What Has Happened to the Church?

Charles Spurgeon said, “If we cannot be torn in pieces by the roaring lion, we may be hugged to death by the bear.”

(I hope you’re ready for a history lesson)

In the earliest centuries of the Church, Christians faced unfathomable persecution. Their property was confiscated, their jobs taken away, and they were subject to physical attacks. Steven, the first martyr was stoned to death for the name of Jesus. James was beheaded for His commitment to Christ. Paul wrote of “troubles, hardships and distresses, beatings, imprisonments and riots, hard work, sleepless nights and hunger” (2 Cor 6:4-5). He was stoned and left for dead (Acts 14:19), shipwrecked three times (2 Cor 11:25), and in constant danger everywhere he went (2 Cor 11:26). We’re all familiar with the stories of Christians facing lions in a public arena for the amusement of the Romans. These men and women gladly surrendered their lives rather than deny the name of their Lord, Jesus Christ. The faith of the martyrs shone brilliantly and boldly against the dark backdrop of persecution.

But in later years, when Emperor Constantine of Rome (272-337) declared Christianity as the state religion, persecution in the west ended and every citizen became a “Christian”–whether they believed or not. Being a Christian was all about nationality, not grace as Christianity was fully embraced by the civilized world. It could be considered the worst thing to ever happen to the church. The standards for Christians became more and more lax over the centuries, and by the twentieth century “Christianity” looked nothing like the faith that men and women once died for.  It had been smothered in a bear hug of cheap grace as the church preached a “light” version of sin and salvation.

But I believe we’re coming back full circle to the days of persecution for true believers. Once again, Christians – Bible-believing, Christ-following Christians are persona-non-grata. Christianity has become the enemy once again. Even in the church.  As churches embrace every sin that the culture can dream up, they also reject the truth and those who live by it. Subtly, degree by degree, hatred for true believers is growing and they are being forced out. It’s happening in churches right now in your own community. The days of the bear hug are coming to an end – and it may be the best thing for the church. It’s certainly following in the footprints of Jesus who said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it” (Matt 16:25). The lion is stirring again. Beloved, are you ready to stand firm?

What the Heart Wants

Why do we sin? Of course, we sin because our first ancestors, Adam and Eve, sinned and passed that sin nature down to us. But James revealed another reason you and I sin, “Each one is tempted when by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.  Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (James 1:14-15). At the heart of all sin is our innate sinful nature and our own sinful desires.  Paul explained it in Romans 8:5 saying, “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires.”

And satan goes right for those desires, which are often our weaknesses.  Money, sex, and power are the usual enticements into sin and death, but there are more than we can conceivably count.  Every person has their own desire, their own personal lure, and be assured Satan knows it.  He has devised a scheme tailor-made to match that craving.  We answer to the temptation that calls out to our innate desires. If your desire is for material possessions, he will pull you into the mall, or entice you with advertisements for the newest shiny thing.  If your desire is lust, every TV commercial for lingerie will catch your attention and he will make certain you get plenty of pop-ups for sexual sites on your I-phone.  Want power, prestige, fame, a high?  He’s got just what you’re looking for.

Our only way of escaping his trap is to have but one desire: God.

One of the church’s favorite verses is Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desire of your heart.”  But we don’t take the whole verse, we just hone in on “He will give you the desire of your heart,” and rush past the requirement expressed just before it: “Delight yourself in the Lord.” If you and I are serious about living pure and holy lives, especially in this culture, we must adopt the attitude of Asaph who proclaimed: “Earth has nothing I desire besides you…God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:25, 26).  When God is your heart’s desire Beloved, He will make sure you have the desire of your heart.

A Pure Heart

When my son was younger, he was determined to do something he knew was wrong. When I caught him before he could put his plan into action he protested, “But Mom I didn’t actually do it!” “That’s not the point.” I told him, “You wanted to do it – that’s the heart of the problem.

Human nature has reduced “sin” to an act – a thing we do, while the Bible tells us that sin is a condition of the heart – our desires. When Jesus taught about adultery in Matthew 5:27-28 He said that the sin of adultery is committed when the desire arises – “anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” James identified the pattern of sin in 1:14-15 as a progression from one’s “own evil desire,” to enticement, then to the action. Sin clearly starts in the heart. After his sin with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Urriah, David pleaded for God to “create in me a pure heart” (Ps. 51:10) for he knew that it was his heart that had led him astray. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Mat. 6:21), meaning we will pursue at all costs what our heart desires. If that desire is for sin, you can bet your hands, feet, and body will follow. Jesus also said only “the pure in heart . . . will see God” (Mat. 5:8). That should be incentive enough.

A pure heart recoils at the thought of disobeying and dishonoring God and breaking fellowship. It pursues the heart of God, which never leads to sin. A pure heart runs from temptation (2 Tim 2:22). Does that mean if you struggle with sinful desires You don’t have a heart for God? No – Paul attested to the battle within himself (Rom. 7:15-23) and I know well my own tug-of-war with sin. But it’s not unwinnable. You just need some Help.

Beloved, Are you weary of toying with the sinful desires of your heart? Victory comes as you allow the Word of God and the Spirit of God to purify your heart day by day. God isn’t just after your behavior Beloved, He is after your heart.  When you “delight yourself in the Lord,” that is when He is all your heart longs for, then “He will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps 37:4). He will give you Himself.

The Heart of Sin

Warning: this devotional contains sensitive and, quite frankly, disgusting information.

An Old Dominion University assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice, Dr. Allyn Walker, has been suspended after writing a book defending what he* termed, “minor-attracted persons.” Dr. Walker stated, “It’s less stigmatizing than other terms like pedophile. A lot of people when they hear the term pedophile, they automatically assume that it means a sex offender. And that isn’t true. And it leads to a lot of misconceptions about attractions toward minors.”[1] In a nutshell, Dr. Walker was seeking to “normalize” sexual attraction to children by contending that people can have the desire without acting on it. That’s much the same message many pastors and Christian counselors claim about homosexuality. But that is a dangerous and wicked lie.

The point of this devotional isn’t to disgust you or to call for comments about how insane the world is. My point is to tell you that sin is rooted in the desires of the heart. It’s what James meant when he said that “each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed” (Jas. 1:14). Our desires – or “attractions” as Dr. Walker termed it – will always lead to action and if they are for sin, they will always lead us away from God. The psalmist said, “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (Ps. 67:18). Desire and cherish all describe something that is deeply rooted in the heart. Listen to Psalm 37: 4: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Many claim the second part of this verse without regarding the first. God is not promising to give you anything you want if you “put Him first.” He wants to be the desire of your heart – the only desire of your heart.  That is why “minor-attraction” or “same-sex attraction” or “food attraction” or “money-attraction” or “anything-sinful-attraction” cannot coexist in a heart that desires God.

Please hear me – I am not preaching condemnation nor am I saying that faithful believers will not struggle with the pull to sin. But if we desire God more than sin we will fight tooth and nail to be set free from it – we will “resist to the point of shedding blood” (Heb. 12:4). Beloved, if you want to be in relationship with God you must put every sinful desire to death (read Romans 6:1-14 – no, seriously, you need to read it). God is not after your good behavior, He is after your heart.

*I am assuming male as Dr. Walker has identified as non-binary.

---

[1] School places professor on leave after controversial interview defending ‘minor-attracted persons’ | Fox News

You Asked for It, You Got it

Those of us over 50ish will remember the Toyota commercial from the late ’70s with the song – “You asked for it, you got it – Toyota!” The idea behind the ad was that the car company had listened to what the driving public wanted in a vehicle and had designed a car to fill their wish list. In my family, that same theme took on a different tone, one aimed at punishment for disobedience and especially for “sassing back” at my mom. “Do you want a whipping?” she would ask. The question was not a query for my preference, like asking if I want soup or a sandwich for lunch. It was a warning to stop whatever I was doing.

God also has listened to my requests and has delivered. I asked the Lord to give me a burden for prayer. So he gave me burdens in my life to pray over. I asked Him to make me more compassionate so He brought people to me that had great needs. I asked Him to make me more loving and He filled my life with people who need a lot of love. I asked Him to give me a grateful heart and He put me through hard seasons of loss. I asked Him to make my life fruitful and He began to prune me. Oh, and I learned the hard way to never ask God for patience.

So my prayers are being answered, just not in the ways I envisioned – but in the ways He knows are most effective. Because God is shaping and molding me from the inside out. And He is doing the same for you. Perhaps the hard things, the hard people, the hard circumstances are God’s answer to your prayers.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers [and sisters] when you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:2-4). God is doing a good work in you. Persevere Beloved.

Proofreading Your Life

My late brother, who was a published author, recommended Grammarly to me and it has been invaluable for helping me in my writing both for school and for ministry. It alerts me to misspelled words, incorrect syntax, better word options, poor grammar, incorrect punctuation, and – my most frequent error, too, many, commas. When I open it with my Word document, it sits on the right-hand side of my screen and constantly checks my work. When I make an error, it comes to life with colored lines and warnings about what I’ve done wrong. So far it has caught 13 mistakes in this devotional (*I’m updating this number as I’m writing). Yet for all its benefit and wise advice, it has one flaw – it won’t make the corrections for me. It finds my problems and makes suggestions but leaves the choice to make the changes up to me.

I think you know where I’m going with this. God has given us a powerful tool for our lives: His Word. The Bible can point to the problems in our lives and give us wise counsel for fixing the problem, but it is up to you and me to make the change. Two things can cause Grammarly not to do its job. I can neglect to turn it on and never see the issues in my document, or I can ignore it – which I do when I like the word I’ve chosen and don’t want to change it. Likewise, if we never bother to read God’s Word, we will never recognize what is wrong in our lives. Or, we just ignore what God said because – let’s be honest – we like the sinful choice we’ve made and we have no desire to change.

James said, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:22). He compared the person who hears, then disregards the Word to someone who looks at his reflection in a mirror and then forgets what he saw when he walks away. All through his letter, James emphasized the hearing and the doing of the Word. Reading the Bible is really useless if you and I aren’t going to obey it. (Note: Grammarly suggested I take out the “really,” but I am ignoring that suggestion because I want the emphasis.)

Beloved, the Bible is the living Word of the living God and it has great power to transform your life – if you will read it and heed it. It’s a good thing to be a good writer, but it’s eternally better to be an obedient doer of the Word of God.

Just One Minute of Sin

I love a good, hot shower. One recent chilly morning as I was getting ready to go to work, I thought, “I’ll just crank up the hot water and stay for a minute.” It felt so good! The next thing I knew I had stayed for almost 10 minutes. I just couldn’t bear to give it up.

Sin is like that. It beckons us with promises of how good we will feel. We vow to ourselves, “I’ll only stay a minute.” That’s when Satan sets his hook in us and that minute turns into ten minutes, a day, a week . . . a lifetime. We just can’t bear to give it up. I don’t recall who said it but it’s so true, “Sin will take you farther than you meant to go, keep you longer than you meant to stay, and cost you more than you meant to pay.” I know this is true from personal experience, and I’m not just talking about a hot shower.

James described the step-by-step progression of sin: “Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (James 1:14-15). The key word in this passage is desire. The desire for sin is already present in us; Satan knows that it and he tailors the temptation to meet our desire. All it takes is one look in the direction of that sin and we are captivated and captured.

No, that moment of pleasure is not worth the chains that remain. You and I must get serious about sin. It is not something we can play around with, even for a brief moment. We must run away from temptation the moment it raises its enticing head. And we must make God the desire of our hearts. Because when you love God with all your heart, there is no room left to desire sin.  Beloved, don’t give sin any place in your life, not for even a minute.

When the Lion Roars

When I was younger my family went to a “wild” animal park, the kind where you drive through while the animals roam around.  All the animals ignored us for the most part; they were used to the steady parade of cars.  We drove through the lion’s section, most of whom slept in the sun or lazily watched us passing by.  But there was one male lion who didn’t take too kindly to our presence, and as we slowed to get a closer look at him he shook his head, sending his mane spiraling outward and let out a thundering ROAR!  We all jumped, my little brother started crying and my dad stepped on the gas.  I’ll never forget how my heart pounded in my chest.

Peter said, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). We have an enemy who is like that roaring lion.  He is fierce and ferocious and always on the hunt for easy prey.  He is ruthless and malicious and will attack without provocation.  He hates humankind because he hates God and everything God loves.  And he has a particularly fierce hatred for Christians.   He stalks believers, pacing back and forth with his menacing demeanor.  And he roars.  He roars out accusations and threats.  He roars out a list of your failures and sins.  He roars about what a bad mom you are, that you’re a lousy husband and a hopeless, useless mess.  He roars out that God could never love you.  He roars out lies.

How should we deal with this roaring lion?  Peter tells us exactly what to do. “Resist him, standing firm in the faith,” (2 Peter 5:9) James agrees, saying, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you,” (James 4:7.  Paul tells us to “Stand against the devil’s schemes” (Ephesians 6:11).   Proverbs 28:1 says “The righteous are as bold as a lion,” Friend, when the lion roars, you stand in the righteousness of Christ and roar back the Name of Jesus and the Word of God.  You remind the devil that he is a defeated, powerless fool and that his destruction is assured.  You declare that “The Lion of Judah” (Rev. 5:5) has already claimed the victory.  The devil roars, but that’s all he can do to those who belong to Christ.  Don’t tremble.  Don’t run.  Don’t back down. “A lion . . . retreats before nothing,” Proverbs 30:30.  You are a righteous lion. ROAR!

Lead Us Not into Temptation

James said, “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone” (1:13).  So why then, did Jesus include in His prayer: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” (Matthew 6:13)? Isn’t James contradicting Jesus? How are we to understand this? Jesus is teaching us to ask for deliverance from temptation.  He is not in any way implying that God would usher us into tempting situations, although He may, as a step of purification, allow Satan to press us with temptation. Peter can attest to that.  

After the Passover meal, just before His arrest, Jesus announces that all of the disciples will abandon Him in His hour of need. Peter declared: “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will” (Matt. 26:33). What passion! What boldness! What foolishness!  Jesus answered His disciple, “I tell you the truth, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times” (v. 34). Luke noted that Jesus told Peter, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat.  But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31).  Satan wanted access to all of the disciples (the first “you” is plural), but Jesus permitted him to lean only on Simon Peter (the second “you” is singular).  Why? Because He intended for Peter to be a powerhouse in His church, and there were things in him that needed to be sifted out. Things like pride and arrogance and self-sufficiency. By the way, did you catch Jesus’ promise – “I have prayed for you, Simon. And did you also catch His assurance – “when (not if) you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” It’s as if Jesus was telling Peter, “This will be rough, but I am praying for you, and you will win this battle – you have My word on it.”

Beloved, is temptation and struggle pressing hard against you? Perhaps the Lord is using the enemy to sift out something that could hinder you from becoming a mighty servant in His Kingdom. Gold is purified by fire. If it’s hot where you are right now, trust God in the process. As Job declared, “When He has tested me, I will come forth as gold” (Job 23:10).

What’s the Desire of Your Heart?

A couple of years ago in the Seedbed Daily Text, One of my spiritual mentors, J.D. Walt, said “Too often my sin is a secret lover rather than a mortal enemy.”

Mind. Blown. Heart. Convicted.

Sin and holiness are often at odds in my heart, and if I’m being honest, sin is often my heart’s desire. It is like an old friend who knows to use the “back entrance” to my heart because that door is never locked. And sin has access to my heart because I haven’t lost my desire for it. I know the only way to eradicate sin is to desire God more than I desire that sin. It is my desire that directs my actions and behaviors and my life.

James said it like this: Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.  After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth do death” (1:14-15).  So the root of my sin problem is a deeply-rooted desire-problem. There is much work to do in my heart, where my desires grow.

But is it possible for me to change my desires? Yes and no. Yes because what I expose myself to feeds my desires. Music, T.V., movies, books, magazines, the internet, conversations, and, yes, even relationships. And no because God has to do a root-level work in me to redirect the desires of my heart. Transformation is the work of the Holy Spirit. My part is to seek it, to ask for it, and to cooperate with it. Which might just mean locking that back door and handing Him the key.

But wait – I’m going to correct myself. I said that the only way to eradicate sin is to desire God more than I desire sin. That’s not quite right. Truly, the only way to eradicate sin is to desire God instead of desiring sin. It’s not a competition between who gets the greater portion of my heart. It is full surrender.