Posted by Windy Desmond on July 2, 2010
Galations 4:7 “So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.”
So we all know that it stinks to be a slave. Being an heir can bring great honor, and privilege, and opportunity, and delight. However, being an heir, in our world, is not always a good thing. It is certainly not good to be a slave, but it is only good to an heir in some circumstances. Do we want to inherit everything from our families? Some of us can say that we are proud to be our Father’s sons or daughters, but do we want to be an heir to everything that they have? Do we want to inherit their flaws, their debts, their pain, and their weaknesses?
So what is the difference in what our Father has for us? We are heirs to HIS Kingdom, and it is an everlasting, perfect, and joyous Kingdom. There is no pain, or weakness, or debt, or flaw. To be a slave in the Kingdom of the Lord would be a great honor, and yet He gives us even more! He has made us sons and daughters and heirs to everything He has! What a loving God. What a loving Father.
One of the songs that God gave us to sing this week is Better is One Day. Some of the lyrics are “Better is one day in Your courts, better is one day in Your house, better is one day in Your courts that thousands elsewhere.” I love this song, and our focus this week will be about the fact that we will be in His courts, in His house as heirs – not as slaves or servants. I know that I will want to serve Him, and that I will serve Him, but it will be as a beloved daughter. This is the gift that our generous God gives to those that He loves beyond measure. Hey! That includes YOU!
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Posted by Adam Desmond on June 28, 2010
This summer, CrossLand is studying joy, and the first passage we looked at was was Isaiah 55:12.
For you will go out with joy And be led forth with peace; The mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, And all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
This is an example of Hebrew poetry, as well as parallelism. Hebrew poetry frequently uses this parallelism to link two similar thoughts or ideas. You can see it in most of the psalms and proverbs, and I believe that’s what we have here, two sets of two statements, saying similar things, in slightly different ways, to highlight the meaning of the passage. The first set (“you will go out with joy” and “be led forth with peace”) seem to be saying the same thing two different ways. To me, that means that the author saw peace and joy as very similar and related. So how are they the same?
I believe that joy and peace are both related to our possession of that which our hearts deeply desire. Joy is an intense and usually short-lived expression of emotion related to either the initial possession of the object of our heart’s desire, or a re-acquainting with that object. Peace, then, is the ongoing emotional state related to the continued possession of the object of our heart’s desire. I kind of liken it to being warm. If you’ve just walked through a blizzard into a warm room, the emotional release at feeling the warmth of the room is very different than someone who has been sitting in the room and continues to feel and appreciate the warmth in comparison to the cold outside, but it can’t and won’t be as intense an emotion. This reliance on external stimuli isn’t always necessary for joy to exist, though, as the man who had been in the blizzard can always recall that feeling, and the corresponding emotional response is just as real. But I do believe experiencing the absence of that desire intensifies our joy when we finally possess it.
I also think that the next two lines relate to our grasping of the joy (initial reaction) and peace (ongoing reaction) that God provides his children through the methods described earlier in the chapter (Come and listen, receive grace and forgiveness, understand our relationship and dependence on God, etc). To me, the natural world would have been the pinnacle of beauty and God’s crowning achievement to Isaiah and his audience. The majesty of a mountain, likely the largest object in their collective consciousness, stood for power and strength beyond the abilities of man to fully grasp. The tree, and how a mighty oak grows from a single acorn, showed the ability of God to create something truly amazing out of something seemingly insignificant. For these objects of man’s awe and appreciation to be pictured viewing man’s peace and joy as worthy of praise would have held deep significance for the reader. To see their own worth in comparison to the most amazing objects in their world would have captured their imagination and helped them to grasp the deep love God showed in providing them with these gifts. They would see that these gifts were not just special for the man experiencing them, but intrinsically special, valued and coveted and praised by all of creation. Because in the end, joy and peace are both dependent on our understanding and appreciation of that which is possessed.
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Posted by Adam Desmond on June 8, 2010
This is a story that I’ve been thinking about writing for ten years. The miracle of Jesus healing the paralytic has always intrigued me. I always wondered why it was that Jesus first forgave the man’s sins, then healed him. I believe this is the only time that Jesus first addressed a man’s sin prior to healing him. This story is my attempt at a response to that question. I have no basis for believing that this is actually how the events recorded in Mark occurred (although I have tried not to deviate from the basic facts of the biblical story). This is simply my impression of the spirit of the story.
—–
I woke up that morning sobbing, which was, in a way, a nice break from waking up screaming.
My daughter slowly opened the door to my room.
“Are you alright, Daddy?”
Daddy, I thought. Why did she still call me that? The word certainly didn’t describe my relationship with her. Not since the accident.
Once I had been a man, a husband, a father. Now I was just a burden.
My daughter came over and gave me a hug. I couldn’t decide which was worse, the fact that I couldn’t hug her back, or the fact that I didn’t want to.
Four years. How could anyone be expected to endure this torture?
After my morning bath, the house had settled into the normal routine, with my wife preparing food for the day, my daughter helping, and my son heading out to the stables where I used to work.
He’s the head of this household now. Such a burden for a boy of fifteen. He must hate me.
I saw hate everywhere I looked. Even the love that still glowed in my wife’s eyes just seemed like pity these days. And I hated her for that. I hated that she stayed with me, subjected herself to this life. She deserved so much better than what we had been given…
A life without hope.
I had stopped dreaming of being whole long ago. That wasn’t why I screamed every morning when I woke up, and it wasn’t why I was sobbing that day. I only had one dream, and it never came true. I only had one desire, and it seemed like God hated me too much to give it to me.
All I wanted was death.
Back before I stopped praying, the only thing I ever asked for was to free my family from this hell. Day after day I would spend my every waking moment consumed in fervent prayers for my demise.
Please, LORD. Release my family from this prison. Let them start a new life.
But my prayers were never answered. The heavens closed up, and I was left screaming at the ceiling. I finally gave up.
I tried for a while to repent for whatever sin I had committed to deserve this life. Then I tried to live a life deserving of death. I tried to drive away everyone that cared about me, I cursed God, I spat on anyone who came near me. Eventually most people stopped visiting.
Except four. And I heard their voices outside my house. They were telling my wife something, I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but they sounded different. Excited.
Soon they were in my room, preparing a mat to take me somewhere. I didn’t even acknowledge their presence. They were used to my ambivalence, so they simply picked me up and started out the door, without even giving me an explanation.
Soon we came upon a crowd of people outside a house. I couldn’t see how many, but it soon became obvious that this was where my friends were taking me. They tried to squeeze through the crowd, but carrying me made it impossible to navigate through the throng of people, all of them just as eager to enter this house as my friends were.
Idiots.
Another “miracle cure.” Dozens of times I had been literally dragged to this pool or that temple. They were convinced that there was a way to heal my body. They didn’t realize that there were only two possible explanations for my condition.
First, there was no God. This was actually the better of the two options, because it meant that this was all just dumb luck, there was no master plan, there was no sin to atone for or higher power to consult. Bad things happened to good people for no reason and that was the end of it.
Second, and this was my preferred theory, there was a God, and He hated me. I had wronged Him somehow, and this was my punishment. So they were idiots for asking anyone to help me. If anything helping me would make God hate them.
Either way, there wasn’t any chance I was ever getting out of this.
Soon, I saw daylight, and realized that they had found a way onto the upper level of the house. They found a purchase and had removed some of the roof. Inside I heard a man talking. I don’t really remember what he said, but I remember how he talked. He talked with authority. I had never heard anyone talk like that. He didn’t just teach like he knew the material. He taught like it was his idea. I heard someone push through the crowd asking to be healed. The man simply said, “Your faith has made you whole.” The reaction of the crowd was enough to convince me that this man might actually be able to heal me.
My friends lowered me into the room, and I found myself looking up at this man who had been teaching. He looked at me, through me, his eyes penetrating into my soul. I could see in his face that he saw my thoughts, he could somehow feel my hatred. He saw my misery. He knew my one desire. Not to be healed, but to die.
“Your sins are forgiven.”
When he said those words, he used that same tone of authority I had heard him using earlier. When he spoke them, I could feel a stone being lifted off of my chest. He had seen my thoughts, and felt my despair, and yet I was forgiven. No one, not even my family, knew the depth of my depravity, how I had hated them all, most of all myself. It was only then that I realized that my soul was more need of healing than my body. Somehow this man knew that, and had the power to forgive me for the things I had done and said and thought. But the most amazing part was…
I actually felt forgiven. The darkness inside of me had been shattered by those four little words. And through the shards came a flood of emotion. I knew what I needed to do, and couldn’t wait to see my family, to ask their forgiveness, to begin restoring our life together. While I was lost in these thoughts, the man had been speaking to the others, then looked down at me again and said, “Get up, take your mat, and go home.”
Yes, I thought. I need to go to my family, start being a father again, start healing the wounds I’ve caused by my callous actions.
It took me a few seconds to realize what had happened. I saw the faces of those in the crowd, and a hush fell over the room. I craned around to see what they were looking at, and realized that they were all looking at me.
I was standing.
I looked down at my mat, and I looked back at this man. Again, his eyes penetrated me, and this time, I could feel his thoughts, his great love, and his happiness for me. I was confused, because everything inside me wanted to fall at this man’s feet, spend the rest of my life offering him my gratitude. But my family…
Go…and give them a hug for me.
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Posted by Windy Desmond on April 20, 2010
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Galations 2:20
This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible, and it is part of the passage that we will be studying for the next two weeks. I have often wondered why this is one of my favorite verses. I have loved it since I was 16. It is not soft, or particularly beautiful, and it speaks of pain and loss. The first part indicates a total loss of rights, and also death to self. The second part is more encouraging – but still hard. It dictates living by faith in our Lord, in His Son, and the price that He paid for our wickedness. This is a tough verse!
So why do I love it? First, it does not pull any punches. This verse tells it like it is, and sums up so much of what our walk is supposed to be about. This is no “lukewarm” Christianity; this is what we strive for, this is the battle, this crucifixion is what God truly wants for us. How much do I have to die to self? Daily. Minute by minute. All the time, because Christ Himself lives in me. What a great honor! I want to do this, but it is oh so hard. Can I do it by myself? This really is a stupid question. No. not even close. And that is where the second part of the verse starts. “The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God…” It is only by faith that we can die to self. It is only by faith and trust that we can allow ourselves to be crucified with Christ. And why do we have this faith in the Son of God? Because He has given everything for us. He loves us more than we will ever know. “…who loved me and gave Himself for me.” He gave Himself, willingly, so that we could be saved from our sins, yes, but also so that we could have a relationship with Him and His Father. So that we can walk with Him, talk with Him, and receive His care and love and words anytime we choose to listen. I am overjoyed that He loves me enough (and more) to give me the gift of Himself. It is the only gift worth receiving. I pray that the Lord will help me die to myself so that I will experience, more and more, Christ living in me.
The focus song for this Sunday that God gave to me is Blessed Be Your Name. It speaks of being crucified with Christ, but living by faith and choosing to praise God in the midst of pain and heartbreak. That kind of faith can only come from Christ. We cannot manufacture it! Here are some of the lyrics:
Blessed be Your name when the sun’s shining down on me, when the world’s all as it should be, blessed be Your name. Blessed be Your name on the road marked with suffering, when there’s pain in the offering, blessed be Your name.
Every blessing You pour out I’ll turn back to praise. When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say…
Blessed be the name of the Lord! Blessed be Your name. Blessed be the name of the Lord! Blessed be Your glorious name!
You give and take away – but my heart will choose to say – blessed be Your name!
We will be singing Blessed Be Your Name this Sunday. My prayer will be that I mean these lyrics when I sing them, and that the reason that I bless the Lord’s name is because of the Faith in His son Jesus, “…who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Amen.
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Posted by Adam Desmond on April 1, 2010
I’ve always thought that my daughter is a pretty good mix of both her parents. I see both of us in her in different situations. Sometimes that is immensely satisfying, sometimes infuriating, sometimes heartbreaking. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a great kid, but I can tell that she’s going to struggle with many of the problems we had to deal with. So in a lot of ways, I see in her the nature we used to have. She is walking the road we’ve been down.
This week I’ve been impressed with the nature of God, and specifically his generosity. There are many examples, in my job, at home, with my family, His nature is to give and so I receive. And the most obvious example is in His Son. Of all the things that have ever been, Jesus was and is the most important. And I believe the most precious to God. Because of all the beings that have ever been, only Jesus shares God’s nature. He is the one and only begotten. I cannot imagine what Jesus means to the Father. Words fail me.
And yet His nature is to give. And so when the need of man presented itself, God’s answer to our problem was to give us that which was most precious in Heaven and Earth. And by giving His Son, He has also given us His nature. We can become His children most when we give.
I’m learning this, painfully slowly it seems, and yet I can tell that this nature is embedded in me, because I want to give it to my daughter. I want others to understand what it is that I’ve been given. And so as Easter comes, we are once again reminded of our most precious gift. And I want to remember that gift not by dressing up and going to church on Sunday. I want to give. I want to grasp the nature of my Father and in so doing, make it my own. I want to give that which is most precious to me – my life.
Of course, I’m anything but the spotless lamb that Jesus is. And yet I want to give my life, blemishes and all, as a reminder of what I’ve been given. As a testimony of the nature that was given to me when Jesus bore the penalty for my sin.
And so I invite you to do the same. Our nature as Christians is to become like our Father. So let us all give of the bounty we’ve received. Have you received something this week that you didn’t deserve? Does someone owe you something? Has someone let you down? Give. Give without reservation. Give with a humble spirit.
Father, impart on your children the birthright of Your nature.
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Posted by Adam Desmond on March 22, 2010
This Sunday was a great example of what is so cool about CrossLand, or more specifically, how God does things at our church. This happens almost every Sunday, but this week it really shows what God is doing in a powerful way.
What God likes to do is show us, basically, how little we matter, and how important we are.
Read it again.
Our God is a God of paradoxes. I would hate to think about trying to be a Christian without embracing the paradoxical nature of the Christian walk. Many have fallen away from the faith due to the seemingly insurmountable obstacles these paradoxes present (Narrow is the way…). But if you can embrace them, the world literally opens up to you.
So we make plans in our church. We’re very intentional about what we teach and when and how. And we’re always very careful to make sure that those plans are God’s plans and not ours. One way that we can tell that they’re God’s plans is the amazing way that things get linked together. For instance, our Sunday School class is working through the book of James, and Sunday we were talking about how we presume to make plans when we really have no idea what will happen tomorrow, when we are just vapors. How arrogant to think we know what will happen.
And then we got to hear the sermon Buddy preached about the sovereignty of God, and how the gospel of Christ was not given to us by men, but by God, through His chosen servant, Paul. Paul says that he was chosen before birth to be an apostle.
Now think about that one. God chose Paul (or Saul) before he was born, yet allowed him to persecute the church before revealing Himself on the road to Damascus. Many Christians died because of Saul. Surely this wasn’t God’s will.
Yet we are still vapors. We still only see in part. In order to judge whether or not this should have happened, we would have to know more than God.
It is certainly possible that Paul disobeyed God by persecuting Christians, and by doing so merely delayed what God’s plan was for him. But I think it’s also possible that Paul needed to fail, he needed to go down that dark road, so that God could show Paul the light. Maybe those Christians who were persecuted and murdered allowed Saul to become Paul. But the whole point is that we don’t know; only God does. We assume so much. We think we understand, when the reality is that only God truly knows anything, and that which is revealed to us comes from Him.
And God showed us this picture of His sovereignty by tying together the passage in Galatians and the passage in James on this Sunday. These passages were hand picked by God to fit together perfectly in order to illuminate His plan for us. What a wonderful way to show us just how little we can see on our own, and the lengths He goes to provide His children with His wisdom.
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Posted by Adam Desmond on March 14, 2010
Today my family went out shopping and I was looking through some pictures. For some reason, there was one print that caught my eye. It was a picture of a wall, made of stone and mud, with two windows in it, one directly above the other. The caption below the photo was “Psalm 91:1 – He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.”
It was interesting, but I moved on and went about the rest of my day.
Tonight I was asked to pray for a friend along with others in our church, and when we got going, the leader said that God had given him a passage for this prayer time.
Can you guess which passage?
So as we read through the psalm, I began seeing the picture in my mind, and God used the imagery in that picture to shape many of the prayers for this person. It was so powerful, and came as a direct result of God calling me to this picture.
God does this in so many ways with me. A billboard, a ray of light through the clouds, an off-hand comment spoken without thinking, a conversation I have with my daughter. God speaks to us in so many ways.
But are we listening?
Part of the problem is that most of the time we aren’t expecting Him to speak to us. We aren’t expecting an answer at all, sometimes, but then we really don’t expect it to come in the voice of a child, or a rock in the sand. But should this really surprise us? The infinitely creative God that spoke the Universe into existence can and does communicate with us in ways that transcend mere words.
So I want to encourage you this week to expect God to speak to you. Watch for His words in every situation. Seek out His answers where you are. I believe you’ll find, as I have, that the means of communication are just as important as the messages.
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Posted by Buddy Westbrook on March 11, 2010
I am new to blogging and this is my very first attempt. This is an article written by one of my favorite authors. It expresses well some of the basis for my personal philosophy of life and seems to be a good way to better get to know me. Please read if you are curious or simply enjoy reading.
Buddy
The Waning Authority of Christ in the Churches
By A. W. Tozer
(as appeared in God Tells the Man Who cares, 1970, Christian Publications, Inc.)
Here is the burden of my heart; and while I claim for myself no special inspiration I yet feel that this is also the burden of the Spirit.
If I know my own heart it is love alone that moves me to write this. What I write here is not the sour ferment of a mind agitated by contentions with my fellow Christians. There have been no such contentions. I have not been abused, mistreated or attacked by anyone. Nor have these observations grown out of any unpleasant experiences that I have had in my association with others. My relations with my own church as well as with Christians of other denominations have been friendly, courteous and pleasant. My grief is simply the result of a condition which I believe to be almost universally prevalent among the churches.
I think also that I should acknowledge that I am myself very much involved in the situation I here deplore. As Ezra in his mighty prayer of intercession included himself among the wrong-doers, so do I. “O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God; for our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens.” Any hard word spoken here against others must in simple honesty return upon my own head. I too have been guilty. This is written with the hope that we all may turn unto the Lord our God and sin no more against Him.
Let me state the cause of my burden. It is this: Jesus Christ has today almost no authority at all among the groups that call themselves by His name. By these I mean not the Roman Catholics nor the liberals, nor the various quasi-Christian cults. I do mean Protestant churches generally, and I include those that protest the loudest that they are in spiritual descent from our Lord and His apostles, namely, the evangelicals.
It is a basic doctrine of the New Testament that after His resurrection the Man Jesus was declared by God to be both Lord and Christ, and that He was invested by the Father with absolute Lordship over the church which is His Body. All authority is His in heaven and in earth. In His own proper time He will exert it to the full, but during this period in history He allows this authority to be challenged or ignored. And just now it is being challenged by the world and ignored by the church.
The present position of Christ in the gospel churches may be likened to that of a king in a limited, constitutional monarchy. The king (sometimes depersonalized by the term “the Crown”) is in such a country no more than a traditional rallying point, a pleasant symbol of unity and loyalty much like a flag or a national anthem. He is lauded, feted and supported, but his real authority is small. Nominally he is head over all, but in every crisis someone else makes the decisions. On formal occasions he appears in his royal attire to deliver the tame, colorless speech put into his mouth by the real rulers of the country. The whole thing may be no more than good-natured make-believe, but it is rooted in antiquity, it is a lot of fun and no one wants to give it up.
Among the gospel churches Christ is now in fact little more than a beloved symbol. “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” is the church’s national anthem and the cross is her official flag, but in the week-by-week services of the church and the day-by-day conduct of her members someone else, not Christ, makes the decisions. Under proper circumstances Christ is allowed to say “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden” or “Let not your heart be troubled,” but when the speech is finished someone else takes over. Those in actual authority decide the moral standards of the church, as well as all objectives and all methods employed to achieve them. Because of long and meticulous organization it is now possible for the youngest pastor just out of seminary to have more actual authority in a church than Jesus Christ has.
Not only does Christ have little or no authority; His influence also is becoming less and less. I would not say that He has none, only that it is small and diminishing. A fair parallel would be the influence of Abraham Lincoln over the American people. Honest Abe is still the idol of the country. The likeness of his kind, rugged face, so homely that it is beautiful, appears everywhere. It is easy to grow misty-eyed over him. Children are brought up on stories of his love, his honesty and his humility.
But after we have gotten control over our tender emotions what have we left? No more than a good example which, as it recedes into the past, becomes more and more unreal and exercises less and less real influence. Every scoundrel is ready to wrap Lincoln’s long black coat around him. In the cold light of political facts in the United States the constant appeal to Lincoln by the politicians is a cynical joke.
The Lordship of Jesus is not quite forgotten among Christians, but it has been relegated to the hymnal where all responsibility toward it may be comfortably discharged in a glow of pleasant religious emotion. Or if it is taught as a theory in the classroom it is rarely applied to practical living. The idea that the Man Christ Jesus has absolute and final authority over the whole church and over all of its members in every detail of their lives is simply not now accepted as true by the rank and file of evangelical Christians.
What we do is this: We accept the Christianity of our group as being identical with that of Christ and His apostles. The beliefs, the practices, the ethics, the activities of our group are equated with the Christianity of the New Testament. Whatever the group thinks or says or does is scriptural, no questions asked. It is assumed that all our Lord expects of us is that we busy ourselves with the activities of the group. In so doing we are keeping the commandments of Christ.
To avoid the hard necessity of either obeying or rejecting the plain instructions of our Lord in the New Testament we take refuge in a liberal interpretation of them. Casuistry is not the possession of Roman Catholic theologians alone. We evangelicals also know how to avoid the sharp point of obedience by means of fine and intricate explanations. These are tailor-made for the flesh. They excuse disobedience, comfort carnality and make the words of Christ of none effect. And the essence of it all is that Christ simply could not have meant what He said. His teachings are accepted even theoretically only after they have been weakened by interpretation.
Yet Christ is consulted by increasing numbers of persons with “problems” and sought after by those who long for peace of mind. He is widely recommended as a kind of spiritual psychiatrist with remarkable powers to straighten people out. He is able to deliver them from their guilt complexes and to help them to avoid serious psychic traumas by making a smooth and easy adjustment to society and to their own ids. Of course this strange Christ has no relation whatever to the Christ of the New Testament. The true Christ is also Lord, but this accommodating Christ is little more than the servant of the people.
But I suppose I should offer some concrete proof to support my charge that Christ has little or no authority today among the churches. Well, let me put a few questions and let the answers be the evidence.
What church board consults our Lord’s words to decide matters under discussion? Let anyone reading this who has had experience on a church board try to recall the times or time when any board member read from the Scriptures to make a point, or when any chairman suggested that the brethren should see what instructions the Lord had for them on a particular question. Board meetings are habitually opened with a formal prayer or “a season of prayer”; after that the Head of the Church is respectfully silent while the real rulers take over. Let anyone who denies this bring forth evidence to refute it. I for one will be glad to hear it.
What Sunday school committee goes to the Word for directions? Do not the members invariably assume that they already know what they are supposed to do and that their only problem is to find effective means to get it done? Plans, rules, “operations” and new methodological techniques absorb all their time and attention. The prayer before the meeting is for divine help to carry out their plans. Apparently the idea that the Lord might have some instructions for them never so much as enters their heads.
Who remembers when a conference chairman brought his Bible to the table with him for the purpose of using it? Minutes, regulations, rules of order, yes. The sacred commandments of the Lord, no. An absolute dichotomy exists between the devotional period and the business session. The first has no relation to the second.
What foreign mission board actually seeks to follow the guidance of the Lord as provided by His Word and His Spirit? They all think they do, but what they do in fact is to assume the scripturalness of their ends and then ask for help to find ways to achieve them. They may pray all night for God to give success to their enterprises, but Christ is desired as their helper, not as their Lord. Human means are devised to achieve ends assumed to be divine. These harden into policy, and thereafter the Lord doesn’t even have a vote.
In the conduct of our public worship where is the authority of Christ to be found? The truth is that today the Lord rarely controls a service, and the influence He exerts is very small. We sing of Him and preach about Him, but He must not interfere; we worship our way, and it must be right because we have always done it that way, as have the other churches in our group.
What Christian when faced with a moral problem goes straight to the Sermon on the Mount or other New Testament Scripture for the authoritative answer? Who lets the words of Christ be final on giving, birth control, the bringing up of a family, personal habits, tithing, entertainment, buying, selling and other such important matters?
What theological school, from the lowly Bible institute up, could continue to operate if it were to make Christ Lord of its every policy? There may be some, and I hope there are, but I believe I am right when I say that most such schools to stay in business are forced to adopt procedures which find no justification in the Bible they profess to teach. So we have this strange anomaly; the authority of Christ is ignored in order to maintain a school to teach among other things the authority of Christ.
The causes back of the decline in our Lord’s authority are many. I name only two.
One is the power of custom, precedent and tradition within the older religious groups. These like gravitation affect every particle of religious practice within the group, exerting a steady and constant pressure in one direction. Of course that direction is toward conformity to the status quo. Not Christ but custom is lord in this situation. And the same thing has passed over (possibly to a slightly lesser degree) into the other groups such as the full gospel tabernacles, the holiness churches, the Pentecostal and fundamental churches and the many independent and undenominational churches found everywhere throughout the North American continent.
The second cause is the revival of intellectualism among the evangelicals. This, if I sense the situation correctly, is not so much a thirst for learning as a desire for a reputation of being learned. Because of it good men who ought to know better are being put in the position of collaborating with the enemy. I’ll explain.
Our evangelical faith (which I believe to be the true faith of Christ and His apostles) is being attacked these days from many different directions. In the Western world the enemy has forsworn violence. He comes against us no more with sword and fagot; he now comes smiling, bearing gifts. He raises his eyes to heaven and swears that he too believes in the faith of our fathers, but his real purpose is to destroy that faith, or at least to modify it to such an extent that it is no longer the supernatural thing it once was. He comes in the name of philosophy or psychology or anthropology, and with sweet reasonableness urges us to rethink our historic position, to be less rigid, more tolerant, more broadly understanding.
He speaks in the sacred jargon of the schools, and many of our half-educated evangelicals run to fawn on him. He tosses academic degrees to the scrambling sons of the prophets as Rockefeller used to toss dimes to the children of the peasants. The evangelicals who, with some justification, have been accused of lacking true scholarship, now grab for these status symbols with shining eyes, and when they get them they are scarcely able to believe their eyes. They walk about in a kind of ecstatic unbelief, much as the soloist of the neighborhood church choir might were she to be invited to sing at La Scala.
For the true Christian the one supreme test for the present soundness and ultimate worth of everything religious must be the place our Lord occupies in it. Is He Lord or symbol? Is He in charge of the project or merely one of the crew? Does He decide things or only help to carry out the plans of others? All religious activities, from the simplest act of an individual Christian to the ponderous and expensive operations of a whole denomination, may be proved by the answer to the question, Is Jesus Christ Lord in this act? Whether our works prove to be wood, hay and stubble or gold and silver and precious stones in that great day will depend upon the right answer to that question.
What, then are we to do? Each one of us must decide, and there are at least three possible choices. One is to rise up in shocked indignation and accuse me of irresponsible reporting. Another is to nod general agreement with what is written here but take comfort in the fact that there are exceptions and we are among the exceptions. The other is to go down in meek humility and confess that we have grieved the Spirit and dishonored our Lord in failing to give Him the place His Father has given Him as Head and Lord of the Church.
Either the first or the second will but confirm the wrong. The third if carried out to its conclusion can remove the curse. The decision lies with us.
This article appeared in the Alliance Witness May 15, 1963, just two days after the death of Dr. Tozer. In a sense it was his valedictory, for it expressed the concern of his heart. Because of its wide acceptance it has been included in this selection.
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Posted by Windy Desmond on March 10, 2010
This week we are studying Galations 1:6-10. One of the things that Paul is talking to us about is remaining steadfast in our faith, and ignoring anyone who might teach something different or pervert the gospel of Christ. He warns us about this quite strongly. His words are, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” So how do we do this? How do we remain steadfast in the Lord? I know that I do not have a perfect answer. I believe that part of it is talking to Him and hearing His voice. Part is reading the Bible and knowing the gospel. Part is confessing our sins and experiencing God’s forgiveness. Here is the part that I want to work on this week – asking the Lord to help me. I think that we think that remaining steadfast is something we are supposed to do in our own strength. That if we are weak and have to ask for God’s help, we failed. The opposite is true! It pleases God so much when we ask Him for His help! We are never on our own with anything God asks from us.
Do I just need to remain steadfast in my faith? Oh, no. There are so many other areas in which I want to remain steadfast, and I want (and need) the Lord’s help! I want to remain steadfast in my parenting, my marriage, my ministry, my obedience, etc. etc. I am confident that my Father will help me with all of these things if I only ask. In what do you want to remain steadfast? Will you ask for His help?
Our focus song this week is Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus. As we are asking for the Father’s help, we keep our eyes on His Son, looking full in His wonderful face. Here are the lyrics to this beautiful song – it is one of my favorites.
“Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.”
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Posted by Jennifer Young on March 8, 2010
This week I had a new and fun experience with the Lord. I was on my way into a meeting and had really hoped to have time to meet with God on some things before going into the meeting. As my LIFE hit me that week it this time with the Lord had not happened. I arrived at my meeting place 15 minutes before my meeting was to start. I would normally make some phone calls , balance my checkbook….things that need to be done that I could take advantage of these few spare moments. As I began to think through this I heard clearly from the Lord…lets talk about your meeting. This made me very uncomfortable as I felt that 15 min. was not nearly long enough for me to have the my time with my Lord “the way that I desired” before entering my meeting. He continued to nudge me and I gave in! I had my journal in the car with me and picked it up, pen in hand and began talking to the Lord. I first shared with him that I really did not like doing things this way with Him! I wanted more time, I wanted “our special spot” in my home, and I wanted to not feel rushed. I wanted to give Him more of me than I felt able to give in this situation. I felt the Lord’s delight in me and how He has made me when He received from me these thoughts and my hearts desire to have a “moment” with Him instead of coming quickly to get what I need. He then proceeded to tell me that as we (He and I ) walk and talk more He wants more times like this with me. Imagine my shock…..he really wants me to come and just take from Him without giving Him anything!
What He showed me in a way that only He can is that if we are going to be always talking and walking through life together that there are times that we need “power talks”. He wants access and the ability to speak into all areas of my life. In order to do this there will be many times that I come and “get what I need from Him”. He likes this and will actually enjoy me doing this. He gave me the example of my relationship with my husband. In our relationship there are times of deep intimacy and understanding. There are also a lot of times of taking care of business and talking about what has to be talked about because there is time for only that. Because my God desires to be my friend, my counselor, my ALL He wants me to receive from Him in many ways….including this one!
This is uncomfortable for me but I do want it ALL! I look forward to experiencing the Lord this way more and more as He shows me more that when I come to Him desiring to listen, He will give me the richest of who He is….it is not about what I bring but instead about who He is! Praise God!
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