HE HAS OUR BACKS

Part 1

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” (Romans 1:16a)

We are not all evangelists, but we can all evangelize.  Evangelism has gotten its share of negative press, especially in recent years.  Opposition to Christianity has gotten more and more vehement, and as a consequence, those who openly profess Christ are more openly ridiculed.  As a matter of self-preservation in an unforgiving society, more and more Christians lie low in spiritual foxholes, popping out when only friendlies are approaching.  We may not all be evangelists, but we are all witnesses and ambassadors.  We have an obligation to walk in the Word daily and be quick to share the Word when our actions provoke others to ask about the Word.

I recently read an article that outlined many of the mistakes that gospel-givers make in the world today.  If we can avoid these stumbles, we will find ourselves in a better position to present the gospel when the opportunity occurs.  It is easy for us to become offensive to others and even easier to be defensive, but the true key is that we be responsive.  We need to lead a life that says the words we cannot say until the time is right.  Our gospel-giving actions can start immediately after meeting someone, the words may need to wait- but not too long. Peter tells us to, “Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.” (  1 Peter 2:12)

Evangelism should not be a hammer that hurts, scares, or shames someone into belief.  On the other hand, evangelism should not bribe, manipulate, or trick someone into belief.   Bad evangelism is worse than no evangelism.  Well over half of hard-core atheists purport to have had a close relationship with the church earlier in their lives.  The meaning of the word “close” is up for interpretation, but for argument sake, let’s take it at face value.  If many atheists have spiritual backgrounds, what went wrong along the way?  There can be a lot of different reasons, as many there are “apostates,” but we need only to be concerned with reasons that we might be guilty of ourselves.

I do not appreciate the ministry of the Jehovah Witnesses that come to my door.  I truly believe they are propagating a false message.  I also do not enjoy their approach.  I am uncomfortable with them (even though I do converse with them) because they preconceive my “wrongness” and it is apparent from their very first words.  They are not excited about their faith and seem more excited about my faithlessness.  In all honesty, they are not especially concerned about my relationship with God, but my relationship with their religion.  If I show excitement about my faith and relationship with God, they are disappointed and vamoose pretty quickly.  I think I should avoid treating others in the ways that I see JWs treating me.  I think they miss the point of what John was saying about John the Baptist (and us) when it comes to evangelism.  Jesus should be the key.    “There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.”  (John 1:6-8)

Here are a few things I think would be good for us to do that our tie-clad door-to-door friends are not doing.  First of all, our delivery should not make God secondary to anything.  We don’t want to promote our church, our denomination, ourselves, or even our pet doctrines.  We are not salesmen whose smooth words promote themselves more than the product. It needs to be all about Jesus.  It doesn’t even need to be about every theological question regarding Christ.  We don’t need to bring up the deep questions that even mature Christians disagree on or sideline arguments that play no role in salvation.  We need to focus on the person of Christ.  It is Him and Him alone that salvation lies…we should try not to get sidetracked on issues that are for another time.  Jesus is for now, those will be for later.

Part 2 next week

“They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.” Psalm 53:3

A few years ago we had a terrible, terrible tragedy in Roseburg.  Murders don’t happen very often in our town, but when they do, it is more often than not, a family dispute or someone passing through murdering someone passing through.  The details of the crime were utterly horrendous.  Lori, a 37 year-old mother of four  worked the graveyard shift in our local fast-stop.  By all accounts, she and her husband were both working hard to make ends meet and to provide a good home for the kids who ranged from ages 11 to 17.   A 27 year-old man who lived  near the fast-stop went into the store, stabbed the woman and then bludgeoned her with a hammer.  The police recognized him from video footage, went to the house and arrested him.  He only told them a couple of things.  One, he did not know Lori, but he hated her anyway, and two, he said he stopped beating her so he would have enough energy to walk home.  He didn’t even take anything- it was killing for killing’s sake.

He had no other ulterior motives.  There wasn’t some kind of jealousy or drug deal.  It was just a thoughtless, heartless act of evil.  How do these kind of things happen?   How can people who purport to belong to the human race be capable of such cruelty?   How is that some even use god as their excuse for wearing bombs and blowing up innocent women and children, or flying planes into buildings killing thousands, or beheading innocent journalists and videotaping it for the world to see?  Everyone has his own theory/excuse.  Some talk about culture and economics and religion, and others talk about mitigating circumstances, misunderstandings, and miscommunication, but there is only one real answer and it is found in Psalm 53:3: “They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.” 

We can look at this verse and say that not all people are corrupt.  After all, it is only a small percentage of our population who can do the cruelest of acts without blinking.  But it is not because we are good and they are not.  It is because we are restrained and they are not.  Some people are restrained by law, some by fear, some by logic and some by society, but the only true restrainer is the Holy Spirit.   Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:17,  “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.”  Our natural hearts are dark and we will, if given the choice, too often pick the darker way of doing things.    Solomon tells us in Proverbs 12:10 that  “A righteous man has regard for the life of his animal, But even the compassion of the wicked is cruel.” The man who killed Lori had abandoned any semblance of rightness by joining the forces of evil.

There was a line in the movie “The Giver” that I mentioned a few weeks ago.  “When man has a choice, he always chooses wrong.”  There is much truth to that statement.   We can say that murder is cruel, reprehensible, and unbelievably  disturbing, but unfortunately we cannot say it is inhuman.  We have seen too many humans do too many horrible acts to classify the acts as inhuman any longer.  They are acts that humans are capable of doing if they have no reason not to.   Someone once said, “imagine the worse thing a person can do, and make it ten times worse, and you can be assured that someone, somewhere, is probably doing it.”

We look at others who do such cruelty and think, how did they get there?  One day at a time, I would say.  They allowed more and more evil to creep into their lives.  They rejected God more and embraced goodness less.  They took our natural inclinations and moved them to a place where few will go, but they are just an extension of our own hearts.   How did they get there?  The same way we would if took the restraints off and lived as our evil hearts could.   I am not giving us excuses for our evil behavior.  Satan, the world, and our flesh constantly war against the “hope which lies within us,” but we still have a choice which influence we decide to heed.   But by God’s grace we could be committing acts that would seem horrific to the civilized world. Remember, even though we are being tempted by Satan, the world, and our own fleshly lusts, we cannot use that for an excuse because ultimately we still have choice.  On the other hand, if we deny the influences around us and erroneously believe that none of our choices are swayed by the three afore mentioned influences we will go along like the “unsinkable” Titanic, and we will sink.

We all need the strength of the Holy Spirit to experience righteousness.  In Proverbs there is a verse that I feel can be extrapolated  to encompass even more things than the verse calls for.  I put my additions in parentheses.  “He who oppresses the poor (weak, lonely, dependent) taunts his Maker, But he who is gracious to the needy (weak, lonely, dependent) honors Him.”  Proverbs 14:31  We must not taunt our maker because He is not one to be taunted.  Not only do we need to armor up everyday, but we need to unsheathe our sword and fight against the forces that would see us give in.   If not,  we might look into the mirror and see the person we have always despised staring back.  The only way to avoid seeing that image stare back at us is to stay close to our Lord.  If we can no longer restrain ourselves than we must retrain ourselves through the power of the Holy Spirit.  We must follow the one who did all things right, so that we might not do all things wrong.   To steal a line from Uncle Sam,  God is looking for a few good men (and women).  We have more than our share of cruel, selfish, and unfeeling people out there. The world could  sure use some loving, obedient, spirit-filled Christians to offset the mess this world is in.

“Abstain from all appearance of evil.”  1 Thessalonians 5:22

When it comes to sin, we sometimes see how close we can come without going over the edge.  We flirt with wrong-doing supposedly keeping ourselves just out of reach of what someone might call sinful behavior.  But that will always be a failing effort, and there are two very important reasons why we should avoid this kind of risky behavior.

The first reason is most apparent.  If we play with fire long enough, we are bound to get burned.  We seldom jump headfirst into temptation.  When I go swimming, I am not one of those who can leap into icy water taking the brunt of the cold all at one time.  I am one of those embarrassing slow-pokes who gets in and inch at a time, allowing a little strip of my body to get used to the water and moving slightly so another section can adjust a few minutes later.  Eventually, my whole body is ready to go and probably everyone else is ready to go home!

When it comes to entering into the waters of temptation, very few take a plunge right in.  They slowly work their way into it, getting used to things just a little bit at a time. But this is dangerous.  Behavior which used to be abhorrent slowly becomes acceptable.  We adjust just like the proverbial frog in the boiling water and eventually we find ourselves in a situation we can’t get out of.  All along the way, we will have excuses that allow us to go to the next level and then, one day, we are at a place we would have never thought of treading just months earlier.

So we know, by the Word and by experience that playing footsy with sin will get us in big trouble eventually, but there is a second reason we should avoid temptation.  Paul tells us to avoid all appearance of evil.  Why?  Because our actions affect others, even if it is not readily apparent.

If others see our sin, it reflects badly on our Christian walk and that in turn can affect another’s Christian walk or even their desire to become a Christian. We have to decide if the sin in which we are engaged is “fun” enough to cost our witness with others.  Is what we are doing worth the risk of influencing someone else away from The Lord Jesus?  Is the behavior so rewarding that if it led another astray, it would be worth it?  Of course, when we slowly enter into sin, we don’t ask ourselves those questions because self gratification becomes the main goal and we don’t want to be bothered by unnecessary negatives. We don’t want to be confused by the facts.

Not only is our sinful behavior a bad witness, others will be impacted because they will feel the consequences as well.  Anyone who thinks he can be involved in sin without its reach affecting others is in denial. We should avoid sin because it will eventually bring others into its tangled web.  There is a saying that “no man is an island,” and I would say that “no sin stays on an island,” as well.  Even if we have a secret sin, it will have its effects.  It will affect the way we look at others and look at ourselves, treat others and treat ourselves, and that is a given.  And, most likely, the sin will eventually raise its ugly head and be discovered and the domino effect will touch the lives of all those around us.  Like a pebble tossed in a pool, the ripples make their way outward.

So if falling to temptation is bad for us and for those around us, how do we prevent the slow move to accept more and more into our lives.  How do we avoid sin while it is just a flickering flame instead of trying to get free when it is a roaring fire?  How do we keep from doing test runs with temptation?  If we avoid all appearance of evil, we will assure that we will not reach the point where we are defending our bad behavior. We must intentionally avoid sin if we are to escape its tempting pull.

Here are some steps we can take to make sure we are not slowly entering the cold pool of sin an inch at a time.  First, evaluate our lives.  Are things that would have shocked us even months ago passing us by with little notice.  Do our minds wander to places they shouldn’t when we are not caught up in an activity?  Do we read, watch, or listen to things that are in opposition to righteous living?  Do we frequent places or take up friendships that will hinder our Christian growth?  On the other hand,  do we intentionally spend time with other Christians and involve ourselves in Christian service.  If we are like many, we might realize that we are doing things or are avoiding things that are not beneficial to our Christian walk. If that is the case, we will usually add the word “but” right after we admit it (even if we can admit it at all).  “I wouldn’t do this normally, but…. or “I would do this, but…” becomes our reason (oops, excuse) for our behavior.  People say we fall into temptation like it is all accidental.  Unfortunately, it is less of a fall (which seems out of our control) and more of a leap (which we slowly, but purposely initiate).

We have all heard the story about the little boy who was told not to swim in the canal, but when he comes home to his father the boy is all wet.  When ask why he swam in the canal when we was told not to, he said , “I looked at the canal and looked down at my swimming trunks, and the combination of the two was too tempting.”  His father ask why he would even take his swimming trunks, and the boy answers, “Well, in case I was tempted, of course.”  We sometimes make all the preparations we need to follow through with temptation, just in case we are tempted.  We plan for temptation, but not to avoid it, but to step into it.

God will give us the strength to avoid temptation.  As we are told, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13).  If we want to fall, however, we can by ignoring the strength He gives us. So for the sake of others and for our own sake, we must stay out of the “sin” pool.  There are probably signs somewhere that say, “Danger. No Swimming,” but we need to look for the signs before we think about getting into the water.

Proverbs 1:32  “For simpletons turn away from me—to death. Fools are destroyed by their own complacency.”

Last week I talked a bit about apathy, but today I would like to talk a little bit about its not too distant cousin, complacency.  Apathy is being disengaged with the surrounding world and circumstances whereas complacency is being satisfied with less than the surrounding  world and circumstances have to offer.  

Complacency is settling for less than what we should because we have a false sense of contentment.  It makes us sit back on our hands instead of forging ahead in our spiritual lives.  Unfortunately, complacency is the disease that everyone denies having.  As we all know, however, the first step in getting well is admitting we have a problem.

Complacent Christians have the idea that they have arrived.  In America this is an especially easy state of mind to fall into.  We have it pretty easy compared to the rest of the world.  Why should we get callouses on our knees praying when we have almost all we want and more.  Unfortunately, when we lack any feeling of need or desperation, we get sloppy in our worship.   

Barna Research reports that since the nineties, Americans have become more spiritually complacent. 40% of born again Christians do not attend church or read the Bible in a typical week, 30% are not “absolutely committed to the Christian faith” and 70% are not involved in a small group that meets for spiritual purposes. The percentage of adults who can be classified as “born again” rose from 35% from the early 90s to 41% in the early 2000s. However, participation in 4 key behaviors declined and have continued to decline in this century; Bible reading (down from 45% to 37%); church attendance (from 49% to 42%); volunteering at church (from 27% to 20%); and adult Sunday school attendance (from 23% to 19%).   The Covid crisis did not helped matters.  It was found that many of the people who got in the habit of not attending due to Covid did not return after Covid.   

There is a story of a tool company that manufactured drill bits. Faced with financial losses, company executives gathered to discuss the problem: a declining demand for drill bits. The CEO challenged his men: “How can we revive the bit market?” After an embarrassing silence, one member of the team dispelled the fog: “Sir, the market isn’t for bits–its for holes!” This simple truth illustrates what the church needs to recognize.  Complacent people feel fulfilled because they don’t feel needy. People are not in the market for spiritual activity because they don’t see a need for spiritual activity.     When someone needs to drill a hole he will think about buying a drill bit and when someone needs to fill a hole in his life he will look for a place to fill it.   In this time the church needs to be that place for unbelievers and believers alike.

There is the story of three demons who were exchanging ideas to bring about the downfall of man.  The first said, “Let’s tell them there is no God.”  The second said, “Let’s tell them there is no Hell.”  The third said, “Let’s tell them that there is no hurry.”  It seems to me that they settled on the third suggestion.

Revelation warns us about this complacency in the future.  “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Because you say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked,”  (Revelation 3:15-17)  Is that the future or has the future arrived?   God warns us of being lukewarm because it is more dangerous than being hot or cold.  It has just enough heat to make us believe that we are okay.  That kind of deception is a favorite ploy of Satan and many in the church seem to be falling for it.

There is a great story about the famous, fiery English pastor, A.J. Gordon, who became the pastor at a large, well-established, but cold Boston church.  After just a few weeks many of the senior members of the congregation moved to oust him because of his bold condemnation of the lifelessness of the church.  After about a month, right before the axe was about to fall he gave a sermon called “The funeral of the Church.”  It was a no-holds-barred, tell-it-the-way-it-is, God’s-Word-is-His-Word sermon.   The theme was that the church was a casket and like a casket there was no room for converts because coffins are built for only the dead.  He warned them of impending disaster if they did not repent.  It was an hour of truth.  Toward the end of the sermon the doors in the back of the church swung open and six solemn-faced pall bearers carried a casket up to the front.  Pastor Gordon lifted the lid and challenged the congregation to file past the coffin to view the deceased on the way out.  In the coffin, you guessed it, a giant mirror.

It seems to me that too many of us today need to look in the mirror to see if our complacency is leading unto death.  Paul tells us,  “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you–unless indeed you fail the test?”  (2 Corinthians 13:5)   It is hard to change others, but we can start with ourselves.  Have we become “fat and sassy” in our christian lives?  Are we going through the motions because that is all it takes anymore?  Do we put more time into the needless and neglect the needful?   We need to be cautious so that we don’t fall into the trap that Paul warns us of in Corinthians,   “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.”  (1 Corinthians 10:1)

So it is time for the church put on its big-boy pants.  It is hard to put pants on someone else, so we should worry about our own legs first, but we shouldn’t be shy about pointing out lack of fervor in the Body of Christ.  It is time to take our spiritual lives seriously even if things are going so well that it seems we don’t need God.  That is, of course, facetious.  No matter how it seems, we need God.  We should not be fooled.  The demons have lied.  There is a hurry and those around us could use our hurriedness on their behalf.

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace  of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 4:4-7

Our verses for today are familiar ones, but like many verses, need to be revisited quite often because worry often gives small things a big shadow and that big shadow can blot out today’s sunshine.  Worry is faith in reverse.  Instead of freeing us, it imprisons us, and most often about things that might not even be real.

There was a woman who constantly worried about burglars and never got a night’s sleep anticipating a nightly break-in.  Finally, after her husband had gone downstairs night after night to investigate normal sounds and invisible burglars, he actually came upon a man who had sneaked his way into the house.  “Well, hello there,” the husband exclaimed, “I am pleased to meet you.  Would you mind coming upstairs to meet my wife.  She has been waiting ten years to meet you.”  That is often what worry is all about.  Anticipating what may not happen at the expense at what does.

Worry often extracts interest on trouble before it comes due.  Like someone wise once said, “I’ve had a lot of trouble, most of which never happened!”  God calls us to turn over our cares to Him, but that is easier read than done.  God knows that we will still worry because we are fretters by nature.  Our sin nature has bred worry into us because faith is intentional while anxiety is natural.   Worry is a useless pursuit because it never gets us closer to a goal and on the contrary it slows our progress.

When I used to coach I told the players to learn their assignments so well that they did not have to worry about what they were going to do (that would just slow them down),  and consequently, they could just go out and do.  That is what we should strive to do- turn our worries over to God so that we can just do. David tells us, “When my anxious thoughts multiply within me, Your consolations delight my soul.” (Ps 94:19) If we don’t nip our worries in the bud, they will flourish into a weedy garden that will take all our time to work. We will spend more time on worry than worship and more time being anxious than active.

In these verses, God gives us several commands:  Always rejoice.  Be reasonable.  Never worry.  Come to God with your requests about everything.  These are not empty words like we so often hear from friends in times of need.  “Hang in there,” and “Tomorrow will be a better day,” and “Just put it out of your mind,” are all well-intentioned, but powerless statements.  They give the end without the means.  It is almost like giving someone the infamous Bermuda Triangle of directions, “You can’t miss it.”

How to “hang in there” is just as important as how to “get there.”  The how-to-dos are more important than the what-to-dos.

So God tells us how to negate the worries that assail us.  If we pray, if we rejoice, if we turn our requests over to Him, and if we are thankful, it will be hard to remain anxious.  Somewhere in that process, the worry will begin to melt.  Most of what we worry about is not worth the time investment anyway.

There was a man who decided to make a Worry Wednesday.  He would set aside his worries until Wednesday and worry about them then.  The funny thing was that by the time Wednesday rolled around, most of the worries he had were not worries any longer.

One thing we can do to cut back on worry is to be prepared.  When I give a speech, I don’t worry if I have truly taken the time to prepare (only the people I am speaking to are worried).  It is the same for us in life.  Paul says, “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.”  (1 Corinthians 16:13) If we are in the Word, think upon God, and surround ourselves with godly influences, we will be prepared to handle what others might just worry about.  With preparation we will set aside much of what the world worries about.

We need to eliminate those things that will never happen.  There is an old Scottish saying “What may be, may not be.”  We have a tendency to worry about what might be even though it will, under all measurements, probably never be.  When ebola hit the US, some people spent so much time worrying about the disease, that it probably took more time off their lives than ebola ever could.  The Covid Crisis a few years past presented the same challenge to thousands who might have been “worrying themselves to death.”  That kind of worry is like being afraid to eat food because it might have chemicals in it and then starving to death.  It is said that 40% of what we worry about has no real chance of ever touching us.  Let’s eliminate those first.  We never want to worry too much about things over which we have no control at the expense of things we can control.

The next worry we should get rid of is things that have already past. In coaching I always said that the only important play is the next one.  If we allow the failure on the past play to affect our performance on the next we have given it more power than it deserves.  Here is the scenerio: a pitcher makes a good pitch and we swing, miss, and look silly in the process.  If we don’t shake that off and instead let that pitch affect our next swing, we have given the pitcher credit for what she has not earned.  The previous one pitch controlled us twice.  That should never be.  If we spend time in our daily lives worrying about the past, it will affect our present. We should not give more power to what is gone than what is yet to come.  I am retired now and it seems I am paying taxes on the same money I have already paid taxes on a couple of times before.  When it comes to worry, we should not spend energy on worries that we have already paid on before.

Finally, eliminate those worries about untrue criticism that comes from others.  If it is true criticism, listen to it, make changes, no worries.  If it untrue, ignore it, no worries. Not everything that people bring to our attention is worth keeping there. Some of the things that people criticize us for cannot be changed anyway.  If I worry about people who don’t like how short I am, that is a waste of time.  My last growth spurt was fifty years ago.  I am not holding my breath.  Some criticism is that foolish.

So, once we have eliminated those things that won’t happen, have already happened, or don’t matter if they happen, what do we do with the approximately 8% that is left.  Those are the legitimate worries that we need to take to God as He has instructed and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will become ours.

Admittedly, it is easier to complain than rejoice, be bitter rather than thankful, and panic than pray, but those are useless endeavors.  In Africa there are people who rely on witch doctors rather than real doctors and we think that is foolish.  But we are doing the same thing if we think complaining, bitterness, and panic are more effective than rejoicing, thankfulness, and prayer.  I had a friend once that complained about always having peanut butter sandwiches for lunch.  I told him that he should have his wife fix something different, but he told me he fixes his own lunches.  It doesn’t make sense to complain about that we have control over any more than it makes sense to worry about things we shouldn’t.

It is so wonderful that the promises in our verses today are being delivered by a great God.  God welcomes us to bring our worries to Him.  I think it is our responsibility, however, to run them through a strainer first.  We can take every single worry to Him, but some should not be worries in the first place.  Our vice principal was talking to me years ago about how some teachers send him students for not bringing a pencil to class or doodling during a lecture.  Those are not heavy-duty discipline issues.  Those should be handled by the teacher.  Well, God expects us to look at our worries with discernment and take care of some of those before we send them to the office.

A while back I gave a lecture on router use in my shop class.  I said if the machine misbehaves, the first thing they need to do is turn it off.  A student ask me, “Shouldn’t we ask you first?” and I told him that I would just tell him to turn it off, so he can eliminate the middleman and do what I would tell him to do anyway.  If I am worried about my weight, God will probably tell me to exercise and eat right.  I can go right to those things without worry.  If I am worried about the way people see me, maybe I should treat people the way God’s Word instructs.  That might take care of a lot of worry.

Christian author John Blanchard has said it well, “So he supplies perfectly measured grace to meet the needs of the godly. For daily needs there is daily grace; for sudden needs, sudden grace; for overwhelming need, overwhelming grace. God’s grace is given wonderfully, but not wastefully; freely but not foolishly; bountifully but not blindly.”

God said it even better, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.  Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”    (John 14:27)