fear

Passive Christians

April 10, 2019 By Jeff Leave a Comment

If we are honest we can see the culture decaying around us. Our institutions are overcome with secular ideas. Passive Christians allow this do happen by not engaging in the culture. The cultural warriors are the twitter warriors that are constantly trolling everyone. If social media is the war-zone why are we too passive to use it. We secede the culture war to those that are work against God. Let’s not be passive.

We gather around people who make us feel safe and secure. Also, we surround ourselves with people who re-affirm our own beliefs. There is a two part problem here. The former shelters us from risk when risk is the only thing that creates a sustainable outcome. The latter stops us from growing. When we are not confronted by our own sins we will give nothing to the world of value. Both induce fear, fear that makes us become passive Christians.

Passivity starts from the most simplest lie, “I can’t.” People who have completed the biggest works to the kingdom of God have had this lie to be put to rest. If it is God’s will “I can’t” shouldn’t exist. There are excuses all the time to not do anything. The world needs Christ and we are his hands and feet. The best way to hand over the culture to Satan is to do nothing.

So, how did our culture get here? Every generation has this question. The answer isn’t “kids these days.” As we sit on our hands it sure makes it hard to point. Allowing norms to bend creates an elastic overton window for the church. We are allowing culture to bend the church while we should be the one bending culture. These norms turns sin into “sin.” After this “sin” becomes normal.

What are we risking? Any social media post that gives us criticism scares us. We create a lie to evade a controversial social media post. This lie: “Being blunt turns people away from Christ.” Also declaring the action of boldness being unloving. If someone is running to a cliff would you politely ask them not to do it? Or would you tackle the before the reach the cliff? The forces of darkness never give up. Remember the parable of the talents. What will you be able to say to your maker with what he has entrusted you with?

Fear To Preach

February 14, 2019 By Jeff Leave a Comment

We are living in a culture where we are afraid to preach the truth. Also teachers are afraid to turn away potential church goers. Teachers are in a constant state of fear. They give milk to the congregation because it is universally accepted. We don’t preach what is needed and what is relevant to convict us. Many people run to the darkness cause they are afraid of the light.

There is not an equal correlation from conviction to not accepting Christ. Church leaders are afraid to preach things that convict people. People who are not Christians don’t know the Truth. I’m not talking about preaching from generally held truths. One example: not to worship a carved image. That is not a cultural problem. One the other hand, worshiping Hollywood celebrities is a far too common practice. Church leaders do not get relevant in preaching out of fear of turning off people to Christ.

I have discussed in past blogs the problem of giving milk to the congregation. Many times the reason is also due to fear. Something substantial always has backlash. There are many church leaders who try to convict a pastor for the substance. Job security, unfortunately, is tied to given people what they want to hear. The job of the congregation is to make disciples. A pastor’s job is to shepard the congregation. His job is not equip the congregation for outreach. The pastor shouldn’t appease the lowest common denominator but to lead their flock.

Unfortunately, even Christians don’t like the truth. Anything that rattles us to the core we are afraid of and hate. We should constantly be rattled. Every time a pastor preaches we should be rattled. Our leaders should recognize this and understand it. We cannot truly change the culture and the world when we can’t preach convicting messages. Church should make us feel good about ourselves. It should make us equipped, to strip away all the filth we see in the Light of God.

A Responsible Church

August 9, 2018 By Jeff Leave a Comment

Leaders and members of a church fail to call out sin. We also fail to be intentional in our actions. Fear causes the church to retain its membership by pandering to the crowd. Members of a church do not want their sins to be exposed. People view the light offensive because their deeds are exposed.

John 3:19-21 (NASB):

“This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

Too many services preach topics to the choir. The teachers tend to preach universal truths that are not too convicting. A good example is talking about a sin like idolatry. A preacher brings up plenty of verses on the subject without being relevant to what we are going thru. Idolatry could easily be used as a straw man. You stick everything to the sin that you are not convicted on. Our culture doesn’t use inanimate objects as idols. We use celebrities and political pundits as idols. They shape our culture when we put their opinions equal to God or above him.

We don’t spur on others to good works. Knowledge without purpose is dead. There needs to be a game plan every Sunday on how we can show God’s light to people we interact with. If we are not spurring each other on to righteous actions what is the point of the church? The great commission fails when we fail as a church. Our actions need to be intentional. We need to not think of what we heard Sunday but practice it. If the message doesn’t promote actions, then it isn’t one that need to be taught. We are stuck in infancy as a church when we don’t promote actions.

A big problem in the church is fear. We are constantly afraid to alienate people in the congregation. Teachers are afraid to call out specific sins that the church is struggling with. These sins eventually translate into the leadership. Therefore, the church becomes more secularized an ineffective. A church may lose people when leadership calls out sin. You can’t be offended by the light when you refuse to go into it. They stay in their own denial without paying homage to the truth.

Is our Church becoming more responsible or less? I believe the answer is unequivocally less responsible. We see people constantly taking in false doctrine. Therefore, we crave the lies in our culture about our sin because our leaders don’t expose the truth. We are afraid of the members of the Church reacting to the truth of their sin. I believe our country and the world is in a desperate need of a revival. It is unfortunate that Christians are the ones who need it.