church – Page 15 – Growing 4 Life

The lemon that never grew up

Leave a Comment / February 28, 2013 February 28, 2013

I have this Meyer lemon tree that is actually still living and it’s been almost a year. I am not known for my indoor green thumb (it only works outdoors) and so no one is more surprised than me that the tree is still alive.

But here is the strange part: do you see that lemon hanging off the tree that looks a lot like a lime? That thing has been hanging there since last fall. The plant blossomed profusely but only one baby lemon started growing. It kept growing and growing and then one day it just stopped. And it has looked like this –like a lime–for the last six months at least.

I know I have to cut it off. I am sure it is taking valuable nutrients from the plant. But I just hate to do it.

I wonder if there are a bunch of us Christians walking around half-ripe? We never mature. We just hang on to the vine, taking valuable nutrients and energy from the other lemons.

Of course, not growing up is a popular thing to do in this country. Just watch any sitcom on TV where you will find men portrayed as video-game-playing, crude, joke-cracking boys stuck in their teens. They need their wives to guide and direct them to be responsible. What a bunch of nonsense!

Women, on the other hand, are the focus of the commercials where we are conditioned to believe that growing up — growing mature — is bad. Looking young is the ultimate goal. Products line the shelves that help keep the wrinkles at bay and the gray hair covered.

And, maybe unknowingly, this has transferred to the Church, where so many of us have no interest in growing up.

Paul compares immature Christians to babies who are still on milk (Hebrews 5:12-14). These Christians should be eating meat, but they are still drinking only milk. Instead of being the teacher, they still need to be taught.

If we choose to remain half-ripe or immature, a few consequences take place that are worth some consideration:

1) We are never able to glorify God in the way that we should.

2) We set a terrible example for our children.

3) We rob the Church of precious energy that should be poured into new babes in Christ.

So how do we grow up? I really only know of one way: Read and study the Word of God. While this is a simple thing to do, there are some principles to follow in our study.

1) Read it in context, not pulling verses out from everywhere to fit our own personal situation.

2) Find a good, traditional commentary or Bible Study guide to help (I highly recommend the resources at Grace to You).

3) Listen to solid, biblical preachers, not only in church, but also on podcast or mp3. (Both Grace to You and Truth for Life are filled with mp3s available to listeners at no charge. They are invaluable resources for helping me understand difficult passages. )

4) We need to have the proper heart attitude. We need to approach our study with humility and a willingness to change. If we approach God’s Word with pride and arrogance, we will not grow. If we approach God’s Word with a selfish heart, we will not grow.

5) We can’t expect to fill our hearts and minds with everything God hates for 12 hours a day (music, books, tv, movies, talk radio) and then expect to grow because we read the Bible for 30 minutes. Discernment is critical.

I wish I could shout to the whole Christian world the importance of studying God’s Word. So many of us don’t do it. Some of us know we should but we just don’t make time. Some of us don’t even try–after all, we have our fire insurance. And some of us languish in the world of half-page devotionals with one verse, never venturing into the true study of God’s Word. Don’t get me wrong–there is nothing wrong with devotionals. They just should never replace actual study of God’s Word.

And, so, the choice to grow past the half-ripe stage is up to us. Are we going to hang onto the branch, never ripening, like that lemon of mine or are we going to take ownership of our spiritual health and grow up?

A.W. Tozer puts it better than I ever could: “Why do some persons “find” God in a way that others do not? Why does God manifest His presence to some and let multitudes of others struggle along in the half-light of imperfect Christian experience? Of course, the will of God is the same for all. He has no favorites within His household. All He has ever done for any of His children He will do for all of His children. The difference lies not with God but with us.”

Wednesday Wisdom: This World– Playground or Battleground?

Leave a Comment / February 27, 2013 February 27, 2013

This excerpt from A.W. Tozer needs no introduction. It is profound (as usual) and the truth of it rings in my ears. The frightening and serious ramifications of modern Christianity’s wrong view of the world are becoming more and more evident each day.

Things are for us not only what they are—they are what we hold them to be. That is to say, our attitude toward things is likely in the long run to be more important than the things themselves. This is a common coin of knowledge, like an old dime worn smooth by use, yet it bears upon it the stamp of truth and must not be rejected simply because it is familiar.

It is strange how a fact may remain fixed, while our interpretation of the fact changes with the generations and the years. One such fact is the world in which we live. It is here and has been here through the centuries. It is a stable fact, quite unchanged by the passage of time, but how different is modern man’s view of it from the view our fathers held! Here we see plainly how great is the power of interpretation. The world is for all of us not only what it is—it is what we believe it to be. And a tremendous load of woe or weal rides on the soundness of our interpretation.

Going back no further than the times of the founding and early development of our country, we are able to see the wide gulf between our modern attitudes and those of our fathers. In the early days, when Christianity exercised a dominant influence over American thinking, men conceived the world to be a battleground. Our fathers believed in sin and the devil and hell as constituting one force, and they believed in God and righteousness and heaven as the other. By their very nature, these forces were opposed to each other forever in deep, grave, irreconcilable hostility. Man, our fathers held, had to choose sides—he could not be neutral. For him it must be life or death, heaven or hell, and if he chose to come out on God’s side, he could expect open war with God’s enemies. The fight would be real and deadly and would last as long as life continued here below. Men looked forward to heaven as a return from the wars, a laying down of the sword to enjoy in peace the home prepared for them.

Sermons and songs in those days often had a martial quality about them, or perhaps a trace of homesickness. The Christian soldier thought of home and rest and reunion, and his voice grew plaintive as he sang of battle ended and victory won. But whether he was charging into enemy guns or dreaming of war’s end and the Father’s welcome home, he never forgot what kind of world he lived in—it was a battleground, and many were wounded and slain.

That view is unquestionably scriptural. Allowing for the figures and metaphors with which the Scriptures abound, it is still a solid Bible doctrine that tremendous spiritual forces are present in the world. Man, because of his spiritual nature, is caught in the middle. The evil powers are bent upon destroying him, while Christ is present to save him through the power of the gospel. To obtain deliverance he must come out on God’s side in faith and obedience. That in brief is what our fathers thought, and that, we believe, is what the Bible teaches.

How different today. The fact remains the same, but the interpretation has changed completely. Men think of the world not as a battleground, but as a playground. We are not here to fight; we are here to frolic. We are not in a foreign land; we are at home. We are not getting ready to live, but we are already living, and the best we can do is rid ourselves of our inhibitions and our frustrations and live this life to the full. This, we believe, is a fair summary of the religious philosophy of modern man, openly professed by millions and tacitly held by many more millions who live out that philosophy without having given it verbal expression.

This changed attitude toward the world has had and is having its effect upon Christians, even gospel Christians who profess the faith of the Bible. By a curious juggling of the figures, they manage to add up the column wrong and yet claim to have the right answer. It sounds fantastic, but it is true.

The idea that this world is a playground instead of a battleground has now been accepted in practice by the vast majority of fundamentalist Christians. They might hedge around the question if they were asked bluntly to declare their position, but their conduct gives them away. They are facing both ways, enjoying Christ and the world, gleefully telling everyone that accepting Jesus does not require them to give up their fun—Christianity is just the jolliest thing imaginable. The “worship” growing out of such a view of life is as far off center as the view itself—a sort of sanctified nightclub without the champagne and the dressed-up drunks.

This whole thing has grown to be so serious that it is now the bound duty of all Christians to reexamine their spiritual philosophy in the light of the Bible. Having discovered the scriptural way, they must follow it, even if to do so, they must separate themselves from much that they had accepted as real, but which now in the light of truth is seen to be false.

A right view of God and the world to come requires that we have a right view of the world in which we live and of our relationship to it. So much depends upon this that we cannot afford to be careless about it.

—Excerpt from This World: Playground or Battleground? by A.W. Tozer

Wednesday Wisdom: Automatic Christianity

Leave a Comment / February 13, 2013 February 12, 2013

A.W. Tozer was born in 1897. When he wrote these words, the climate of Christianity was much different than it is now. Or was it? I can never get over the foresight of this author. But, perhaps it wasn’t foresight, but an awareness of the direction the church was headed instead. Can we change it? With God’s help we can. Will we? Only God knows. However, as Tozer states in this excerpt from The Pursuit of God, we can personally repent and turn towards God’s Word for our standards.

This entire book is well worth reading–

The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast-flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar.

The tragic results of this spirit are all about us: shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit. These and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul.

For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor, average diet with which others appear satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another’s notions, copied one another’s lives and made one another’s experiences the model for our own. And for a generation the trend has been downward. Now we have reached a low place of sand and burnt wire grass and, worst of all, we have made the Word of Truth conform to our experience and accepted this low plane as the very pasture of the blessed.

It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to biblical ways. But it can be done. Every now and then in the past Christians have had to do it. History has recorded several large-scale returns led by such men as St. Francis, Martin Luther and George Fox. Unfortunately, there seems to be no Luther or Fox on the horizon at present. Whether or not another such return may be expected before the coming of Christ is a question upon which Christians are not fully agreed, but that is not of too great importance to us now.

What God in His sovereignty may yet do on a world-scale I do not claim to know. But what He will do for the plain man or woman who seeks His face I believe I do know and can tell others. Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days.

Any man who by repentance and a sincere return to God will break himself out of the mold in which he has been held, and will go to the Bible itself for his spiritual standards, will be delighted with what he finds there.

—Pursuit of God, The

The Implications of the Cross

Leave a Comment / April 21, 2011 April 3, 2015

We lay out the plans for our own lives and say, “Now, Lord, it is nice to serve You and we love You, Lord, and let’s sing a chorus,” but we won’t change our plans in any way. But, let me remind you, the cross of Jesus Christ always changes men’s plans. The cross of Christ is revolutionary, and if we are not ready to let it be revolutionary in us nor let it cost us anything or control us in any way, we are not going to like a church that takes the things of God seriously. People want the benefits of the cross but yet they do not want to bow to the control of the cross. They want to take all the cross can offer but they don’t want to be under the lordship of Jesus.

The above is written by A.W. Tozer. Again, I turn to him for wisdom. This time regarding that most iconic of symbols in Christianity: The Cross. Here are some further thoughts on the Cross and what it means for us as believers–

In every Christian’s heart there is a cross and a throne, and the Christian is on the throne till he puts himself on the cross; if he refuses the cross he remains on the throne. Perhaps this is at the bottom of the backsliding and worldliness among gospel believers today. We want to be saved but we insist that Christ do all the dying. No cross for us, no dethronement, no dying. We remain king within the little kingdom of Mansoul and wear our tinsel crown with all the pride of a Caesar; but we doom ourselves to shadows and weakness and spiritual sterility.

The old cross slew men; the new cross entertains them. The old cross condemned; the new cross amuses. The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh; the new cross encourages it. The old cross brought tears and blood; the new cross brings laughter. The flesh, smiling and confident, preaches and sings about the cross; before that cross it bows and toward that cross it points with carefully staged histrionics—but upon that cross it will not die, and the reproach of that cross it stubbornly refuses to bear.

The cross stands high above the opinions of men and to that cross all opinions must come at last for judgment.

If we are wise we will do what Jesus did: endure the cross and despise its shame for the joy that is set before us. To do this is to submit the whole pattern of our lives to be destroyed and built again in the power of an endless life. And we shall find that it is more than poetry, more than sweet hymnody and elevated feeling. The cross will cut into our lives where it hurts worst, sparing neither us nor our carefully cultivated reputations. It will defeat us and bring our selfish lives to an end.

In coming to Christ we do not bring our old life up onto a higher plane; we leave it at the cross. The corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die.

The cross that ended the earthly life of Jesus now puts an end to the sinner; and the power that raised Christ from the dead now raises him to a new life along with Christ.

To any who may object to this [the cross] or count it merely a narrow and private view of truth, let me say God has set His hallmark of approval upon this message from Paul’s day to the present. Whether stated in these exact words or not, this has been the content of all preaching that has brought life and power to the world through the centuries.

Willingness to suffer for Jesus’ sake—this is what we have lost from the Christian church. We want our Easter to come without the necessity of a Good Friday. We forget that before the Redeemer could rise and sing among His brethren He must first bow His head and suffer among His brethren! We forget so easily that in the spiritual life there must be the darkness of the night before there can be the radiance of the dawn. Before the life of resurrection can be known, there must be the death that ends the dominion of self. It is a serious but a blessed decision, this willingness to say, “I will follow Him no matter what the cost. I will take the cross no matter how it comes!”

At the heart of the Christian system lies the cross of Christ with its divine paradox. The power of Christianity appears in its antipathy toward, never in its agreement with, the ways of fallen men. The truth of the cross is revealed in its contradictions. The witness of the church is most effective when she declares rather than explains, for the gospel is addressed not to reason but to faith. What can be proved requires no faith to accept. Faith rests upon the character of God, not upon the demonstrations of laboratory or logic. The cross stands in bold opposition to the natural man. Its philosophy runs contrary to the processes of the unregenerate mind, so that Paul could say bluntly that the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. To try to find a common ground between the message of the cross and man’s fallen reason is to try the impossible, and if persisted in must result in an impaired reason, a meaningless cross and a powerless Christianity.