God’s grace is the means, not the end, of salvation.
When offered, our proper response is repentance through faith …
Leading to obedience and good works.
Author: Plumbline Faith
Simple Truths from a Lifetime of Service to the King of Kings
Just because God is transcendent …
Doesn’t mean our perceptions of Him transcend Scripture.
After all, God is also immanent …
As is His written Word.
Contrast the vulgarity of the recent so-called “Woman’s March” …
With the dignity of yesterday’s March for Life.
One degraded women and the entire human race …
The other elevated women and everyone else.
I choose life because I choose dignity …
For all.
The charm of a charmer …
Leads many astray.
Be careful who you quote, promote, support or “like” online …
Or anywhere else.
Sure, they may say, write or do things designed to make you feel good so they look good.
But that doesn’t mean that they or their agendas are good for you …
Or anyone else.
When leftist elites redefine “love” as vulgarity and virtue as “hate” …
What we saw at the so-called “Women’s March” in Washington last week is the result.
Don’t get upset at the March’s resulting, open display of depravity by regressive “progressives” …
But rejoice that their utter contempt for decency and virtue – which they previously hid in the shadows while working to undermine our culture – is now on full display for all to see.
The more they expose their true ideology of oppression against all that is right and decent …
The more men and women of good faith will be stirred to action against their underlying obscenities.
Make no mistake:
True “rights” are based on virtue …
And lift everyone.
Anything less is a lie.
Rejoice that their lies increasingly are becoming evident for all the world to see …
While resolving to stand firm once again for true rights based on doing right …
For all.
Did you know:
In the New Testament, the context of the Greek words typically translated as “preach” or “preaching” is always – with one possible ambiguous exception – outside the church toward unbelievers …
Rather than in the church toward believers.
Or that the Greek words describing the type of “teaching” that happened in the church – with believers – primarily mean participatory, interactive dialogue …
And not one-way preaching or monologue sermons.
If that surprises you, check it out yourself.
Then ask, what else about “church” have you uncritically assumed or done …
Without studying Scripture to first see what God actually says about it?
The key to healthy churches is simple:
Are God’s gifts to you about advancing your ministry …
Or about advancing His wonderfully diverse gifts in others?
“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” 1 Peter 4:10
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” Philippians 2:3-4
The ultimate temptation exploits your greatest strength …
Not your greatest weakness.
May our only agenda
Be to avoid all agendas
That keep God’s people
From fulfilling His agenda
For themselves, one another,
And a world He yet loves.
Words have power.
Daily, I see the bondage they bring when misused …
And the liberating freedom they create when of God.
Is it any wonder, then, why “Christians” who reject God’s plenary authority of Scripture as His revealed, written Word …
Inevitably remain stuck in an existential quagmire of self and doubt?
In God’s Kingdom, leading behind a pulpit …
Is about as effective as leading behind a desk.
Christian mysticism says we die to self to lose ourself in a mystery beyond us.
Biblical discipleship says we die to self to find ourself as God authentically defines us.
Big difference.
Only when we get to the end of ourselves, can we find ourselves …
As God intended.
If we become myopic (i.e., nearsighted) by viewing everyone and everything in terms of our own God-given gifts, motivations and perspectives …
Or our own pet doctrines, understandings and sensibilities …
Or even our individual personality, including our hurts and achievements …
Then we will never understand or experience true church – ekklesia – as mandated in the New Testament.
Yet this is why most house churches become stiflingly insular and fail, and most legacy churches become stiflingly homogeneous and hierarchical.
Continue readingGovernments that can afford to subsidize the bad consequences of our irresponsible choices …
Can’t afford to let us enjoy the good consequences of our responsible choices.
Under the New Covenant, worship is not about “entering into God’s presence” …
With weekly church “services” – whether traditional or contemporary – designed to lead us there through manipulated feelings of intensity.
In fact, there are no such concepts regarding church or worship anywhere in the New Testament.
Nope, not, nada …
Just ain’t there.
Rather, the New Testament defines true worship as living holy lives of sacrificial obedience and submissive obeisance to God, 24/7.
Moreover, under the New Covenant we are to be His temple, with His presence now in us …
Each and every one.
This is why the New Testament simply says that when we gather together, we should sing God’s praises to encourage one another.
That’s it – nothing more and nothing less – and the New Testament gives no other reason to sing when we gather as His church.
It also says nothing about gathering to “enter into,” “invoke,” “seek” or be “ushered into” God’s presence.
Until we fully grapple with this distinction, we will never understand why being the church as the New Testament actually shows it …
Looks so much different than church as we’ve otherwise come to know it.
Sola fide?
Yes, of course …
We are saved and live by faith alone.
The problem, however, is we no longer seem to affirm full faith …
As actually taught and understood in Scripture.
Continue readingIn the Kingdom of God, there are no spectators …
Except, of course, on Sunday mornings.
The old legalism said we must always “act good” …
While the new legalism says everyone else must now make us “feel good.”
Seriously, these things run in cycles …
As adherents of each diss anyone and anything that doesn’t feed their own insecurities.
Unfortunately, those who buy into each extreme – while still in it – seldom see how artificial and shallow it tends to be.
Which is why Jesus and His Word are about plumblines …
Not pendulums.
If, after the Cross, you’re still trying to invoke, approach or enter into God’s presence like in the Old Testament …
It ain’t true worship.
Under the New Covenant, we instead are to daily live worthy of – and in obedience to – God’s presence now in us …
Which is true worship.
Ignore this distinction, and you will never understand authentic church or real discipleship in the New Testament.
You can either have self rule based on Godly truth and virtue …
Or be ruled by oppressive “progressives.”
But you can’t have both.
Choose wisely.
Christ’s finished work on the Cross …
Doesn’t mean that His work on the Cross is finished in us.
Staged “church” …
Is very scripted, professional and alluring.
But …
Is it New Testament?
Every church has some who are thinkers …
Some who are feelers …
Some who are doers …
And some who are relaters.
Only as they learn to esteem each other’s gifts above their own, can their own individual gifts fully blossom between them …
For the mutual edification of all.
“Unity” based on anything less, however, leads to strife …
Which helps explain why so many churches are unhealthy instead.
“Christian Nationalists” and “Progressive Christians” are just different sides of the same coin.
That’s because they’re both utopian ideologies – even though at odds with each other – which claim perfectibility in the here and now.
Inevitably, this leads to tyranny as they are reduced to seeking unlimited government power to impose their unrealistic goals on everyone else …
Under the rationale that it’s for our own greater “good.”
Ultimately, they can’t allow opposing views to get in the way of creating their perfect societies where everyone thinks, believes and acts like them …
Through coercion if necessary.
In contrast, civil liberty this side of Heaven is only possible if we acknowledge our frailties and imperfectibility …
And give government only enough power to protect us from evildoers – rather than the unlimited power needed to turn us into somebody else’s notion of “do gooders.”
Only then can we be free to pursue true virtue as God directs and intends …
Rather than live under the false virtue of utopian tyranny.
Don’t fall prey to either form of unbiblical extremism …
Because God’s into plumblines, not swings of the pendulum.
