Initial failure …
Is often the key to success.
Those most enthralled with the latest “Christian” fads …
Often know the least about God’s written Word and redemptive history.
When we give civil government the rights and responsibilities that God gives to Himself, to individuals, to families or to His church …
We become its supplicants, and it our idol.
Pharisees in the New Testament were religious leaders who did not live what they taught to others.
Today, we have authors, bloggers and so-called “workers” (their euphemism for “apostles”) peddling books, seminars and “ministries” that tell others how to form “organic” or “simple” churches …
With no consistent history – in their own lives, home towns or anywhere else – of sucessfully starting, sustaining or even being part of any church like they’re selling to others.
One need look no further than authors like Frank Viola, Jon Zens, Milt Rodriguez, Felicity Dale, Ross Rohde, Keith Giles and their buddies to see such failures …
Along with their various here today, gone tomorrow mutual promotion networks.
The irony is that when you point this out, they call YOU the Pharisee!
Simple, participatory church works as the New Testament authoritatively shows it …
Not as they keep selling it to promote themselves, their “ministries” and their failed existential agendas.
Be discerning.
Unless Jesus is your King …
He’s not your Savior.
Is Jesus really the measure of all things?
Not when we create Jesus in our own image …
Shaped by hurts from wrongs and disappointments we’ve suffered.
Such a false Jesus is really all about us, and becomes our bondage …
Rather than the authentic, liberating Lord of all.
So it’s always our choice:
Do we surrender our hurts to Christ – as He authoritatively defines us, Himself and so much more in His written Word …
Or let our hurts define us, Him, our reality and even His Word?
Sometimes …
Love says no.
May God deliver His people from Church, Inc. …
As we learn to simply be the church, one to another, like He originally intended.
Law reveals,
Grace enables,
Faith secures.
There are no hierarchical titles in the original language of the New Testament regarding God’s people and the church.
Instead, there are only straightforward descriptive words for different functions using the everyday language of ordinary folk …
And bad English translations which imply otherwise today.
When we finally act like adults and just say “no” …
Repressive “progressives” throw temper tantrums.
When our view of God reflects our own sensibilities …
He’s not really God, but an idol of our own creation.
Maybe it’s good to occasionally irritate people teaching what they ain’t living …
Just like Jesus did with the Pharisees of His day.
Those needing a title to be a leader and influential …
Are neither.
Unless the mandate to be Christ’s ekklesia (His participatory assembly that represents and advances His Kingship within the local community where we live) is fully working …
None of His other mandates (like the Great Commission and discipleship) will also fully work.
Faux leaders in the Body of Christ are not so hard to spot:
They seek notoriety for themselves;
Status for themselves;
Power for themselves; and
Enrichment for themselves …
Like Jesus never did.
Nowhere in the New Testament is “pastor” ever applied to an actual person as a title, position or office.
Instead, it’s simply one of several functions performed by local elders (plural) in their churches.
Someone else’s problem may not always require our intervention …
But when it does, we should earn the right to do so.
In the New Testament, Jesus commands His disciples to be individual peacemakers who turn their cheeks against minor personal offences …
And civil magistrates to be government peacemakers who use the sword to protect others from true evil.
Those who see this as a contradiction or confuse those distinctions …
Lack an authentic Biblical worldview.
There are no autonomous facts …
Because no fact, standing alone, innately interprets itself.
All facts, as we perceive them from our finite perspectives, only find definition and meaning in a broader interpretive framework.
If you stop to consider this, however, it becomes clear that the only interpretive framework able to communicate reliable meaning …
Is the external revelation of an omniscient and omnipotent God who created all things from nothing.
That means He alone is able to know everything about anything, since nothing exists apart from His comprehensive knowledge and authority …
And, unlike us, there is nothing He doesn’t know which might contradict what He claims He does know.
Without Him and His resulting external written Word, where He authoritatively defines us and His creation …
We and our “facts” are confined to us and our own subjective limitations, with no basis for reliable truth claims.
Because of this, postmodern existential ideologies – which reject all transcendent interpretive frameworks and external revelation – have no basis for claiming to know the truth, or understand the meaning, of anything.
Ironically, even some Christians naively fall prey to postmodern existential absurdity by making the authoritative propositional claim …
That there can be no authoritative propositional claims.
Instead, they make the further absurd external claim that the standard for all meaning lies within them …
As they then insist on the right to define Christ and everything else through their own, limited, self-referential perceptions.
How frustrating it must be when even the meanings of their absurdities depend on the very God-given foundations of truth and knowledge which they reject.
Be wary of those who peddle the latest theological fads.
Often they prey on spiritually wounded or naive people with the temptation of “deeper” life, new “revelation,” or some other trans-Biblical agenda …
Rather than the health and assurance of simple faith as taught in Scripture.
Here are two tests that typically weed out these merchants of deception:
1. Are they part of an actual, functional local fellowship in their own home town, where they are transparent and accountable to a community of fellow believers – among whom their ideas have been demonstrably working and showing good fruit over time?
2. Do they openly affirm and submit to God’s plenary authority of Scripture as His authentic written Word in all matters of faith, life and doctrine?
If they fail either criteria, you likely are dealing with a wolf …
Rather than one who legitimately comes in the name of the Lord.
We have no autonomous “free will” against God:
Only by His sovereign saving grace alone can we choose Him;
Only by His sovereign delegated authority alone can we reject Him; and
Only by His sovereign ultimate will alone do those doctrines find resolution.
The problem with routinely owning other people’s problems …
Is that eventually, they’re more than willing to let you.
Forgiveness isn’t about excusing or setting the offender free …
But fully acknowledging and giving the offense to God so we can be free.
Is it any surprise that those who deny God’s plenary authority of Scripture as His written Word …
Never seem able to demonstrate the power of His authority to a waiting World?
