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Archive for July, 2007

Get hard or go home

Posted by darryl on July 30, 2007

I’ve been reading a book by Ian Wishart called “Eves Bite“. If you want a very thought provoking and challenging book to read… actually – no - you should read this book. It will shake you to your core. Order it from the eves bite website.

I’ve also been listening to some talks given at a conference recently and between the book and the talks, I’m more convinced than ever that we are living in the last days and that the return of Christ is not far away.

The world around us is doing a fantastic job of popularizing evil. Every radio station, TV network, newspaper, magazine article and government department are working hard to demolish any basis of morality at all.

We are continually fed movies, TV programs and articles by the media that portray homosexuality as normal, vilify fundamentalist religions and their adherents, promote the atheistic and secular mind set as healthy and rational, dilute marriage and parenthood to either optional or subject to the state, promote the state as the ultimate authority, endorse pleasure as the ultimate pursuit and generally desensitize us to violence, sexual impurity, greed, lust, drunkenness and a great range of other evils.

The amazing thing is not so much that it is happening – after all it was predicted nearly two thousand years ago by the apostle Paul:

[1] 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,

2 Timothy 3:1-4

The truely amazing thing is that Christians by and large don’t care.

Interestingly enough, the above verse is actually aimed at those who say they follow Christ. Paul continued:

[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.

2 Timothy 3:5-8

These people have the appearance of godliness… meaning that they look OK on the outside. There are lots of these people in the church, but they are dead inside.

Genuine believers are not to sit idly by. When Paul wrote to the church at Corinth which was entrenched in a broad array of evil practices he said to them:

[12] For what have I to do with judging *outsiders? *Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? [13] God judges* those outside. *“Purge the evil person from among you.”

1 Cor 5:12-13

What Paul is instructing the believers to do is to put those who are practicing evil out of the church.

“Wait a minute”, the liberalist says “who are we to judge”? The answer to that question depends on where you stand. If you love Christ and seek to see him glorified, it puts you in the position of judge. If you don’t care for Christ and the salvation his death wrought for you, then it puts you either on the outside – subject to Gods judgement, or it puts you in the position of the one who should be judged by the church and possibly purged.

Simply put, faith in Christ and evil practices do not go together, and this is the exact compromise that Christians have made that has led to this apathy. We love the world. We love the things of the world (the TV, entertainment, sex, money, alcohol, drugs or that high) more than we love God.

On this John wrote:

[15] Do not love the world or the things in the world. *If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

1 John 2:15

Are there that many apostates in the church?

If you don’t think this is you – then change. Starting to day repent and turn from the ways and thinking of the world and look for the truth – and look for the truth in the word of God – it is nowhere else.

The world around us is blinding those in the world not only to the truth of Christ, but any truth at all. There is a conspiracy – not of human origin, but satanic, and it is here. Right now. It is pervasive, and there are few who are not under its influence.

If you feel as strongly about these things then lets get hard and lets wake up and let the world know about the state that it is in. We need to tell people that they are lost, that they have been deceived and are going to be judged by an impartial and all righteous and all powerful judge who is not fooled by the political correctness and so-called tolerance of the west for all things evil.

Believers – the time has come – get hard or go home.

Posted in: Christian Living, Faith

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Peddling the word of God

Posted by darryl on July 28, 2007

One of the things about technology today is the freedom that it gives us to get the message of the Cross out there into the hands of people on the street.

MP3 audio is able to be consumed by virtually every personal computer and most mobile phones and certainly all the various digital media players on the market today. A single message recorded in text or MP3 can be distributed and shared by almost the entire western world and a reasonable proportion of the rest of the earths population (language barriers aside).

In addition, CD players are almost ubiquitous, and the ability to create new mediums is now cheap and easy compared to the past.

Not only this, but we live in an age where we have some very experienced and very powerful teachers and preachers and some incredible Christian thinkers.

In a world where western Christians have so much potential and content, you’d think that we’d have nothing holding us back – but we do.

It seems that the key thing holding believing Christians back is apathy, which is induced by modern journalism fueled by secular (at best – socialist more realistically) agendas.

One of the side affects of this secular mind-set is that everything must be done for a dollar. You cannot just give stuff away – you must charge for it.

I’ve just finished listening to an audio file by a thinking believer who is in a unique position to understand some of the affairs of the modern world – and what he says is bone jarringly chilling, and something that politicians, Christians and the average Joe on the street should know. But when I visit the web site that hosts this content, I find that it is material that is copyright protected and distributed for a fee.

This is preposterous. Its like being warned that your neighbors house will be burned down tomorrow and rather than warning him to flee for his life or stay somewhere else, you go and tell him “I have something important to tell you – your life depends on it, but you have to pay me for it”.

If the message is critical (and isn’t any good Bible based teaching?), why do we charge for it?

Isn’t there enough barriers to people getting into the word of God? Do we need to introduce another one (money)?

I’ve asked big, well known and well respected ministries about this in the past and have had answers like – “we have more than 100 people working here – we have to support them”. Maybe you do have lots of people in your ministry – but are they there for money or for Christ? Is your ministry there for money or for Christ? Have you set your ministry up for ultimate failure by paying staff a salary from earnings rather than depending on Christ to supply all your needs? Ultimately these ministries will fail to reach the mass they could because they have limited the accessibility of the ministry to those with money – rather than limiting it to whosoever will.

Do those who preach the word not believe that God owns the world and that all the resources of the universe are at His disposal and he can direct them where he wills? Do we not trust the Lord of the universe – whom we say and even preach that we trust?

I cannot see how any ministry can justify charging for the word of God or the teaching of the Word. In fact, I’ll go as far to say that this approach (charging for ministry material) is the equivalent of peddling the word of God (2 Cor 2:17). Jesus gave the disciples a principle to work by when he sent them out. He told them “You have received without paying; give without pay.” In case you mistake this to mean that organizations should be non-profit – he continued “Acquire no gold nor silver nor copper for your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals nor a staff, for the laborer deserves his food” (Matt 10:8-10). The instruction was clearly to minister without imposing costs.

There has to be a better way that truly honors the Lord and aids (rather than hinders) the dissemination of the Word of God.

UPDATE: One thing I should point out is that I’m deliberately distinguishing between those calling themselves ministries and those calling themselves companies. Companies charge – thats what they do – ministries shouldn’t.

Posted in: Money

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Counting it all joy

Posted by darryl on July 21, 2007

The Bible is full of commands that, on the face of it, are impossible to obey. In James 1:2 we are commanded to consider it all joy when we are faced with trials of various kinds.

To us in our 20th century, when we think of trials we think of difficult jobs, spouses, relationships or financial pressure. For the recipients of the letter trials meant having given up everything, being without any property, friends, family and being forced to live in an unfamiliar culture – all at the same time.

Nonetheless, they were still commanded to consider their trials pure joy. How is this possible. Even for believers how is this possible?

The answer is Christ. When we become a Christian we must do two key things… The first is that we must repent. We must turn from our sin and walk the other way. The second is that we must believe in or put our trust in Christ for justification and thus salvation.

With repentance must come transformation – or there was no true repentance. Once we have repented and trusted Christ we are then transformed as we live our lives in trust.

Trust in Christ implies that rather than relying on ourselves we rely on Christ. This is not just for justification, but for everything. In the words of Yoda – you must unlearn what you have learned – that is we must put aside all the worldly knowledge we have that relates to metaphysical realities and believe that Christ has a far better handle on things than we do. In other words trusting Christ means living the way He wants us to live – not because we are robots, but because we believe He knows what is pleasing to God better than we do.

As we trust Christ and forsake the ways of the world, we are transformed. Romans 12:2 says “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind”. The renewal of our mind takes place through a number of mechanisms.

Firstly, it takes place through what we take in to our minds – i.e. what we read, watch and hear. Secondly it takes place through the circumstances we are put through.

God often uses circumstances to bring pressures to bear down on us as part of this transformation process. So being saved it is truly possible to consider trials all joy – these trials confirm that we are being transformed, and when we take our trials and circumstances to God we can see him work through them.

Take the suffering of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane for instance. Christ could feel the pressure of sin bearing down on him, and it made him tremendously uncomfortable – the point that he brought it to God and asked him to “remove this cup from me” (Luke 22:42). Obviously the cup was not removed from Christ – but it was there for a greater cause.

Christ knew this and continued “Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done” – while Christ was uncomfortable, He still recognized the sovereignty of His Father, and trusted Him.

This is the response God wants from us – He wants us to bring our trials to him – to depend on him, but yet to trust that He knows best. And through the trial because we know that He is working in us to build our character and to temper us into Christlikeness we can rejoice that He is working and we can rejoice that He is in control and more than able to be trusted.

After all – that is the promise of Romans 8:28 – “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good; for those who are called according to His purpose”.

Posted in: Character

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The purpose of Trials

Posted by darryl on July 19, 2007

Our first study dealt with the purpose of trials from James 1:2-4

Rather than writing out the entire content, here are my (fairly raw) notes from the evening. Questions I used to lead the discussion are in italics. The answers in this guide are not comprehensive, they were meant to help me lead the study – so if you want more detail, ask in the comments or ping me an email. Verses are linked so you can read them online.

Objectives in the text: to demonstrate from scripture:

That in a trial we choose between comfort and character
That in Gods eyes Character is commensurate with sanctification which is the will of God for believers
the benefits of steadfast faith

Passage breakdown

James 1:2- Imperative instruction

James 1:3 – the reason the instruction is possible

James 1:4 – the result of obeying the instruction

Verses 2-12 the word (trial/test/temptation) “as the basic meaning of trying, testing, as saying, or proving and can have negative or positive connotations, depending on the context”

In verses 13-17 the “idea is clearly that of temptation, of solicitation to evil. James is here dealing with an entirely different concept”

Study Material-Verses 2-4

What was the situation that the recipients of James’ letter were under?

These people had left their homes and families and fled to unknown places to live life in peace and safety, but as they fled the continued to be persecuted and followed by the Jews.

We spent some time discussing this — it is important that we understand the difficulty of life for the believers James was writing to.

These people had been scattered from Jerusalem primarily and in so doing they had walked away from their entire lives including:

Loved ones
Families (parents, children, great grandparents, etc)
All their worldly goods and resources
Jobs and businesses
Social contacts and status
Common locations and surroundings
Safety and comforts of home
Familiar culture

What are some common trials that we all have?

Trials are a part of our lives. Common trials we have are difficult relationships, jobs, social situations, bad health etc Our trials are generally petty and trivial in comparison to the situation of those the letter was written to.

How are some ways that we “get out of” trials? Select one of the “common trials” and ask what do you do to try and get out of it?

If we don’t believe God is Sovereign we will try to control the situation somehow by stepping out of it (e.g. get a new job, walk away from a difficult family situation), or by manipulating the situation to ease the discomfort (this is often true of marriage and children) or by deceiving our way out of it (e.g. large tax payments we may be required to make)…

Read James 1:2-4. What are we commanded to do in trials? Why?

We are commanded to count it all joy. There are two outcomes of trials which are the cause for our rejoicing in the midst of them. These are steadfastness/patience/endurance/perseverance and character.

Steadfastness means “to remain under” – trials teach us to stay under the weight or burden that we are under.

What does steadfastness lead to?

Endurance leads to “perfect and complete” (v4) – what does “perfect and complete” mean?

The end result of sanctification: Rom 5:3-4 Suffering -> endurance -> character -> hope

Sanctification:

- 2 Cor 3:18 – transformation from one degree of glory to another - explain

- Tools for sanctification – 2 Tim 3:16-17,

Heb 13:20-21 - God is in the process of equipping us with what we need to do his will

1 Pet 5:8-10 – The Lord uses the devil for this purpose (cf Job 1:7-12, Job 2:1-6, Job 42:5-6 – examine the usage of Satan in the beginning and the result of this amazing trial at the end – what did it do to the character of Job?)

How do we get steadfastness/endurance/patience?

We are made steadfast by the testing of our faith (v3). What then is the purpose of this testing? It is to prove our faith, to refine it and purify it.

Compare to James 1:12 – Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial… to those who love him. Remaining steadfast is how we demonstrate we love Christ. (Eph 6:24 – love for Christ is incorruptable – even by hardship).

Steadfastness also results in the crown of righteousness – remember Abraham believed God and it was acredited to him as righteousness (Rom 4:3)

Why do we wriggle out of trials if they are for our good?

One reason – Sin. Specifically we are self centered, self serving, Christ despising beings who by nature are inclined to trust ourselves and value ourselves before all else

What is the reaction of those who Christ has saved to trials?

Rom 5:3 – we rejoice – how can we rejoice in trials? 1) knowing that God uses them to build us up and 2) because we are pursuing steadfastness (1 Tim 6:11) and we are making every effort to add this to our faith (2 Pet 1:5-7)

What makes the difference between an unbeliever and a believer? Knowledge of God – who He is, what His purpose is, His sovereignty.- Knowing that He is in control.

If we don’t believe the Lord is Sovereign we will try to control the situation somehow by stepping out of it (e.g. a job, difficult family situation), or manipulation (spouse/children) or deception…

2 Thess 1:3-12 – Perseverance under affliction is evidence of Gods judgement, both of those who are afflicting and those who are being afflicted that they are saved (Phil 1:27-28).

What is the reaction to the unsaved in trials, generally?

Remove themselves from it, manipulate the situation or otherwise escape the difficulty to make life easier. Let us stop acting like unbelievers if we are saved. If we are not saved, let us trust Christ to cleanse and save us from our sin!

How do we tend to respond when others are under trial? How should we respond when others are under trial?

2 Thess 1:11-12 – we should pray that God will make them worthy of His calling.

Col 1:11 – we should ask the Lord to make them strong through the trial

Generally we try to pray others out of their trials, which contrary to the purpose of trials and ultimately leads to disappointment when we don’t receive what we pray for. This also reflects that we value comfort over character.

We should definitely sympathize with peoples pain and do our best to alleviate it, but we should value character and Christ-likeness above comfort in both ourselves and our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Posted in: Faith

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James on trials

Posted by darryl on July 18, 2007

The book of James starts with some challenges about trials. Over the last few weeks we’ve been studying James and I wanted to provide some commentary here on what we’ve been studying along with the notes I’ve used for you to keep up with the play.

Initially we carved James up into a small number of chunks, but we’ve actually taken a lot longer to go through the first 18 verses than we thought we would. Our first cut of James looked like this:

James 1:1 – Introduction
James 1:2-12 – Trials
James 1:13-18 – Temptation
James 1:19-27 – Obedience to the Word

So far it has actually panned out like this:

James 1:1 – Introduction (we got that part right )
James 1:2-4 – The purpose of trials
James 1:5-8 – Wisdom in trials
James 1:9-12 – Equality in trials
James 1:13-15 – The cause of temptation
James 1:16-18 – Why God cannot be the cause of temptation

We’ve still got verses 19-27 to do… but Mark is doing these over the next couple of weeks.

So, I’m going to try and do two things over the next few weeks (and I’m traveling so be patient with me) – I want to tidy up and post my study notes – which should be pretty easy to reuse should you feel the urge to do so – they are in a Q&A format and secondly I want to provide a few small snippets of things I’ve learned from these studies associated with each study.

Posted in: Character

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