You may or may not know that Robert H. Schuller (father) has based his “ministry” on rejecting true biblical teaching for a doctrine of self-esteem stating that we should not go around telling people what is and is not sin.  For him the gospel is about building up self-esteem and not about forgiveness of sin or the proclamation of Christ as Lord.

Al Mohler wrote a post that analyzes some of the stories and it seems that the younger Schuller might have committed the “sin” of beginning to utilize the Bible in his messages.  Mohler asks, “What about the younger Schuller’s self-esteem?”

Read the interesting article by Mohler here.

(HT: Trevin Wax)

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It seems as though we finally have presidential race so the political discussion should really begin to heat up now.  That is if it has not already.  Politics is an area that causes many believers to slip into idolatry.  We stand for righteousness, and we long to see good men as our leaders who will do good things and bring America back to God.  It is as if we believe that if we get OUR men, which we believe to be God’s men, in the right political positions then this world could be fixed.  In this pursuit, many of us forget that God is in control and that ultimately it is only He who will redeem this world.  When we place our trust in a political candidate to solve our world’s problems, politics has become our god.

As an unbeliever, there was a time when I became rather obsessed with politics.  It began at the end of high school, continued to build through my college years, and reached its high point during the time of Clinton/Lewinsky saga.  My political beliefs then are not much different than they are today.  I was a solid right-wing conservative who was against abortion, for smaller government, for lower taxes, etc… It was an interesting time for me because I would spend countless hours thinking about how different programs could fix our country.  If we had lower taxes…  If we had better judges…  If we just had more Republicans… These thoughts consumed me.  I have no doubt that during that period of my life, politics served as my god. 

Now as a believer, as I look back at that time of my life it has become clear to me that the reason politics became a god for me was that I was able to find my own righteousness in my political views.  My conservative views were absolutely correct and could fix things in our country, in our world.  Anyone who opposed these views was absolutely wrong and ultimately evil which in turn made me ultimately good.  As a lost person without any righteousness in me, I had put all of my trust in my political views which really was just putting my trust in myself.

I am very grateful that God stepped in to show me what true righteousness is.  Our only hope is in Him.  We have hope because God sent his only Son into this broken world to die on the cross for our sins.  Jesus died, was buried, and rose from the grave on the third day defeating death becoming a new creation which will culminate one day when He will return and fully redeem this fallen world.  That, beloved, is when the world’s problems will be solved.

Earlier this week a friend sent me an email regarding something John McCain said at a town meeting he held here in Nashville.  McCain was asked what books inspired him, and one of his answers was that he was inspired by Joel Osteen’s books.  I have to say it is a little troubling to think that someone leading our country could be influenced by name-it-claim-it theology.  On the other hand we have Obama and Rev. Wright.  Before we get too worried we should recall that our hero of conservatism, Ronald Reagan, was known to consult astrology, and his wife allegedly consulted a psychic regularly after he was shot to determine where he should and should not go.  So this is nothing new.   Just remember that God is in control.

Paul explained in his letter to the Romans that we are to submit to governing authorities because they have been given their power and been established by God.  We are to submit to such authorities because God put them there for our good (Rom 13:1-4).  Paul is telling us that God is in control of the rulers; therefore, we should be willing to submit to them.  The big thing I want you to get is that no matter what the political landscape looks like, we have to remember that God is in control and the He will “cause all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom 8:28).

Don’t put your hope in a politician.  Put your hope in Christ.

Until next time, put God first and “be the fruit.”

Thinking of sin as illogical begins to make more sense of the text stating, “The fear of the Lord is beginning of wisdom” (Prov 9:10).  If obedience to God is the only logical choice then it follows that our wisdom only begins when we begin to fear Him.

We need to remember this fact in dealing with our own sin as well as the sin of others.  It important to remember that sin is illogical because when we sin we will often not be thinking logically.  Think about how people get lost in sin and throw so much of their lives away.  For example, people who may commit adultery and rip apart a marriage and a family are often dumbfounded as to what caused them to do such a thing.  In other cases, people have reasons for what they do, but such reasons only seem to make sense to them.  I know for me, when I am working through an area of sin, I feel like an idiot because it seems like even simple tasks become cumbersome. 

I think it is important to remember how we cease to be logical in sin because it shapes how we need to look at the process of change.  When we attempt to change or to help others change we need to turn to the Scriptures, the word of God, to shape us.  When we are working through sin, we need to repent and conform ourselves to His word.  This process takes conviction to break through our spiritual blindness to open our eyes to the truth and the wisdom of God.

Sin at its essence is a moral issue, but it is clear that we can take this moral component away and it still does not make any sense.  Yet, the thing we all try to do when we sin is to try to rationalize our behavior.  We may blame our parents, blame circumstances, or try to pretend that we had no other option, but this does not make any logical sense either.  Rationalizing our sin does not make any sense because a remedy for sin has been given through the Cross of Jesus.  If we own our sin, we know that such sin has been paid for and we can learn to move forward with the help of the Spirit and grow more into the likeness of Christ.

So let us all put off our illogical behavior and begin to fear the Lord.  Let us  own our sin, let us admit our sin, let us confess our sin and remember that “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).  When it comes to sin, confession, repentance, and obedience are our only logical choices.

After some time, it became clear that the majority of his true pastoring work was happening after work in the neighborhood, in the community, and at home. Due to this fact, this pastor made the decision several weeks ago to leave security of his job at the established church to attempt to establish a new church beginning with the community of believers that God had been growing up around him. I might add that this was done with the blessing of the established church.

This new church in Spring Hill is The Church at Spring Hill, and its lead pastor is my friend William Guice. The Church at Spring will be having its first official gathering tomorrow night (Sat. October 25) at 5:00 p.m.  This is the rest of the story.

You can find out more about William by visiting his blog here, and you can find out more about this new church by visiting its website here.

If you are nearby, I want to invite you to go check out The Church at Spring Hill.  I know I will be there, and I hope to see you there.  If you are not nearby, please pray that this new church can continue to impact the community of Spring Hill.  The Church at Spring Hill will be meeting on Saturday nights at 5:00 p.m at the following location:

Spring Hill United Methodist Church – 5286 Mains St., Spring Hill, TN 37174

You see, when God created us we were designed to worship Him, but this got fouled up when sin entered into the world.  Our desire to worship did not change, but our object of worship did.  When sin entered into the world, man essentially chose to worship anything and everything other than God.  Paul describes this misguided worship below:

“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” (Romans 1:21-25, ESV)

Paul states that people worshiped images of man, birds, and animals then God gave them up to the “lusts of their hearts,” and they “worshiped the creature rather than the Creator.”  This could explain the nature of our idol worship today.  Most don’t seek out images, but all seem to get lost in worship of things rather than God.  Sometimes the worship goes beyond things, to wanting some sort of status or feeling above all else.  I believe that all of our sin involves some time of wrongful worship.  Such wrongful worship causes all kinds of problems.  Wrongful worship shows up a lot in marriages.  Husbands demand respect and wives demand attention or “love.”  Husbands may demand to relax after work and wives may demand a break from the kids.  Respect, love, relaxation, and a break are not bad things in general, but they become objects of wrongful worship when a person is willing to sin to get it or will sin if they don’t get it.

Thinking about this wrongful worship brings me to an aspect of the gospel that is often overlooked.  For most people, the gospel is all about forgiveness of sins, but the reality is the gospel is primarily about fixing this wrongful worship.  When a person believes the gospel he/she is not just accepting a gift of forgiveness, but proclaiming that Christ is truly is God and worthy of worship.  When we accept the gospel we are able to put down our worship of creation and worship the Creator again.  One might say that the forgiveness we receive in Christ is not the end but a means to the end of being able to return to a right relationship with God and worship him forever.

I think it is clear that God created us to worship, and sin did not eliminate this aspect of nature but merely distorted it so that we began to worship creation rather than Creator.  We worship because God made us that way, but our sin causes us to worship idols, and it is only through the Cross that such wrong worship can be corrected.

For some more reading on idols, specifically killing idols, you might check out a new series that Jared Wilson just started up over at searchwarp.com.  Check out the first post here.

Until next time, put God first and “be the fruit.”

One problem with all this reading is that it had gotten in the way of my reading of Scripture.  I would dive into my books first because they were required for class then I would dive into other books I wanted to read while I had time because I knew more required reading was coming.  All the while, the Bible was not being read.  I was using the Bible, reading a lot about the Bible, learning about the Bible, but I was not reading the Bible consistently.  

I decided a few weeks ago to change this and began to follow a Bible reading plan.  I picked a healthy block of Scripture that I wanted to read through the end of the year then set my Logos software to generate a daily reading.  Each day a few chapters are listed and I read through them.  I really like using the software because the plan is customized and it only gives me my scheduled reading for the day which keeps me accountable. Now my Bible reading takes precedent over my book reading on a given day.

The neat thing about following the plan is that it has helped me in my classes because the knowledge of the Scripture is fresh in my mind.  It helps me follow the Scripture references in books as well as in class.  It has also helped me with writing papers because I can remember pertinent passages instead of searching for them.  It also keeps the examples and stories in context when I think about them so I am not just searching for proof texts, but thinking about them as they stand within the grand narrative.

Above all, reading the Bible consistently helps me to become more godly.  Reading books sometimes can only build up my knowledge, but reading the Bible always seems to build up my character.  I might even say that my books tend to help me know things about God, but the Bible helps me to know God.  Reading the Bible is just a totally different personal interaction.  I see it transforming me as a person.

If you are not reading the Bible consistently, I suggest you begin today.  I promise that you will not regret it. The important thing to remember is that it is the Bible that is the Word of God not our other books, commentaries, or study notes; therefore, it might do us well to set our reading of God’s word first. 

I know there are all kinds of reading plans out there, but I really liked customizing mine.  If anyone knows of a website or other inexpensive way to customize a reading plan on the computer, please leave a link or a referral to how it can be done without Logos.  I would like to pass it along to others.

This notion of sacrificing a child to a false god absolutely makes no sense.  It is absolutely shocking, disturbing, and a heinous thing to think about.  I see my youngest sitting across from me, and I can’t imagine what would be going through a person’s head to cause them to sacrifice their child.  Why would people do such a thing?

The answer is, they are trying to get this god to do something for them.  They are trying to gain the god’s favor for some reason.  For whatever reason they offer their children to the god so this god will either do something good for them or not do something bad to them.  Consider the following verse that describes this as “feeding” the god: “For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. With their idols they have committed adultery, and they have even offered up to them for food the children whom they had borne to me.” (Ezekiel 23:37, ESV)

Essentially, they offered their children as food to appease the god.  You may be wondering, what does this have to do with abortion?  Think about it.  Why do people have abortions?  Is it not because having a child will disrupt their life in some way?  Maybe they have a party lifestyle that will go away if a child comes along.  Maybe they have a great career plan that involves college and grad school, and a child will foul those plans up.  Maybe they have a standard of living they want to keep up and a child will be too much of a burden.  Maybe they have parents who will disapprove, so they abort the child in order to not feel such disapproval.

I contend that all the reasons I listed involve the worship of idols, and because they seek to get something from these idols they are willing to sacrifice their unborn children.  Take the person with the career plan.  This woman is worshiping the god of success and she is not willing to let anything or anyone get in the way of striving for such success.  Having a successful career rules her life so it is truly her god.  She becomes pregnant and sees this child coming between her and her career so something must be done to not lose the favor of this god.  So she is willing to lay down the life of the unborn child in order to serve this god of success.  The child is sacrificed and the god is appeased, and she can now go on serving and worshiping her god.

I say “she” in the example, but this would also apply to the guy in the situation pressuring the girl to have an abortion so his god is served.  It would also apply to the parents who may be pressuring their daughter because a child may wreck all the plans they have for her.  Whatever the case may be, there always is some other god ruling the decision to abort the child.  There is always some other god that is being worshiped, and it seems quite right and sensible to sacrifice their unborn children to go on serving and worshiping their god.

^{All of this is to say that the key to stopping abortions is to see more people to turn to the true God who does not demand our children, but gave up his own in Jesus to pay the penalty for our sins.  If you have stumbled upon this post and have had an abortion, I can tell you there is good news for you as well because the sacrifice that Jesus made is sufficient for all.  God can move into your life and break the bonds that these idols have in your life for his yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matt 11:30).  Let us all put down the idols of our lives to serve and worship the one true God.}   

The article brought a couple things to mind for me.  First, it brings me back to something I heard at a conference last year from an economist who was giving advice and a critique of the service projects churches engage in.  His assessment was that it appeared that often times such projects were more focused on looking good on the website or church bulletin than actually making a real helpful impact in the service they engage in.  As I recall the assessment did not attack motives, but called people to really think about if they can effective.  The speaker gave an example of a food bank that was running at an average cost of over $100 per meal given out.  His advice, get rid of the food bank and send the people to a restaurant.

The other thing this brought to my mind was a church I passed by yesterday.  The church has a very rickety building in need of some repairs.  Some time ago, I passed by this church and I saw a very high-class church bus from Memphis parked at this church.  As I went by I noticed that the people were painting the church.  Great news right?  Well, apparently somebody forgot to bring a ladder so the church was painted up to about 6 feet off the ground and no higher.  So what was once just rickety now is rickety and two-tone.  I have often wondered what the Memphis church people said about their mission work when they returned.  Do you think they took pictures of the two-tone church they left?

All this is to say that I think the article raises some good questions that we should raise every time we seek to help people with our time and resources.  The good question is, “Can we actually help and be effective?”

Does this strike anyone else as odd?

Why is it that global warming seems to be the key moral question of the day and the abortion has remained silent? I wonder what the underlying heart issue is with this. Perhaps it is because global warming, if it exists, just might hamper MY life and an abortion does not affect ME at all (unless I am the unborn that it is).

I am not sure about global warming, but I don’t think there is any doubt that the economic issues push abortion out of people’s minds very quickly. Why worry about abortions when it costs ME so much to fill up my car that I can’t drive anywhere I want. Why worry about abortions when MY house is dropping in value, and the banks can’t loan ME more money so I can have a bigger and nicer house that I really NEED.

It is clear that we were all created as worshipers, but we often have a worship disorder in that we tend to worship things and not God. It is also clear that such idols are revealed when we are faced with difficulties, and I think many are being revealed in this current economic crisis.

The Apostle Paul wrote, “the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal 5:14). I’ll leave it to you to consider why he chose not to sum it up with loving God above all else, but I would like to add one thought. In these shaky economic times, let us take our focus off or our gas tanks, mortgages, and off ourselves and fulfill this law by loving our neighbors. And as we love our neighbors, let us not forget about our little neighbors in the womb.

Just some thoughts for you to think about today.

I recommend you read this whether you are involved in or interested in church-planting, or involved in an established church.  In fact, I think it could be more beneficial for those of us who are currently involved in established churches because much of what he wrote about are things all of us should be doing in our normal lives as Christ-followers.

There is nothing like “4 keys to church-planting success” in the post.  It is just a snapshot showing what they have been doing, working towards, and praying about in their journey.  The most interesting and encouraging aspect of the update to me was seeing the missional mindset they seem to have in their lives which I think all of us should have.  Anyway, I got something out of the read so I thought I would pass it along to you.

Read the update here.