I saw Glory in the Gospel in the eyes of my heart!
The battle for joy is the battle to keep on seeing Glory.
Verses of promise listed here
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Thursday, November 16, 2017
https://faithunlocked.wordpress.com/2014/09/27/quotes-on-idolatry/
“Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected. In the wilderness God gave Israel the manna every day, and they had no need to worry about food and drink. Indeed, if they kept any of the manna over until the next day, it went bad. In the same way, the disciple must receive his portion from God every day. If he stores it up as a permanent possession, he spoils not only the gift, but himself as well, for he sets his heart on accumulated wealth, and makes it a barrier between himself and God. Where our treasure is, there is our trust, our security, our consolation and our God. Hoarding is idolatry.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
“I believe a significant segment of American evangelicalism is guilty of nationalistic and political idolatry. To a frightful degree, I think, evangelicals fuse the kingdom of God with a preferred version of the kingdom of the world (whether it’s our national interests, a particular form of government, a particular political program, or so on). Rather than focusing our understanding of God’s kingdom on the person of Jesus—who, incidentally, never allowed himself to get pulled into the political disputes of his day—I believe many of us American evangelicals have allowed our understanding of the kingdom of God to be polluted with political ideals, agendas, and issues.”
― Gregory A. Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church
“The first sin was rebellion, idolatry, treason, and pride, all rolled into a single bite. Both Adam and Eve made a conscious choice to rebel against their Creator and live on their own terms. And we imitate their decision every time we choose our desires over God’s.”
― Francis Chan, Multiply: Disciples Making Disciples
“The universe shudders in horror that we have this infinitely valuable, infinitely deep, infinitely rich, infinitely wise, infinitely loving God, and instead of pursuing him with steadfast passion and enthralled fury — instead of loving him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; instead of attributing to him glory and honor and praise and power and wisdom and strength — we just try to take his toys and run. It is still idolatry to want God for his benefits but not for himself.”
― Matt Chandler, The Explicit Gospel
“He who loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.’ That’s not really cruel. Loving Christ more than our fathers and mothers simply saves the love we have for our parents from idolatry…. God, as the source of love, is the proper head of every loving household.”
― William Sloane Coffin
“If the heart be chiefly and directly fixed on God, and the soul engaged to glorify him, some degree of religious affection will be the effect and attendant of it. But to seek after affection directly and chiefly; to have the heart principally set upon that; is to place it in the room of God and his glory. If it be sought, that others may take notice of it, and admire us for our spirituality and forwardness in religion, it is then damnable pride; if for the sake of feeling the pleasure of being affected, it is then idolatry and self-gratification.”
― Jonathan Edwards, The Life and Diary of David Brainerd
“When something becomes so important to you that it drives your behavior and commands your emotions, you are worshipping it.”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary
“Here’s the point: idolatry is the tree from which our sins and struggles grow.”
― Kyle Idleman, Gods at War: Defeating the Idols that Battle for Your Heart
“When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshipping. When such a thing is threatened, your anger is absolute. Your anger is actually the way the idol keeps you in its service, in its chains. Therefore if you find that, despite all the efforts to forgive, your anger and bitterness cannot subside, you may need to look deeper and ask, ‘What am I defending? What is so important that I cannot live without?’ It may be that, until some inordinate desire is identified and confronted, you will not be able to master your anger.”
― Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters
“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
― Anne Lamott
“One of the dangers of having a lot of money is that you may be quite satisfied with the kinds of happiness money can give, and so fail to realize your need for God. If everything seems to come simply by signing checks, you may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God. Now, quite plainly natural gifts carry with them a similar danger. If you have sound nerves and intelligence and health and popularity and a good upbringing, you are likely to be quite satisfied with your character as it is. “Why drag God into it?” you may ask. A certain level of good conduct comes fairly easily to you. You are not one of those wretched creatures who are always being tripped up by sex or dipsomania or nervousness or bad temper. Everyone says you are a nice chap, and between ourselves, you agree with them. You are quite likely to believe that all this niceness is your own doing, and you may easily not feel the need for any better kind of goodness. Often people who have all these natural kinds of goodness cannot be brought to recognize their need for Christ at all until one day, the natural goodness lets them down, and their self-satisfaction is shattered. In other words, it is hard for those who are rich in this sense to enter the kingdom.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“My point is that when we ask people what they want in church instead of giving them what they were created to long for, we play into the very idolatry that church was created to dismantle.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.
“Every man becomes the image of the God he adores.
He whose worship is directed to a dead thing becomes dead.
He who loves corruption rots.
He who loves a shadow becomes, himself, a shadow.
He who loves things that must perish lives in dread of their perishing.”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
“Five obstacles block our access to the benefits God wants for us: Unbelief, which hinders knowing God Pride, which prevents us from glorifying God Idolatry, which keeps us from being satisfied with God Prayerlessness, which blocks our experience of God’s peace Legalism, which stops our enjoyment of God’s presence”
― Beth Moore, Breaking Free
“What are you really living for? It’s crucial to realize that you either glorify God, or you glorify something or someone else. You’re always making something look big. If you don’t glorify God when you’re involved in a conflict, you inevitably show that someone or something else rules your heart.”
― Ken Sande, Resolving Everyday Conflict
“God is most high. To choose God, his light, his way his truth (all Christ), means everything flows from the highest point. To choose something lesser is to compel your life to flow from a lesser rise — a hill, rather than a mountain.”
― Elizabeth Scalia
“If you uproot the idol and fail to plant the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything
“Idolatry is when you become the source of your own joy. Poverty of spirit is a wonderful thing.”
― Paul Washer
“We have lived for too long in a world, and tragically in a Church, where the wills and affections of human beings are regarded as sacrosanct as they stand, where God is required to command what we already love, and to promise what we already desire.”
― N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
“When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what’s more, you reflect what you worship not only to the object itself but also outward to the world around. Those who worship money increasingly define themselves in terms of it and increasingly treat other people as creditors, debtors, partners, or customers rather than as human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories) and increasingly treat other people as actual or potential sex objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it and treat other people as either collaborators, competitors, or pawns. These and many other forms of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and of those whose lives they touch.”
― N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
“Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected. In the wilderness God gave Israel the manna every day, and they had no need to worry about food and drink. Indeed, if they kept any of the manna over until the next day, it went bad. In the same way, the disciple must receive his portion from God every day. If he stores it up as a permanent possession, he spoils not only the gift, but himself as well, for he sets his heart on accumulated wealth, and makes it a barrier between himself and God. Where our treasure is, there is our trust, our security, our consolation and our God. Hoarding is idolatry.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
“I believe a significant segment of American evangelicalism is guilty of nationalistic and political idolatry. To a frightful degree, I think, evangelicals fuse the kingdom of God with a preferred version of the kingdom of the world (whether it’s our national interests, a particular form of government, a particular political program, or so on). Rather than focusing our understanding of God’s kingdom on the person of Jesus—who, incidentally, never allowed himself to get pulled into the political disputes of his day—I believe many of us American evangelicals have allowed our understanding of the kingdom of God to be polluted with political ideals, agendas, and issues.”
― Gregory A. Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church
“The first sin was rebellion, idolatry, treason, and pride, all rolled into a single bite. Both Adam and Eve made a conscious choice to rebel against their Creator and live on their own terms. And we imitate their decision every time we choose our desires over God’s.”
― Francis Chan, Multiply: Disciples Making Disciples
“The universe shudders in horror that we have this infinitely valuable, infinitely deep, infinitely rich, infinitely wise, infinitely loving God, and instead of pursuing him with steadfast passion and enthralled fury — instead of loving him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; instead of attributing to him glory and honor and praise and power and wisdom and strength — we just try to take his toys and run. It is still idolatry to want God for his benefits but not for himself.”
― Matt Chandler, The Explicit Gospel
“He who loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.’ That’s not really cruel. Loving Christ more than our fathers and mothers simply saves the love we have for our parents from idolatry…. God, as the source of love, is the proper head of every loving household.”
― William Sloane Coffin
“If the heart be chiefly and directly fixed on God, and the soul engaged to glorify him, some degree of religious affection will be the effect and attendant of it. But to seek after affection directly and chiefly; to have the heart principally set upon that; is to place it in the room of God and his glory. If it be sought, that others may take notice of it, and admire us for our spirituality and forwardness in religion, it is then damnable pride; if for the sake of feeling the pleasure of being affected, it is then idolatry and self-gratification.”
― Jonathan Edwards, The Life and Diary of David Brainerd
“When something becomes so important to you that it drives your behavior and commands your emotions, you are worshipping it.”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary
“Here’s the point: idolatry is the tree from which our sins and struggles grow.”
― Kyle Idleman, Gods at War: Defeating the Idols that Battle for Your Heart
“When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshipping. When such a thing is threatened, your anger is absolute. Your anger is actually the way the idol keeps you in its service, in its chains. Therefore if you find that, despite all the efforts to forgive, your anger and bitterness cannot subside, you may need to look deeper and ask, ‘What am I defending? What is so important that I cannot live without?’ It may be that, until some inordinate desire is identified and confronted, you will not be able to master your anger.”
― Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters
“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
― Anne Lamott
“One of the dangers of having a lot of money is that you may be quite satisfied with the kinds of happiness money can give, and so fail to realize your need for God. If everything seems to come simply by signing checks, you may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God. Now, quite plainly natural gifts carry with them a similar danger. If you have sound nerves and intelligence and health and popularity and a good upbringing, you are likely to be quite satisfied with your character as it is. “Why drag God into it?” you may ask. A certain level of good conduct comes fairly easily to you. You are not one of those wretched creatures who are always being tripped up by sex or dipsomania or nervousness or bad temper. Everyone says you are a nice chap, and between ourselves, you agree with them. You are quite likely to believe that all this niceness is your own doing, and you may easily not feel the need for any better kind of goodness. Often people who have all these natural kinds of goodness cannot be brought to recognize their need for Christ at all until one day, the natural goodness lets them down, and their self-satisfaction is shattered. In other words, it is hard for those who are rich in this sense to enter the kingdom.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“My point is that when we ask people what they want in church instead of giving them what they were created to long for, we play into the very idolatry that church was created to dismantle.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.
“Every man becomes the image of the God he adores.
He whose worship is directed to a dead thing becomes dead.
He who loves corruption rots.
He who loves a shadow becomes, himself, a shadow.
He who loves things that must perish lives in dread of their perishing.”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
“Five obstacles block our access to the benefits God wants for us: Unbelief, which hinders knowing God Pride, which prevents us from glorifying God Idolatry, which keeps us from being satisfied with God Prayerlessness, which blocks our experience of God’s peace Legalism, which stops our enjoyment of God’s presence”
― Beth Moore, Breaking Free
“What are you really living for? It’s crucial to realize that you either glorify God, or you glorify something or someone else. You’re always making something look big. If you don’t glorify God when you’re involved in a conflict, you inevitably show that someone or something else rules your heart.”
― Ken Sande, Resolving Everyday Conflict
“God is most high. To choose God, his light, his way his truth (all Christ), means everything flows from the highest point. To choose something lesser is to compel your life to flow from a lesser rise — a hill, rather than a mountain.”
― Elizabeth Scalia
“If you uproot the idol and fail to plant the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything
“Idolatry is when you become the source of your own joy. Poverty of spirit is a wonderful thing.”
― Paul Washer
“We have lived for too long in a world, and tragically in a Church, where the wills and affections of human beings are regarded as sacrosanct as they stand, where God is required to command what we already love, and to promise what we already desire.”
― N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
“When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what’s more, you reflect what you worship not only to the object itself but also outward to the world around. Those who worship money increasingly define themselves in terms of it and increasingly treat other people as creditors, debtors, partners, or customers rather than as human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories) and increasingly treat other people as actual or potential sex objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it and treat other people as either collaborators, competitors, or pawns. These and many other forms of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and of those whose lives they touch.”
― N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
Sunday, November 12, 2017
"..A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no
further turned away from God would be just as desperately in need of salvation
as a miserable world---- and might even be more difficult to save. For mere
improvement is not redemption, though redemption always improves people even
here and now.."
- C.S. Lewis
The zing, the relevance
”If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desire not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, we are like ignorant children who want to continue making mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a vacation at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
- C.S. Lewis
My generation has traded infinite joy for drink and sex and ambition. I struggle with this a lot too, with being jealous of my peers. What does "drink" and "sex" and "ambition" look like colloquially? What are the pleasures of my generation, the generation of millennials and yuppies, and the generations to come (iGen/Gen Z)? How do we live for eternity Lord?
- C.S. Lewis
The zing, the relevance
”If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desire not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, we are like ignorant children who want to continue making mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a vacation at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
- C.S. Lewis
My generation has traded infinite joy for drink and sex and ambition. I struggle with this a lot too, with being jealous of my peers. What does "drink" and "sex" and "ambition" look like colloquially? What are the pleasures of my generation, the generation of millennials and yuppies, and the generations to come (iGen/Gen Z)? How do we live for eternity Lord?
https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/why-are-so-many-so-silent
http://adam4d.com/normal-christianity/
Sigh...these are so me. So so me right now...
https://vimeo.com/112919409
“God is the highest good of the reasonable creature. The enjoyment of him is our proper; and is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Better than fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of any, or all earthly friends. These are but shadows; but the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain. These are but drops, but God is the ocean.”
- Jonathan Edwards
“That very church which the world likes best is sure to be that which God abhors.”
- C.H. Spurgeon
Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives. Many have so light an apprehension of God’s holiness and of the extent and guilt for their sin that consciously they see little need for justification, although below the surface of their lives they are deeply guilt-ridden and insecure. Many others have a theoretical commitment to this doctrine, but in their day to day existence they rely on their sanctification for justification drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance or the relative infrequency of thier conscious, willful disobedience. Few know enough to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand on Luther’s platform: you are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance, relaxing in the quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctificaiton as faith is active in love and gratitude.
— Richard Lovelace
The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly
http://diendiendien.blogspot.com/2015/06/musings-at-4am-at-night.html
http://adam4d.com/normal-christianity/
Sigh...these are so me. So so me right now...
https://vimeo.com/112919409
“God is the highest good of the reasonable creature. The enjoyment of him is our proper; and is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Better than fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of any, or all earthly friends. These are but shadows; but the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain. These are but drops, but God is the ocean.”
- Jonathan Edwards
“That very church which the world likes best is sure to be that which God abhors.”
- C.H. Spurgeon
Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives. Many have so light an apprehension of God’s holiness and of the extent and guilt for their sin that consciously they see little need for justification, although below the surface of their lives they are deeply guilt-ridden and insecure. Many others have a theoretical commitment to this doctrine, but in their day to day existence they rely on their sanctification for justification drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance or the relative infrequency of thier conscious, willful disobedience. Few know enough to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand on Luther’s platform: you are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance, relaxing in the quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctificaiton as faith is active in love and gratitude.
— Richard Lovelace
The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly
- Provocations:
Spiritual Writings of Soren Kierkegaard
He is no
fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose
– Jim Elliothttp://diendiendien.blogspot.com/2015/06/musings-at-4am-at-night.html
"If
you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present
world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves,
who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up
the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all
left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with
Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world
that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get
earth "thrown in": aim at earth and you will get neither.”
- C.S. Lewis
- C.S. Lewis
Whom have I in heaven but You?
And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.
My flesh and my heart fail,
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
For, behold, those who are far from You will perish;
You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You.
But as me, the nearness of God is my good;
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
That I may tell of all Your works.
Earth holds no treasures
But perish with using,
However precious they be;
Yet there’s a country
To which I am going:
Heaven holds all to me.
Why should I long
For the world with its sorrows,
When in that home o’er the sea,
Millions are singing
The wonderful story?
Heaven holds all to me.
Heaven holds all to me,...
Brighter its glory will be;
Joy without measure
Will be my treasure:
Heaven holds all to me.
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.
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth
Will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.
Thursday, November 9, 2017
I was at a large conference and I’m backstage eating with some of the
other speakers. A guy called me “The Bible Guy.” The Bible Guy?
Shouldn’t we all be the Bible-Guy, dumb-dumb? Somehow,
hyper-fundamentalism and doctrine have become synonymous, and we’re lost
as to how worship has faded. Seeing God rightly stirs the affections of
the soul. Seeing God wrongly…Let’s do it this way.
- Matt Chandler
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/a-shepherd-and-his-unregenerate-sheep
- Matt Chandler
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/a-shepherd-and-his-unregenerate-sheep
Monday, November 6, 2017
Tension
The last two days have been really weighing on my heart, as
it has been for very member at Church of the Beloved. The bylaws didn’t pass,
but even if they had passed, there wouldn’t have been any victory. The single
most daunting question right now is this: God why did you let this issue become
this way? Why in your Holy Word did you make it so hard for us to see if women,
competent and faithful women, could teach or not?
I believe I owe it to all my sisters both an apology for not
listening close enough and not truly caring enough, and a duty to truly dig deeper
into the Word, the history and context, and find the underlying truth, and do
this without bias. Honestly I don’t think I will find a concrete answer, as I
know on both sides smarter and more holy theologians have debated and refuted
each other for centuries and only coming to half-conclusions and
conglomerations of haphazardly woven arguments. I also acknowledge the reality of the overwhelming number of white male theologians whose interpretation of Scripture
dictate the serving limitations of my sisters in Christ. I am also saddened how
little I could find on that side women theologians who have done the research
and came to same conclusion. To that end, I only found bits and pieces of fluff, as such is the
irony of the Complementarianism viewpoint. Even if I do come to a conclusion
within the next month or so, I will arrive at it begrudgingly, as I did with
going from being an Armenian (free-will determinism) to about 80% Calvinism. I
came to that conclusion partially due to my own testimony, and partially
because I started reading and taking Scripture seriously. I say begrudgingly
because I see a lot of pride in those who call themselves Calvinists. There is
nothing to be proud of, but instead much to be humbled by the view of
predestination and awe of God’s sovereignty. I will always refuse to call
myself a Calvinist because I am a Christian, a Christ follower, and that is my
sole identity. I want to echo Paul’s
warning in 1 Corinthians 1:12-17 here as well (My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me
that there are quarrels among you. What
I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”;
another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”Is Christ divided?
Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God
that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, so no one can say
that you were baptized in my name. (Yes, I also baptized the household of
Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.) For Christ
did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and
eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.)
There is always an underlying problem within this problem,
and that is the problem of abuse. I look at the Old Testament, and I find so
much abuse of women. Sarah. Hagar. Leah. Rachel. Dinah. Tamar. Tamar. Ruth. Bathsheba.
Gomer. Esther. Eve. God why did you let so many women be abused in your history
by your chosen people? Is it to reveal the depravity of men? How do we, the brothers in Christ, fix this
problem? How can we ever assume headship or leadership over women without
profusely apologizing with every single breath of our lives for the legacy we
carry from our forefathers? I know…the answer is Christ, but this is one of
those moments where it doesn’t sound enough.
How do we reconcile the tension(s)? Not just this issue, but
issues across the board. Gender? Justice? Justification? Mission? Abuse? My own
paradigm warns me that the atmosphere in America will slowly, but with
increasing speed, become one that is hostile to Christians regardless of their
secondary beliefs as long as they proclaim the name of Jesus Christ as Lord and
Savior. Jesus’s words echo in my head: You
will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to
the end who will be saved (Matt 10:22 NASB). In context, this applied to
Jesus’s immediate disciples and is not a foretelling of the End Times but for
all times and all believers.
All of yesterday’s tension was for the 501(c)3, but there
may come a day very soon where all churches will lose nonprofit status, and
maybe one day in my life or my children’s lives all churches will become criminalized. History, scriptural prophecy, and the persecution of Christians
in other countries lead me to this conclusion. It is possible, in the future
before the Day of the Lord, the church will once again become like the first churches
in Jerusalem and Asian: house churches full of Joy and compassion for one
another, but also facing insurmountable levels of persecution. Almost
insurmountable levels if Paul’s words here are to be believed: We are hard pressed on every side, but not
crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned;
struck down, but not destroyed. (2 Cor 4:8-9 NIV).
Coming full circle, I do not believe any of
my brothers and sisters who believe either view of Complementarianism or
Egalitarianism will go to Hell if they are wrong, just as I don’t believe gay
affirming Christians, or even Christians who do not believe in the inerrancy of
Scripture, are going to Hell. What sends us to Hell is our own Pride, our own
self-glorification, our own desire to set ourselves (or other things in our
lives) as our god over God. What saves us is the righteousness imputed to us by
Christ’s death on the Cross, which is done by our confession via mouth and
heart that Jesus is both Lord and Savior (Romans 10:9) through the power of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3). By this Gospel we the
church will survive and be unified. I want to see the Acts 2 church, the church
that grasps God’s love together (Ephesians 3:18-19) and be unified in body and
spirit (Ephesians 4:4-6), re-envisioned here at COTB. This is the solution we need, but how
does it look practically, I don’t have an answer. I just know It is my
desire to love my sisters and my brothers with all I got. I hope I can convey this
sentiment all the days of my life. Only Christ can help me do so.
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