CARNAL METHODS

I have again found a youtube video that says what I want to say probably better than I could.  I don't agree 100% with anyone whose youtube videos I find and listen to and post, but there is a gem in so many of them that I continue to listen.  Here is a gem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f6iVWVqugc

What do you think?

YOU'RE JUST NOT A GOOD FIT ANYMORE

This is just an old saw, folks.  An excuse.  A cliché.  It has become popular now that when someone in charge is ready to ditch an employee...or a pastor...they tell them, "You're just not a good fit anymore."  You can probably already tell this riles me a bit.

In the case of pastors, I have to wonder...at what point did he start to "not fit?"  I've had shoes before that didn't fit, but they didn't fit to begin with and I should have never bought them.  Don't ask me why I did.  I guess I liked the way they looked so much I thought I could live with them.  I didn't think they would rub my heels or crush my toes that much.

Or maybe the shoe doesn't fit because I gained weight?  Or lost weight?  If the shoe started to "not fit" after I bought them and wore them for awhile when they actually did fit to begin with, the fault could very well lie with me.

So...what happens when a pastor that's been in his pulpit for years all of a sudden "doesn't fit anymore?"

Did the congregation start complaining about him?  No.  Was he caught in an illicit affair?  No.  Was he embezzling funds?  No.  Had he forgotten how to preach?  No.  Was his wife a problem?  No.  Were his children a problem?  No.  Maybe the leadership changed and had a close friend they wanted to pastor the church.  Maybe the leadership decided to steer the church in a different direction and the current pastor doesn't want to captain a ship that's making what he considers a wrong turn (or is unstable.)

Maybe the church has heard about things that other churches in other places are doing to entice visitors, things that maybe aren't quite square with how the Bible says we should be conducting church and the pastor has pointed this out.  Maybe there are some new, hip goings-on in those other churches that might be fun or different to do at this church and the pastor points out that they are not quite in line with the Bible.  Maybe these things don't square with the denominational tenets.

In that case, "Pastor Fuddy-Duddy, you aren't a good fit anymore."  The pastor then has to wonder what happened because the leadership didn't give him any other reason for giving him the boot.  It's just that he's "not a good fit anymore."

Well, folks, this doesn't set well with me.  A person shouldn't just be sent packing.  Everyone deserves to know the reason he's no longer wanted in his job.  I abhor it when people are mistreated.  If the pastor has done something illegal or immoral, that's one thing, but when he's done nothing and you blindside him with not fitting anymore, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Climbing down from my soapbox now.  My shoes are hurting my feet.

COFFEE IN THE SANCTUARY?

Apparently I'm not the only one that's agitated about coffee in the church sanctuary.  It's rare for me to let someone else do the talking (!!!!!!!) but this youtube video speaks to how I feel about the topic in question pretty well.  I can't say that I agree with everything he says, but at least he is speaking to it and making us think.  The video is only about 4:40 long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ch-i8XssIo


What do you think?

Entry #7 in the New Age Series

Today’s post concerns the very popular “Jesus Calling” devotional book by Sarah Young. Did you have any idea that it is very New Age? Here’s why.

It’s my understanding that Sarah started out as a Christian. Then she read “God Calling,” a New Age book whose authors were two anonymous women who referred to themselves as “the two listeners.” They operated in “spiritual dictation,” believing they were receiving personal messages from God. It was a popular book on New Age participants’ bookshelves decades ago. Because of Sarah Young’s endorsement of it, it has resurfaced and is popular again. She said, “It is a treasure to me.” She liked it so much that she wanted to receive personal messages from Jesus, so she began to operate in spiritual dictation, too. In other words, she became a channeler. How do we know that it is not from the real Jesus Christ? Well, you decide.

On page 246, the August 23 entry, he is talking about entrusting your loved ones to him. He says, “I took Isaac to the very point of death to free Abraham from son-worship. Both Abraham and Isaac suffered terribly because of the father’s undisciplined emotions. I detest idolatry, even in the form of parental love.” Abraham was being obedient to God, not worshipping Isaac. And what undisciplined emotions was this "Jesus" talking about?

On page 376, the December 25 entry, as he is talking about his birth, he says, “I accepted the limitations of infancy under the most appalling conditions—a filthy stable. That was a dark night for me…” Wouldn’t it be more likely that it was a dark night for Satan? Jesus was glad to give up Heaven for earth. In my opinion, the only thing that might appall Jesus is sin. Paul said in Philippians 4:11 that he had learned to be content in whatever situation he found himself. Wouldn’t the Savior feel that way even more?  And he thought that a filthy stable is "the most appalling conditions?"  Can you think of anything more appalling?  Yeah, I can, too.

“Jesus Calling” is rife with references to “My Presence.” That sounds good until you discover that the New Age is also rife with these same references, and especially with both words capitalized. There is even a New Age book called, “Practicing the Presence,” by Joel Goldsmith, in which he states, “All is God manifested…God constitutes the life, the mind, and the Soul of every individual.” We’ve already established that God is not in every human, but He lives in every Christian.

One last point for today. The New Age refers often to Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.” They suggest that it is a call to sit in silence and listen for God’s voice when it is actually a call, according to Matthew Henry and others, to the nations to literally “shut up” and be still and know that HE is God. It is taken out of context. God is speaking to the nations in this verse. I have to admit…I had interpreted it as sitting in silence, too, but if we’re supposed to be quiet and listen and think on nothing, wouldn’t it make sense that Satan could drop a few ideas into our heads in that time, too? And didn’t King David say, “Blessed is the one…who meditates on His law day and night?” Psalm 1:2

Warren B. Smith, a man who spent years in the New Age then got saved, has written several books. One is “Another Jesus Calling” in which he points out so many, many New Age tendencies in “Jesus Calling.” It is available from amazon.com. I have taken some of the info in this post from this book. There is much more.

Stay tuned!

Entry #3 in the New Age Series

Have you had time to study the scripture passages from the previous post?  You'll remember that we talked about how Satan makes things that are not of the Lord easy to swallow.  Here's an example of "easy to swallow but off-track." Can you figure out what's wrong with the pictures below? (Hint: It's in the wording, not the pictures.) It took me two or three times of reading to my grandchildren to finally catch it! (Apologies to their parents, my daughter and her husband!) Compare this version to Genesis 8:16-19 in your Bible, or read it in KJV here. 16 Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. 17 Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you, birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may breed abundantly on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth. 18 So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him. 19 Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by their families from the ark.

We MUST stay in communication with God through prayer and Bible study. If we don't know what's in the Bible, how can we know when something confronting us isn't biblical?

The New Age didn't die out with the hippies and flower children that some of us remember seeing on TV when we were children in the '60s and '70s. I lived in a pretty sheltered area of the country so TV was my only exposure to that culture, and my household didn't take it seriously. We just laughed them off as a bunch of weirdos. The New Age is alive and well and has gone through a bit of a transformation over the decades with the help of Shirley MacLaine and others who have polished it up and repackaged it so that respectable, intelligent people are being misled and are buying into it. You may remember that Shirley gained a bit of notoriety with her New Age beliefs, including informing the world that she is "God." (According to God Himself, she is not, by the way. The first Commandment says, "You shall have no other gods before Me." Exodus 20:3) She wrote an autobiographical book published in 1983 called "Out on a Limb." In 1987 it was made into a TV miniseries. Here is a clip where she discovers that she is "God" and announces it to the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccb2GsnOoBM Start at about the 3:00 mark.

AND...the New Agers are a peace-loving bunch, for the most part. I suppose if you're "God" you could be pretty peaceable, right?  It makes a lot of sense to me now when I think about folks who want to save the whales, and save the earth, and save the trees, and won't build a house or a business or a shopping center on a particular piece of land because there is a snail on the endangered species list whose habitat is there. You must save the whales and the earth and the trees and the snails because...they are "God." They believe that everything in the universe is connected, therefore everything is "God." Stay tuned!  (If you don't figure out what's wrong with the pictures below, I'll tell you in the next post.)

 

 

 

 

 

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Let's Talk New Age

Making New Year's resolutions is something I gave up years and years ago because I, like pretty much everyone else, can't keep them.  I forget.  I lose interest.  It becomes more difficult than I expected.  Whatever excuse presents itself, that's what I use to avoid carrying out my well intentioned plans.  So...

...I will not say that my plan to publish more blog posts this year is a New Year's resolution but just something I hope to be able to carry out for more than a week.

If you are a Facebook friend of mine, you will remember that on September 1, 2015, I began a series of posts explaining to folks about the dangers of the New Age Movement, sometimes known as the New Spirituality.  New Age is a conglomeration of the world's religions, basically, but is made up, in large part, of Hinduism.  However, they are very open to you and whatever you believe.  Even if you're a Christian, they will accept you, but you can't bring along one of your most basic Christian beliefs...that Jesus Christ is the only Way to salvation.  You can come into their fold, but you must check that belief at the door as they believe there are many ways to salvation.  Therefore, it stands to reason that if you are New Age, you can't be Christian, and vice-versa.  However, before you go wagging a finger in your Christian friend's face because he or she has a New Age habit, remember that so few people are aware of the New Age and its habits and beliefs that they have just picked some of them up because they seem "nice."  And Jesus was "nice," right?  Here is one reason I'm making these posts.  Not enough people, especially Christians, are educated on the New Age.

In the next few days, I am going to be revamping my Facebook posts for this blog.  On Facebook, people tend to be uninterested in longer posts, so bringing them to my blog allows me to post them as they are on Facebook or edit them, adding info if I feel the need, or leaving off info that is unnecessary.

So let's get right into the first post from September 1, 2015.  I hope you'll follow along!  If you haven't read these, you're gonna learn something.  If you read them on Facebook, you may learn more here since they have been revamped.

Entry #1 in the New Age Series

Our small group at church has been studying the New Age Movement. It's been EXTREMELY interesting with lots of participation from the group. Eyes are being opened.

Let's start with a brief explanation of the New Age Movement, sometimes known as the "New Spirituality."  Basically, when you boil it all down, the New Age teaches that we are all God. Not only humans, but the trees, the birds, the rocks, the planets, the chairs, the carpet, the cars, the coathangers, the stars, the moon, etc.  They believe that everything that exists is connected through the universe and is therefore God. From the get-go, we can see that this is not compatible with Christianity when we remember that the first of the Ten Commandments is: "You shall have no other gods before Me." (Exodus 2:3)  Also, "Hear, o Israel:  The Lord our God, the Lord is one."  Deuteronomy 6:4

From this we understand that there is no such thing as a New Age Christian.  The New Age is pretty much all-inclusive.  If you want to join them, you can even bring Jesus Christ along with you, if you wish. You just can't say He's the only Way. (Jesus says in John 14:6 "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.") The New Age and Christianity are like oil and water;  they don't mix.

This is just a little introduction for you to chew on until the next post, which should be in just a day or two.  Stayed tuned!

(Feel free to contact me with your thoughts, but be nice.)  :)

"Passionate"

"Passionate."  Until recently this word was reserved, for the most part, for steamy novels and seductive movies, but in the last few years it has been introduced into the Christian church to show strong feeling.  I decided to do an online search for the definition of this word.  The first "hit" was from the Bing dictionary and said, "showing sexual desire:  expressing or showing strong sexual desire."  The Merriam-Webster said "easily aroused to anger."  Of course when you look further into both dictionaries, you see "showing intense emotion" or a similar phrase.  Interesting.

"Intimate" is another such word.  A search showed "close," "cozy," and "private and personal:  so private and personal as to be kept secret or discussed only with a close friend or relative," and in another dictionary the same sort of sexual definition as with "passionate."

I'm not sure why the church has dropped the use of such words as "zealous" and "personal" in favor of the more sensual "passionate" and "intimate," but I have the feeling that it has to do with the fact that the church is becoming more like the world instead of encouraging the world to become more like the church.  Or better yet, more like Jesus Christ.  He said we're to be "in" the world but not "of " the world.  You may not agree with me...and that's fine, and between you and God...but I see the line of separation there becoming less clear.

Being a person of strong conviction who stands staunchly by my beliefs (some call it stubborn) I'm not one to embrace the phrase, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," but in this case I'll make an exception.  If "passionate" is what the church wants, "passionate" is what it'll get here.  Just this once.  (Until I find myself forced to use it again.)  :)

In recent years, some strong Christian people decided to make some strong Christian movies.  "Facing the Giants," "Fireproof!" "Courageous," and "God's Not Dead" come to mind.  They are biblical and teach enormous life lessons using, of all things, The Holy Bible.  I use the more formal name The Holy Bible because it is that...holy.  It appears to me that the church is beginning to lose the grip it once held on that fact...that The Holy Bible was written by God, automatically making it holy and perfect.  Translations or paraphrases have come onto the scene in the past decades that have lost that concept in big ways.  That's all I'm going to say about that in this blog post, but stay tuned.

What this "passionate" post is about is the fact that Hollywood has seen us rushing en masse to the Christian movies (because we're hungry for something other than their usual worldly fare) and they started seeing dollar signs.  The next thought seems to be, "If it's Bible movies they want, then Bible movies they'll get!"  Enter "The Bible" miniseries and "Noah."  This would have been HUGE for Christianity, for the kingdom of God...had they been biblical.  (I'm not a Hollywood basher. I'm actually on the prayer team of Mastermedia International based in California.)  Call me old fashioned, but I sorta think that if an attempt to produce a biblical movie is made, said movie should be, oh, I don't know...biblical.

My husband and I watched "The Bible" miniseries when it first aired on TV and hoped for the best, but we were sorely disappointed on many levels.  Not the least was the fact that the producers, Mark Burnett* and Roma Downey, chose for the sake of art and time, as has been suggested, to combine biblical stories so that, even though they didn't occur simultaneously in the Bible, they were portrayed as if they did.  Many people don't have a problem with this.  I do, and here's why:  As a young person, I watched "The Ten Commandments" several times and loved it.  Not that I was a Christian at that time...I wasn't...but it was a Bible story and it made me closer to God to watch a Bible movie, right?  (No.  God doesn't want "favors."  He wants our hearts.)  Anyway, years later around the age of thirty when I actually did get saved and began reading the Bible, I read the story of Moses and was shocked.  You mean it didn't happen the way Charlton Heston portrayed it?  Hardly.  Cecil B. Demille got not just a few things wrong in producing that one.  For the sake of art and time, I guess.  Here's another thing that God's not interested in:  Whether or not our art and time are preserved instead of His Word.  I think He likes that we want to attempt to reach "the lost" and encouage "the found" through our art, but I think He is enormously grieved that we care more for the art form than for what He would like to express through it.  I think Mark and Roma would have done well to have told a few stories right rather than many stories wrong.

I have not seen "Noah" but I did see an interview with its director, an atheist who didn't want it to be biblical; and from the reviews that say it never mentions God, my guess is that it is terribly misleading to the viewer, to say the least.  My guess would also be that God is greatly displeased.

What I am attempting to say is that I am "passionate" for the Bible.  God wrote it.  He wrote it for all time and for all people.  We don't need to rewrite it.  We do need to translate it into the languages of the world so that it can be read and understood, but rewriting it to suit our wishes and beliefs does not stand well with Him.  Nor does watering it down and changing His original meaning.  How do I know this?  Because He says so in Deuteronomy and The Revelation.  Whether we're translating it into paper form, cyber form, art form, or any other form, the Bible stands as our life manual from God.  He doesn't need us to make it "hip" or "cool" or anything except what it is.  I know there may be problems you have with what it says.  I have to admit....I do.  If I had been writing the Bible, I certainly would have left out a lot that God put in!  Praise God that writing the Bible wasn't my calling!  (Do you think for a minute I would have left in the part about gluttony being a sin?)

I'm okay with someone translating it so that it can be read and understood as long as the original meaning isn't lost.  There are those who think it must be "cool" and "modernized" to the point that it is insulting, that there are people who are too dumb to understand what God said so they give it a little tweak, dumb it down, even water it down in places so as not to hurt people's feelings thereby altering the truth of the Bible.  That was not what Jesus Christ was about when He walked this earth.  He told the truth, whatever it was.  He loved us enough to tell us God's truths.

Hubby says I go a little berserk when this topic arises in casual conversation.  It's true.  I'm "passionate."  Others are "passionate" about other things.  (Have you ever watched the Superbowl game with "passionate" sports fans?  It's a thing of beauty, if you're "passionate" for sports.)  Some things I let slide because they're not worth discussing.  It's like raising children:  Some battles aren't worth the fight.  Choose them with discretion."  For me, though, this isn't one of those topics, so if I offend you in my "passionate" discussion of such things, I ask your forgiveness and hope to receive it.  However, this in no way changes my beliefs.    :)    I'm trying very hard (and failing often) to discuss and not preach.

You might think that I've been "passionate" in this post, yea even zealous, dogmatic, and stubborn, and I understand that we are all different, but to me disrepect for the Bible is disrespect for God.

So when a version of the Bible is released that says, "Yo, dog.  When everything started, the Big Man made all this stuff outta nothing and throwed it out here and plopped us on this planet," stand back.  You ain't seen nothin' yet.



*Mark Burnett, who professes to be a Christian, also produces the TV show "Survivor," a reality show in which the participants engage in such acts as walking the beaches nude or semi-nude, lying, cheating, stealing, and vying for idols, little carved figures or necklaces, all in the name of a chance to win a million dollars.  Just sayin.'

I don't think professing Christians should produce such shows, nor do I think such hypocritical Christians as I should watch them.  Just sayin.'  I never claimed to be perfect.  Just "passionate."

(If it wasn't a sin to envy, I would certainly envy those bloggers who get to blog about pretty things all the time.  Sweet things.  Nice things.  Everybody loves them.)

APPEARANCES

The topic of how to dress for church comes up now and again, and I felt like addressing it in a blog today, so here goes.

I am one of those who feels like God loves us and accepts our worship no matter what we look like or how we're dressed as long as our worship is sincere and from the heart. With God, everything is all about the heart anyway. If you want to show up for church in jeans and a red plaid flannel shirt, go for it. Male or female. However, there is another way of looking at church dress that is also not wrong. You may want to think about this. Even pray about it.

I know that times have changed, customs have changed, hearts have changed...so how you answer the following questions is just going to have to come from your own stance in life. Here are the questions:

How do you dress to attend:

1. A wedding?
2. A funeral?
3. A 50th wedding anniversary celebration? Especially if it's your grandparents' or other close relatives'?
4. A professional or college ballgame?
5. A NASCAR race?
6. A tractor pull?

For my more affluent friends...yea, maybe even the snobs who may read this: (Not all affluent people are snobs, by the way.)

How would you dress to attend:

1. The opera?
2. A Broadway play?
3. A movie premier?
4. A presidential inauguration?

(As I said, times and customs have changed, so some of you would dress the same for a wedding as you would for a tractor pull; the same for the opera as you would for a NASCAR race, should someone who attends operas actually attend a NASCAR race.)

If Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, (and He is, according to The Bible) then let's see what the Bible says about dressing for church. I would think what Jesus said then would apply now, since He is unchanging. In the Old Testament of The Bible, the priests (our modern-day preachers?) were to wear some pretty specific clothing to perform their duties. Really specific. Down to colors and styles. Exodus 28 is one of the places you can read about that. Men and women both wore robe-like or tunic-like clothing with small differences in stylng for the two genders.

In the New Testament, I don't see it addressed a whole lot. However, James 2:1-4 talks about two men who come to church, one in finery and one in filthy clothes, so it appears that both styles of dress were acceptable. The passage is instructing people not to favor the more finely dressed man over the one in filthy clothes. Even saying that if you do, you've become a judge with evil thoughts! Yikes!

Now it's time to think. Who is someone that you respect a lot? Really...think of someone. Depending on who's reading this it could be one of many types of people...an old friend, a seldom-seen-but-admired relative, your favorite performer (writer/actor/singer/dancer, etc.,) the president, the king/queen of some foreign country, whomever. How would you dress to meet that person, whether for the first time or after many years? Personally, I would want to look pretty spiffy. After all, it would be a bit of a celebration for me.

Doesn't the King of Kings deserve more respect than anyone on this earth that we could possibly meet? Shouldn't we respect Him enough to show up in His presence looking like we respect Him? I know, I know...I've already said that with God it's always about the heart and not appearances...but, really, if we respect and love Him as much as we say we do, shouldn't it be obvious not only to Him but to everyone else? If we have the ability, shouldn't we put on not just the garment of praise (Isaiah 61:3) but a garment of respect for our Savior? Just a thought. I know you have your own.

June 20, 2018 - Update - I discovered today a great youtube video that I think fits this topic perfectly.  Here it is:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXbI_NdcBaU