Pray KNCSB

I quote the following from the book Jesus Manifesto a free reader’s copy of which I received recently Publication will be soon). The authors (Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola) claim that the ultimate question facing this generation in and out of the church today is: “Who do you say that I am”?  the question Jesus asked his disciples. Apparently, the church has given inadequate answers to this question recently according to Sweet and Viola. . The divine in Christ, they say, is eroding while the human in Christ is piling up as the church’s sole agenda.

Emphasis here is on “you say.” The authors also claim that “every revival and restoration in the church has been a rediscovery of some aspect of Christ in the process of answering this critical question. In fact, three features are present in every awakening in the history of the Christian church: (1) a rediscovery of the ‘living word,’ or the Scriptures and its authority; (2) a rediscovery of the loving Christ and His supremacy; and (3) a rediscovery of the living Spirit and the Spiriti’s gifts and power to manifest Christ in the context of culture. God has a history of taking seriously people who take God’s Word seriously.”

What do you think of this quote? Do the authors have a legitimate complaint to make with regard to the way many make much more of the human Christ and so little of the divine Christ?

It is now old news that people in the church and people out of the church are similar in the way they behave and make decisions on moral issues. A regrettable development to be sure.

New converts and long time converts, researchers tells us, are not shining stars of holiness, reflecting the image and glory of Christ. Instead of being conformed to His image, being changed from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18), many have adopted a willing conformity to the world. In large part we have become a people who are in the world refusing not to be of it. This is a sad turn of circumstances. An awakening of our willingness to do what is right and a rejection of doing what is wrong awaits. Eternal and abundant living should fill our minds with the love of truth and the love of righteousness.

When America had strong leaning toward a Judeo-Christian code of behavior we could depend on Christian leaders and church member to reflect the image of Christ in their morality, in their politics, in their science, in their economy, and in every part of society. Alas, doing what is right is no longer a given when it comes to Christians. Many live by the heart-sickening sounding words “it all depends.”

Ask the generation after you if they believe that cohabiting is morally wrong and against God’s command and you may be surprised at the answer. Ask how far should a young man or woman go (sexually speaking) when dating and be ready for a jolt to your brain the size of an espresso double shot. Ask that if a couple is no “longer in love” should stay faithful to each other and wait for a confused response. It all depends, they may say.

You see morality is now an arbitrary decision governed by feelings and not by reason. The “mushy heart” of Hollywood drives most decisions of right and wrong among us. In “The Use of Science and Ethics” an American moral and social philosopher, Abraham Edel (deceased since 2007), has written this popular piece on morality quoted by John Stott in “Radical Discipleship” (p. 230). Our default relationship to holiness is now nonconformity.

It all depends on where you are,

It all depends on when you are,

It all depends on what you feel.

It all depends on how you feel.

It all depends on how you’re raised

It all depends on what is praised,

What’s right today is wrong tomorrow,

Joy in France, in England sorrow.

It all depends on point of view,

Australia or Timbuctoo,

In Rome do as the Romans do.

If tastes just happen to agree

Then you have morality.

But where there are conflicting trends,

It all depends, if all depends.

How sad. immorality has taken on the guise of prayer: If two agree it (immorality) will happen. Have mercy on us, O Lord!

When the church separates Savior from Lord, it (holiness) all depends. When we make following Jesus to the cross optional, it all depends. When disciple means something different from Christian it all depends. When bidding someone come a die with Christ is strange sounding to our ears it all depends. When we refer people with sinful patterns to the therapist next door, it all depends. When we study videos mostly and Scripture no more, it all depends.

Returning to holiness is the constant mandate of Scripture. Deciding right and wrong on the basis of Christ’s commands of loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves must recapture our conduct. Self-control must return to our favorite words’ list in the church. Purity must no longer be viewed as prudish but the honorable thing to live by.

Without a commitment to prayer and holiness revival like tomorrow may never come. But it won’t be because the Lord is slow to act but because we are slow to respond to his holy call to be a holy people. Call me Lord only if you plan to live under my Lordship.

Prayer: Lord, help us to resolve no longer to linger in the world miring in unholiness, forgetting our roots in you. Rather, Lord, we cry out to you to grace us with the power to return to holiness. Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on us! Amen.

Who am I to call the church to repentance? Am I usurping the role of the Holy Spirit? To the first question I answer: I am a follower of Jesus Christ who loves the church because the church is the bride of Christ. But does this simple fact give me any right to issue the clarion call of returning to the Lord? To the second question I answer: not really. I have long given up on the idea of persuading anyone of anything. I am only a family member who deeply loves the family, calling us together to go on further along the road of repentance and trust. Perhaps in the wake of repentance the Holy Spirit of God would deign visit us in power and healing.

Repentance ought to be a very familiar practice in our lives. When Jesus announced the availability of the kingdom of God to all people he put forth two ways to see and enter the kingdom: Repentance and trust or belief (Mark 1:14-15). Now repentance and trust are not once in a lifetime kinds of actions. Rather they are constant conditions we ought to find ourselves in order to see and enter the kingdom or will of God as little children and long for it on earth as it is in heaven. Faith or life with God, and repentance, letting ourselves be found wanting and returning to God in our want, demand constant vigil and decisions to belong.

I have already spoken of pluralism as a challenge in the church. The second “ism” that demands our repentance I want us to consider together is materialism. Some of the most attractive elements of our faith are material. Jesus was born of flesh, he ate real bread, he built real homes of brick and mortar, he was baptized in real water, he lived with real people who lived off a material land, he died on a cross made from wooden material, and was buried in a tomb hewn from real rock wrapped in materials made by real hands. The apostles saw him and handled him before and after the resurrection. Our faith is part of the material order.

But materialism is of a different sort of thing. Materialism is scrupulous obsession with material things. It’s built on a disordered desire to horde, to own, to possess things to the detriment of living in the presence of the Holy Spirit. As John Stott says, it “smothers the spiritual life.” Storing up earthy treasures, hoarding what eventually moth will devour, and coveting more and more of the material world until we become distracted from and forgetful of the fact that this world is not our home, we are just passing through.

Thus we live complicated lifestyles stressed beyond our capabilities to cope. Simplicity is for simpletons, we think. Generosity and contentment are only for the filthy rich. Never satisfied with what we have, wanting more because more wants more we reject our circumstances, neglect the example of our Lord and injunction of Paul to be content in whatever state we find ourselves in. We borrow, we sweat, and we claw our way to the top Mountain Riches to find the same discontentment with life that the chase after materialism never gave in the valleys of life.

If living in “godliness with contentment [is not] great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6) to us then materialism’s mesmerizing pull has undermined our trust in God. We must return or repent of our ways (that is change our minds or the way we think about materialism). If memory serves, everyone enters this life with nothing and exits it with nothing. Wise and patient Job had it right: Naked he came and naked he will leave this world. Stott adds this poetic thought: “In other words, life on earth is a brief pilgrimage between two moments of nakedness.”

So in my call to repentance to myself, to my spiritual family, I am calling for light travel. The kind that does not beset us and weigh us down, the kind that speaks the soft words of Jesus to Martha: you are weighed down with too many material burdens.

What then is the point of tongue lashing our preoccupation with materialism? When the Holy Spirit comes down on us in revival, materialism will be stripped away. Let’s hold it lightly while we have it. Let’s let it slip away from us willingly. Let’s begin now by repenting of holding it too dear and too close to our chest. When the Holy Spirit came down upon our dear apostles and disciples early in the church’s life, they took material things and gave them away to those in need. The example is set. Must we wait until Holy Spirit comes again to do what we already know we must and have a mandate to do? Let’s change our minds!

Changing our minds with regards to materialism requires deep conviction from God. Human nature is given to want more even when we have enough. Being willing to loosen our hold on our materialistic existence may open the floodgate of generosity and begin a movement of the Holy Spirit to eliminate poverty, heal the sick, and permit us the luxury of time to pursue no more the greenback but the prisoner’s welfare, to eliminate the widow’s loneliness, and to set sin-captive souls free. Let the revival begin in my heart. Amen.

The church is a group of radical disciples; followers of Christ who are transformed from the roots up. Radical disciples uproot everything in their lives that is not in conformity with Christ. Radical disciples intentionally follow their Master’s teachings, his ways, his life. And no one else’s. They do not escape the world but they do not conform to it either. They are holy people living in a world where they are not at home. One day, when this world is totally transformed, they will fit in.

What we often see in the church is less than radical discipleship. Radical discipleship has flown the church coop. In its place foreign “isms,” once alien in the church, have taken up permanent residence. John Stott mentions pluralism, materialism, ethical relativism, and narcissism as four main “isms” that are threatening the witness of the church today. They are foreign “isms” that share the bed of faith with some in the church, the live in partner that has taken liberties and left an anemic discipleship among us.

Pluralism denies the uniqueness of Christ. It muddles the finality of Christ and makes him an equal partner with others. We must not surrender the absolute truth of Christ’s uniqueness and his exclusivity. No matter what pressure for tolerance we receive, no matter what bigotry we get accused of fostering, Christ will always be the Only Way.

The world wants to rob Christianity of its uniqueness: The absolute Lordship of Christ. It wants to demote him to the level of a great healer, leader, or prophet. The world wants to place the creator of heaven and earth on par with Gandi, Alexander the Great, or Napoleon! Jesus is not great or greater. He has no equal: Not Mohammad, not Buddha, not the Dalei Lama.

This demotion won’t do for the radical disciple. Christ is on his rightful throne and he won’t step down. Not ever again. Radical disciples must resist to the very bitter end those who would pillage the divine realm of Christ for a mere mess of equality. He is Lord. Period. He is Lord because he is God in flesh appearing, in flesh suffering for humankind, bodily resurrected, and in the same manner reappearing. His status is not tentative. We are not waiting for society to pronounce the final verdict. He is Lord. God. Savior. That’s our only and final answer in every way.

He is the only God-man, the only God who dies for our sins, the only conqueror of death, the only judge and final word of every issue of life and humanity now and eternally.

Repenting of our pluralism, the obsession with other ways to live other than in radical discipleship to Christ is necessary for awakening to happen. Let’s heed the call, which comes to us from God: Repent and live again. Change and come back to me.

In pluralism the primacy of Christ is compromised. Allegiances and treaties with our souls are forged that move us in the direction of nonconformity to Christ and conformity with the world. Crying about this reality is the right thing to do. Crying out to God in repentance is the better thing to do.

Therefore,

We repent, dear God, of trusting in man’s ingenuity rather than Christ’s uniqueness and finality.

We repent of making god out of government.

We repent of joining politics to Christianity.

We repent of putting our trust in education.

We repent of believing that a robust economy is our savior.

We repent of doing good to save ourselves.

We repent of trusting in human personalities to solve our spiritual lethargy.

Revive us again, O Lord, and deliver us from our competing godless, pluralistic ways. Strip away our false gods. Strip away our false powers. Strip away our self sufficiency, our dependence on and our conformity to the world. Amen.