I don't usually read Relevant Magazine. I have their RSS feed in iGoogle and glance at the headlines, and usually they don't interest me very much. For whatever reason, Relevant does not often seem... well, relevant to my Christian experience. I guess I'd rather read the testimonies of God's people that have survived 50, 100, or 300 years than the latest thoughts from the "emergent church."

But when I saw this headline, I immediately knew what he was saying. I think I've been saying the same thing to myself for some time. In fact, even as I wrote this post, I was thinking, "I don't really believe this like I say I do - if I did, I wouldn't be living like I am."

At some point, I'd like to write a follow up to "Why we need to pray," entitled "Why we don't pray." I think there's a lot more to it than the Relevant article's author talks about - but he's put his finger on a very important core issue. One of the main reasons that we don't pray is simple unbelief. We don't pray because deep down, we don't feel like it will make any difference.

I encourage you to read the Relevant article, but more importantly, to take him up on his challenge!


RELEVANT MAGAZINE: "It’s too bad we don’t believe in prayer. We will go on saying that we do and every once in while we will be reminded that we don’t, so we will try to pray more. Unfortunately, it won’t last long because deep down we don’t believe it makes a difference. We can’t hide it. Beliefs only mask the absence of action for so long.

I don’t believe in prayer.

You don’t believe in prayer, either.

If you disagree, prove it."

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I'm posting this at the request of a friend. I had intended to put it up eventually but it ended up in the list of things "I may post sometime." I had shared it with a few friends in person, however, and one person asked me to write it up, so here it is.

Beholding-Becoming

A basic assumption about spiritual growth that I learned at IHOP is that the way that you grow in holiness is to meditate on the knowledge of God. This comes out most clearly in 2 Corinthians 3:18:

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

There are several other verses that talk about "looking unto Jesus" (Hebrews 12:2), "considering" Him (Hebrews 3:1), and lots of verses in the Old Testament that talk about meditating on the Lord, such as: "to behold the beauty of the Lord" (Psalm 27:4), "behold His sorrow" (Lamentations 1:12), "contemplate His ways" (Psalm 119:15), etc. The verse in 2 Corinthians is especially noteworthy, however, because it explains a process that takes place as we engage in contemplation – through the power of the Spirit at work in us, we will become like Him as we behold His glory. Mike Bickle calls this the "Beholding-Becoming Principle."

Taking this to the next step, then, a significant part of the way that we grow in Christ is to meditate on the attributes of Christ. Do you want to grow in compassion? Consider Him who wept for His friend, even though He knew He would raise him from the dead (John 11:35); who wept for His enemies even as they were rejecting Him (Luke 19:41-44); and who was moved with compassion as He saw the crowds that were harassed and helpless. (Mark 6:34)

Or do you want to grow in humility? This is a profound subject, and one that all of us who call ourselves Christians should deeply ponder. Let us consider Him who was "gentle and lowly in heart" (Matthew 11:29); who "did not consider it robbery to be equal to God, but made Himself of no reputation… and became obedient to the point of death" (Philippians 2:6-8); who "when He was reviled, did not revile in return… but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously." (1 Peter 2:23)

We can go on and on like this. And in fact we should. According to Paul, "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" are hidden in Christ (Colossians 2:1-3). Meditating on the attributes of God is a life-time calling – an eternal calling – for those who belong to Him.

The Grateful God

This post is about one small glimpse of the beauty of the Lord Jesus that I received a few months ago. It struck me as I was doing a Bible study on Colossians 3:12-17:

12 Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; 13 bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. 14 But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. 15 And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. 17 And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

To grow in tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, forgiving… In all of those things I can meditate on the Lord Jesus and consider how He lived. But what about thanksgiving? Can I meditate on the beauty of Jesus to grow in thankfulness?

The answer is yes. And this is startling if you pause to consider it. I once heard someone say that Christianity, alone among the religions of the world, has added courage to the attributes of the Creator. Certainly this is true – how can the God who made everything experience fear and have to endure it? He can do so only if He has become part of His creation and has allowed Himself to experience its brokenness. The Incarnation allows the Omnipotent One to experience real fear, real pain, and to demonstrate real courage.

On this line of thought then, I would add that Christianity, alone among the religions of the world, has added gratitude to the attributes of the Creator.

Jesus is recorded as giving thanks to His Father on the night of the Last Supper:

Matthew 26:27 (also Mark 14:23, Luke 22:17)
Then He took the cup, and gave
thanks, and gave it to them…

Luke 22:19
(also

1 Corinthians 11:24)
And He took bread, gave
thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me."

On two other occasions, Jesus gave thanks to His Father for bread before He multiplied it to feed a multitude – one time it was seven loves and 4,000 men ate (besides women and children), and another time it was five loaves and 5,000 men.

Matthew 15:36 (also Mark 8:6)
And He took the seven loaves and the fish and gave
thanks, broke them and gave them to His disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitude.

John 6:11
And Jesus took the loaves, and when He had given
thanks He distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down; and likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted.

And there are several times when Jesus explicitly thanks His Father for His ways and His actions:

Luke 10:21
(also
Matthew 11:25)
In that hour Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said, "I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight.

John 11:41-42
… And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, "Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. And I know that You always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me."

Wonder of wonders! God in the flesh giving thanks to God. And I think this mystery was not missed by the Apostles. Consider the way that John retells the events after the feeding of the five thousand:

John 6:22-24
22 On the following day, when the people who were standing on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other boat there, except that one which His disciples had entered, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with His disciples, but His disciples had gone away alone— 23 however, other boats came from Tiberias, near the place where they ate bread after the Lord had given thanks— 24 when the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they also got into boats and came to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.

We might have said, perhaps, if we were talking with the Apostle John, "John, don't you think you could have referred to that incident a little differently? After all, a lot more happened at that place than the fact that Jesus gave thanks for bread. Don't you think the fact that 5,000 people were able to have enough to eat from five barley loaves is significant?"

If we said that to John, his response might be this: "Of course it's significant, but don't you remember what I wrote in the beginning of my book? This Man was the Word who was in the beginning with God and who was God! All things were made through Him, and without Him was nothing made that was made. Of course He could feed 5,000 people with five barley loaves, just like He spoke all of creation into existence from nothingness. What is wonderful is that He – the Word made flesh – gave thanks to His Father for the bread that He had given Him!"

 

Do you want to grow in gratitude? Then behold the beauty of the Lord in His thanksgiving!

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Gunman Kills 2 at Missionary Center Near Denver - New York Times: "Two missionaries-in-training were killed early today and two more were wounded when a gunman burst into a residence hall at the Youth With a Mission center in the Denver suburb of Arvada, the police said."

Christians should be praying for the comfort and encouragement of the families of the victims of the two YWAM trainees who were killed last night. This event is horrible, it is a shock, and it hurts. To contemplate the cold-blooded murder of two twenty-somethings who were in training to serve the poor and preach the Gospel around the world is a painful thing, and it is right for us to grieve.

But let us not grieve as "those who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13). About 12:30 am this morning, Tiffany Johnson and Philip Crouse entered into the presence of Glory and right now they are gazing on the Beauty of the One who is Love Himself. They are praising Him for the perfection of His leadership and the timing of His plan. If they could speak to us now, they would not have us weep for them, but rather for ourselves - and for the thousands of others who will die today for whom death will not be a glorious Homecoming, but a terror and the certain expectation of judgment.

These two had signed up for Youth With a Mission intending to lay down their lives for the Gospel. And now their Lord has taken them up on that offer - sooner and more violently than perhaps anyone expected, but it does not change the fact that He is in control and doing exactly what He has planned.

So let us pray for comfort, for the sense of the Lord's presence, and for peace for friends and families. And let us pray even more fervently for the fruit that will be borne by the lives of these young martyrs. Jesus said that "unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain." (John 12:24) Let us pray for the repentance and salvation of the man that killed them, and let us pray that the story of these young people and their lives and deaths will lead many to salvation in Jesus Christ.

But let us have no silly talk of the "mysteriousness of God's ways". He said that He would do this with His people. He warned His enemies that He would send us to them to proclaim the Gospel - and they would kill us, and it would serve to condemn them in the end. Let us not be surprised that He - who cannot lie - is doing what He said He would:

Matthew 23:34-35
34 Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, 35 that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.


As I read the news articles describing the shooting this afternoon, I thought of something which Steve Brown said in a sermon once. He said, essentially, that he thinks that every time a tragedy happens to an unbeliever, God allows the same thing to happen to a Christian.

• When an unbeliever loses his business, God allows a Christian to lose his business... so the world can see the difference.


• When an unbeliever loses a child, God allows a Christian family to lose a child... so the world can see the difference.


• When an unbeliever goes through a divorce, God allows a Christian marriage to fall apart... so the world can see the difference.

So perhaps... when the world suffers a tragic school shooting, God will allow a tragic shooting at a Christian school... so the world can see the difference.

And what is the difference? The difference will be in the response. Those without Christ have only human strength, human wisdom, and human comfort to fall back upon when horrible tragedy takes place.

But to the born again, the fullness of the God who made heaven and earth lives inside them. The fullness of love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and self-control lives in them in the Holy Spirit. A supernatural ability to love enemies and extend forgiveness is available to them.

And in the end, the heart filled with the Holy Spirit will be a heart filled with gratitude. Even in the face of tragedy, we will find our spirits offering thanksgiving to the One who is Sovereign over the universe. "For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen." (Romans 11:36)

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Continuing with more on the issue of self. Today's post is from C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. I know that I read, and loved, this book in High School, but this particular section really didn't leave much of an impression on me. Re-reading Mere Christianity a few years ago, however, this section stood out from the entirety of the book.

Lewis takes a different approach than Tozer or Reidhead, but the core point is the same: without the Cross – our cross – Christian living is nothing but a parody.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Is Christianity Hard or Easy?

The ordinary idea which we all have before we become Christians is this. We take as the starting point our ordinary self with its various desires and interests. We then admit that something else—call it "morality" or "decent behavior," or "the good of society"—has claims on this self: claims which interfere with its own desires. What we mean by "being good" is giving in to those claims. Some of the things the ordinary self wanted to do turn out be what we call "wrong": well, we must give them up. Other things, which the self did not want to do, turn out to be what we call "right": well, we shall have to do them. But we are hoping all the time that when all the demands have been met, the poor natural self will still have some chance, and some time, to get on with its own life and do what it likes. In fact, we are very like an honest man paying his taxes. He pays them all right, but he does hope that there will be enough left over for him to live on. Because we are still taking our natural self as the starting point.

As long as we are thinking that way, one or other of two results is likely to follow. Either we give up trying to be good, or else we become very unhappy indeed. For, make no mistake: if you are really going to try to meet all the demands made on the natural self, it will not have enough left over to live on. The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience will demand of you. And your natural self, which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, will get angrier and angrier. In the end, you will either give up trying to be good, or else become one of those people who, as they say, "live for others" but always in a discontented, grumbling way—always wondering why the others do not notice it more and always making a martyr of yourself. And once you have become that you will be a far greater pest to anyone who has to live with you than you would have been if you had remained frankly selfish.

The Christian way is different: harder and easier. Christ says, "Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours."

Both harder and easier than what we are all trying to do. You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, "Take up your Cross"—in other words, it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp. Next minute he says, "My yoke is easy and my burden light." He means both. And one can just see why both are true.

Teachers will tell you that the laziest boy in the class is the one who works the hardest in the end. They mean this. If you give two students, say, a proposition in geometry to do, the one who is prepared to take the trouble will try to understand it. The lazy student will learn it by heart because, for the moment, that needs less effort. But six months later, when they are preparing for the exam, that lazy student is doing hours and hours of miserable drudgery over things the other student understands, and positively enjoys, in a few minutes. Laziness means more work in the long run. Or look at it this way. In a battle, or in mountain climbing, there is often one thing which it takes a lot of work to do; but it is also, in the long run, the safest thing to do. If you funk it, you will find yourself, hours later, in far worse danger. The cowardly thing is also the most dangerous thing.

It is like that here. The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self—all your wishes and precautions—to God. But it is far easier than what we are trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good." We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way—centered on money or pleasure or ambition—and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and re-sown.

That is why the real problem of the Christian life arises where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.

We can only do it for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system: because now we are letting God work at the right part of us. It is the difference between paint, which is merely laid on the surface, and a dye or stain which soaks right through. He never talked vague, idealistic gas. When he said, "Be perfect," He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are hankering after is harder—in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

May I come back to what I said before? This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else. It is so easy to get muddled about that. It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects—education, building, missions, holding services. Just as it is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects—military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden—that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men to Christ, to make them like little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose.

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Continuing with my thoughts on the issue of self. I came across Paris Reidhead's message "Ten Shekels and a Shirt" a few weeks ago via the Revival Hymn (which is awesome; if you haven't listened to it yet, I encourage you to do so). There's a good chunk of this message in the Revival Hymn, but the whole thing is well worth listening to also. It's available at SermonIndex.net.

The following excerpt gives a very strong summary of the philosophy of humanism and how humanism has permeated the Church. The disaster of humanism is that self became exalted in the very place it was supposed to be killed. Under the influence of humanist thinking and a humanist Zeitgeist ("spirit of the age"), the American Church began to invite people to Jesus by appealing to self. And what do you end up with?

A speaker I heard last year put it this way: "We've got a bunch of unconverted people sitting in purpose-driven pews hearing a seeker-sensitive Gospel about 'your best life now!'"

Excerpt from Ten Shekels and a Shirt (Message Transcript)

…The philosophy of the day became humanism. And you could define humanism this way, humanism is a philosophical statement that declares the end of all being is the happiness of man. The reason for existence is man's happiness. Now according to humanism, salvation is simply a matter of getting all the happiness you can out of life. If you're influenced by someone like Nietzsche who says that the only true satisfaction in life is power and that the power is its own justification, and that after all the world is a jungle. And it is therefore up to the man to be happy, to become powerful, and become powerful by any means he can use. For it is only in this position of ascendancy or as we saw in the worship of Molech that one can be happy. This would produce in due course a Hitler who would take the philosophy of Nietzsche as his working operating principles and guide and would say of his people that we are destined to rule the world. Therefore any means that we can use to
achieve this is our salvation.

Somebody else turns around and says, "Well no, the end of being is happiness, but happiness doesn't come from authority over people, happiness comes from sensual experience." So you would have the type of existentialism that characterizes France today, that's given rise to beatnikism in America and to the gross sensuality of our country. Since man is essentially a glandular animal who's highest moments of ecstasy come from the exercise of his glands, salvation is simply to find the most desirable way to gratify this part of a person.

And so this became the effect of humanism, that the end of all being is the happiness of man. John Dewey, then an American philosopher influencing education, was able to persuade the educators that there were no absolute standards. Children shouldn't be brought to any particular standard, that the end of education was simply to allow the child to express himself and expand on what he is and find his happiness in being what he wants to be. So we had cultural lawlessness, when every man could do as seemed right in his own eyes and we had no God to rule over us. The Bible had been discounted and disallowed and disproved according to what they said. God had been dethroned, He didn't exist, He had no personal relationship to individuals. Jesus Christ was either a myth or just a man, so they taught, and therefore the whole end of being was happiness. The individual would establish the standards of his happiness and interpret it.

LIBERAL, FUNDAMENTAL or...NEITHER?

Now religion then had to exist because there were so many people that made their living at it, so they had to find some way to justify their existence. So back about the time, in 1850, the church divided into two groups. The one group was the liberals, who accepted the philosophy of the humanism and tried to find some relevance by saying something like this to their generation, "Ha, ha, we don't know there's a heaven. We don't know there's a hell. But we do know this, that you've got to live for 70 years! We know there's a great deal of benefit from poetry, from high thoughts and noble aspirations. Therefore it's important for you to come to church on Sunday, so that we can read some poetry, that we can give you some little adages and axioms and rules to live by. We can't say anything about what's going to happen when you die, but we'll tell you this, if you'll come every week and pay and help and stay with us, we'll put springs on your wagon and your trip will be more comfortable. We can't guarantee anything about what's going to happen when you die, but we say that if you come along with us, we'll make you happier while you're alive". And so this became the essence of liberalism. It has simply nothing more than to try and put a little sugar in the bitter coffee of their journey and sweeten it up for a time. This is all that it could say.

Well now the philosophy of the atmosphere is humanism; the chief end of being is the happiness of man. There's another group of people that have taken umbrage with the liberals, this group are my people, the fundamentalists. They say, "We believe in the inspiration of the Bible! We believe in the deity of Jesus Christ! We believe in hell! We believe in heaven! We believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ!" But remember the atmosphere is that of humanism. And humanism says the chief end of being is the happiness of man. Humanism is like a miasma out of a pit, it just permeates everyplace. Humanism is like an infection, an epidemic, it just goes everywhere. So it wasn't long until we had this, that the fundamentalists knew each other because they said "We believe these things!" They were men for the most part that had met God.

But you see it wasn't long until having said "These are the things that establish us as fundamentalists!", the second generation said "This is how we become a fundamentalist! Believe in the inspiration of the Bible! Believe in the deity of Christ! Believe in His death, burial, and resurrection! And thereby become a fundamentalist". And so it wasn't long until it got to our generation, where the whole plan of salvation was to give intellectual assent to a few statements of doctrine. And a person was considered a Christian because he could say "Uh huh" at four or five places that he was asked. If he knew where to say "Uh huh", someone would pat him on the back, shake his hand, smile broadly, and say "Brother, you're saved!" So it had gotten down to the place where salvation was nothing more than an assent to a scheme or a formula, and the end of this was that salvation was the happiness of man because humanism has penetrated. If you were to analyze fundamentalism in contrast to liberalism of a hundred years ago as it developed, for I am not pinpointing it in time, it would be like this:

The liberal says the end of religion is to make man happy while he's alive, and the fundamentalist says the end of religion is to make man happy when he dies.

But again! The end of all of the religion it was proclaimed was the happiness of man. And whereas the liberal says, "By social change and political order we're going to do away with funds, we're going to do away with alcoholism and dope addiction and poverty. And we're going to make HEAVEN ON EARTH! AND MAKE YOU HAPPY WHILE YOU'RE ALIVE! We don't know  anything about after that, but we want you to be happy while you're alive!" They went ahead to try and do it only to be brought to a terrifying shock at the first World War and utterly staggered by the second World War, because they seemed to be getting nowhere fast.

And then the fundamentalists, along the same line, are now tuning in along this same wavelength of humanism. Until we find it something like this:

"Accept Jesus so you can go to heaven! you don't want to go to that old, filthy, nasty, burning hell when there is a beautiful heaven up there! now come to Jesus so you can go to heaven!"

And the appeal could be as much to selfishness as a couple of men sitting in a coffee shop deciding they are going to rob a bank to get something for nothing! There's a way that you can give an invitation to sinners, that just sounds for all the world like a plot to take up a filling station proprietor's Saturday night earnings without working for them.

Humanism is, I believe, the most deadly and disastrous of all the philosophical stenches that's crept up through the grating over the pit of Hell. It has penetrated so much of our religion. AND IT IS IN UTTER AND TOTAL CONTRAST WITH CHRISTIANITY! Unfortunately it's seldom seen. And here we find Micah, wants to have a little chapel, and he wants to have a priest, and he wants to have prayer, and he wants to have devotion,  because "I KNOW THE LORD WILL DO ME GOOD!" AND THIS IS SELFISHNESS !!! AND THIS IS SIN !!! And the Levite comes along and falls right in with it! Because he wants a place! He wants ten shekels and a shirt and his food! And so in order that he can have what he wants, and Micah can have what they want, THEY SELL OUT GOD! For ten shekels and a shirt. AND THIS IS THE BETRAYAL OF THE AGES !!! And it is the betrayal in which we live. And I don't see HOW GOD CAN REVIVE IT! Until we come back to Christianity. As in DIRECT AND TOTAL CONTRAST WITH THE STENCHFUL HUMANISM that's perpetrated in our generation in the name of Christ.

I'm afraid that it's become so subtle that it goes everywhere. What is it? In essence it's this! That this philosophical postulate that the end of all being is the happiness of man, has been sort of covered over with evangelical terms and Biblical doctrine until God reigns in heaven for the happiness of man, Jesus Christ was incarnate for the happiness of man, all the angels exist in the..., Everything is for the happiness of man! AND I SUBMIT TO YOU THAT THIS IS UNCHRISTIAN !!! Isn't man happy? Didn't God intend to make man happy? Yes. But as a by-product and not a prime-product!

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The issue of "self" – that part of human nature that came from the Fall; the fundamental rebellion which turns every good work into a sham and a stench to God – has been on my mind a lot lately.

The teaching is right there in the Gospel – "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me." (Matthew 16:24), but it seems to be almost impossible to hold in mind.

The problem is that my natural mind is continually resisting this teaching. My culture is in full-fledged defiance of it. And the American church has lost its voice on this topic too. Sermon after sermon makes an unabashed appeal to self – not to kill it, but to pander to it. We are "motivated", "challenged", "inspired"… But are we called to self-denial and taking up the cross? To the death of self-determination and self-destiny? To unconditional surrender to the One to whom we rightfully belong?

Here is what A.W. Tozer had to say about self.

 

A.W. Tozer – The Knowledge of the Holy, chapter 5, The Self-existence of God

 

…

In this utter dependence of all things upon the creative will of God lies the possibility for both holiness and sin. One of the marks of God's image in man is his ability to exercise moral choice. The teaching of Christianity is that man chose to be independent of God and confirmed his choice by deliberately disobeying a divine command. This act violated the relationship that normally existed between God and His creature; it rejected God as the ground of existence and threw man back upon himself. Thereafter he became not a planet revolving around the central Sun, but a sun in his own right, around which everything else must revolve.

A more positive assertion of selfhood could not be imagined than those words of God to Moses: I AM THAT I AM. Everything God is, everything that is God, is set forth in that unqualified declaration of independent being. Yet in God, self is not sin but the quintessence of all possible goodness, holiness and truth.

The natural man is a sinner because and only because he challenges God's selfhood in relation to his own. In all else he may willingly accept the sovereignty of God; in his own life he rejects it. For him, God's dominion ends where his begins. For him, self becomes Self, and in this he unconsciously imitates Lucifer, that fallen son of the morning who said in his heart, "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. . . . I will be like the Most High."

Yet so subtle is self that scarcely anyone is conscious of its presence. Because man is born a rebel, he is unaware that he is one. His constant assertion of self, as far as he thinks of it at all, appears to him a perfectly normal thing. He is willing to share himself, sometimes even to sacrifice himself for a desired end, but never to dethrone himself. No matter how far down the scale of social acceptance he may slide, he is still in his own eyes a king on a throne, and no one, not even God, can take that throne from him.

Sin has many manifestations but its essence is one. A moral being, created to worship before the throne of God, sits on the throne of his own selfhood and from that elevated position declares, "I AM." That is sin in its concentrated essence; yet because it is natural it appears to be good. It is only when in the gospel the soul is brought before the face of the Most Holy One without the protective shield of ignorance that the frightful moral incongruity is brought home to the conscience. In the language of evangelism the man who is thus confronted by the fiery presence of Almighty God is said to be under conviction. Christ referred to this when He said of the Spirit whom He would send to the world, "And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment."

The earliest fulfillment of these words of Christ was at Pentecost after Peter had preached the first great Christian sermon. "Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?" This "What shall we do?" is the deep heart cry of every man who suddenly realizes that he is a usurper and sits on a stolen throne. However painful, it is precisely this acute moral consternation that produces true repentance and makes a robust Christian after the penitent has been dethroned and has found forgiveness and peace through the gospel.

"Purity of heart is to will one thing," said Kierkegaard, and we may with equal truth turn this about and declare, "The essence of sin is to will one thing," for to set our will against the will of God is to dethrone God and make ourselves supreme in the little kingdom of Mansoul. This is sin at its evil root. Sins may multiply like the sands by the seashore, but they are yet one. Sins are because sin is. This is the rationale behind the much maligned doctrine of natural depravity which holds that the independent man can do nothing but sin and that his good deeds are really not good at all. His best religious works God rejects as He rejected the offering of Cain. Only when he has restored his stolen throne to God are his works acceptable.

The struggle of the Christian man to be good while the bent toward self-assertion still lives within him as a kind of unconscious moral reflex is vividly described by the apostle Paul in the seventh chapter of his Roman Epistle; and his testimony is in full accord with the teaching of the prophets. Eight hundred years before the advent of Christ the prophet Isaiah identified sin as rebellion against the will of God and the assertion of the right of each man to choose for himself the way he shall go. "All we like sheep have gone astray," he said, "we have turned every one to his own way," and I believe that no more accurate description of sin has ever been given.

The witness of the saints has been in full harmony with prophet and apostle, that an inward principle of self lies at the source of human conduct, turning everything men do into evil. To save us completely Christ must reverse the bent of our nature; He must plant a new principle within us so that our subsequent conduct will spring out of a desire to promote the honor of God and the good of our fellow men. The old self-sins must die, and the only instrument by which they can be slain is the Cross. "If any man come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me," said our Lord, and years later the victorious Paul could say, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."

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I've been encouraged in the last few months through the testimony of Crissy, a former porn star who returned to her childhood faith in Christ about a year ago. She has given her testimony on the radio and in print several times.

She just posted on her blog about a new interview published in a Jacksonville newspaper. It's worth reading, especially if you don't know her story. She sheds light on the reality behind the glamor and titillation of the "adult" industry, as well as the vulnerability and courage needed for someone to come out of it.

She quit porn industry and turned to Christ: "'I know in the beginning when I first started going [to church] I felt a lot of them judging me,' she said, but now it's the kindness of her friends and fellow congregants that gets her through emotionally and financially.

'I mostly think about the struggles I'm going through and how I don't have a job or the skills I could've been working on at that time and bettering myself in so many different ways,' she said.

She wants to find a job - at least part-time - so she can go to school to be a social worker. In the meantime, she's started volunteering with Treasures, a nonprofit group that encourages women in the adult industry to turn to Christ. She's spoken out at her own church about her story, which she said helps her heal."

If you read this, please take a minute to pray for Crissy, and for God to have mercy on our nation. In addition to the thousands of women whose lives are being wrecked by various adult industries, there are millions of men - and many women - whose lives and families are being devastated by sex addiction.

If you happen to be reading this and to be one of those who are experiencing devastation - THERE IS HOPE. There is grace sufficient for any sin - ANY SIN - in the blood of Jesus. That doesn't mean it's going to be easy to get out of it. It usually takes years to get free and get healthy. But it is possible, and you are not alone. Here are some places to start getting help:

XXXChurch.com

Pure Desire

Desert Stream

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I've been thinking for some time about "Atheistic Christianity" (A way of doing Church that could go right on doing its thing even if God didn't exist). A corollary to this is what I call the "American Evangelical Fallacy." In a nutshell, the fallacy is this:


We look at men and women of God who have done great things for God before us, and we attempt to imitate their methods. We assume that if we use the methods they used, we will get the results they got.

But if we would look harder at their lives, we would realize that their methods were born out of their prayer lives. If we imitated their prayer lives, the Lord could give us our own methods!


I found out today that Oswald J. Smith wrote almost exactly this about 85 years ago in the book "The Revival We Need":

THE REVIVAL WE NEED by Oswald J. Smith
'We read in the biographies of our forefathers, who were most successful in winning souls, that they prayed for hours in private. The question therefore arises, can we get the same results without following their example? If we can, then let us prove to the world that we have found a better way; but if not, then in God's name let us begin to follow those who through faith and patience obtained the promise. Our forefathers wept and prayed and agonized before the Lord for sinners to be saved, and would not rest until they were slain by the Sword of the Word of God. That was the secret of their mighty success; when things were slack and would not move they wrestled in prayer till God poured out His Spirit upon the people and sinners were converted.'

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