are fallible men handling infallible truth and that we (I) must always be vigilant that whatever theological system we adopt, we must let it be totally secondary and always subject to being changed by this inerrant, infallible and fully sufficient Word of the living God.

Yep.  That is what the blowed back all teeth showing in my head smiling Osteen said.  Faith is “positive optimism.”  It is believing in whatever is in your life at the moment that you need and praying for that which you need and believing that it is yours.  It is positive optimism focused on whatever we fix our hearts on that would make our lives better.  He actually sat on the curvy couch with the hosts of Fox and friends and talked this way.  He never quit smiling.  He said that we have to have a positive approach to our desires, our ambitions, our goals, our wants and our needs and believe that it will be, and it will be.  Hocus pocus.  Cross my heart and hope I die, this is what I want and I do not lie.  What’s the difference?  He just turned one of the most precious gifts of God given to us into a fable and a farce.   And I suppose that it would be ok if so many thousands of professing believers (oops I almost wrote believers) saw him as the charlatan that he is rather than believing him to be the best thing since buttered biscuits.  Yet, he stands  before this culture Sunday after Sunday drawing in thousands as a living, breathing, verbal witness to the truth of 2 Timothy 3-4 [+/-]2 Timothy 3-4 [3:1]But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. [2]For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, [3]heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self- control, brutal, not loving good, [4]treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, [5]having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. [6]For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, [7]always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. [8]Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. [9]But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men. [10]You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, [11]my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra--which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. [12]Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, [13]while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. [14]But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it [15]and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. [16]All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, [17]that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. [4:1]I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: [2]preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. [3]For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, [4]and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. [5]As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. [6]For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. [7]I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. [8]Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. [9]Do your best to come to me soon. [10]For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. [11]Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry. [12]Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus. [13]When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments. [14]Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds. [15]Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message. [16]At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them! [17]But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth. [18]The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. [19]Greet Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus. [20]Erastus remained at Corinth, and I left Trophimus, who was ill, at Miletus. [21]Do your best to come before winter. Eubulus sends greetings to you, as do Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brothers. [22]The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you. (ESV)
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But wouldn’t you love for what he preaches to be true.  I am going to practice positive optimism toward my 38 inch (oops I almost lied) 40+ inch waistline.  I am sucking in right now and straining hard.  I am positively optimistic that by the time I finish this blog, I will be a bad boy 34 inches in he waist.  Believe with me brother and sister.  Join with me in this positive optimism so that we can see taller people and thinner waistlines.  And while I am at it I am believing with positive optimism for hair growth on my head and for psoriasis to pass away.  I would even be positive over one out of the two.  What about you?  Write like this and it all sounds crazy.  And I wished that that was all that it is.  It is far beyond crazy.  It is totally corrupt.  It is Rev. Osteen a complete and total perversion of the person and purpose of God.   I can only hope that my friends who are passing through dark valleys right now did not hear you and do not listen to you.  I can only pray that those who are so faithful to Jesus while fighting so many forces of darkness do not get deceived by the likes of you.  You may sound good and look great on the curvy couch but I wonder what it will be for you and for me when we stand before the Bema Seat of our sovereign God?