Monday, June 29, 2015

Interesting Times

There is a Chinese proverb that says something like, “may you live in interesting times.”  I would say that many Christians would agree that we live in interesting times. 

Many have been shook to the core by the ruling on marriage by the Supreme Court.  I am not shocked in the least.  The seeds for this revolution in identity, marriage, and morality have been sown many years ago.  This post is lengthy and it reflects my own struggles.  Realize that these are areas where I fall short so I am preaching to myself also. 

The question we should be asking is, “How did we get here?” and “What is our response?” 

We are at this moment because of apathy and a lack of love.  Now you may think that sounds crazy that a lack of love has lead us to a moral decline in our country.  What I mean by love is Biblical love.  Love means that I care enough about a person to share the truth with them.  If I know that their lifestyle is destructive and that they are not in fellowship with their Creator, I should have enough love to tell them.  Love means that I will tell you the truth in a compassionate way realizing that you may hate me for that.  Love means that I will still be your friend even if my ‘truth telling’ has caused you to be upset with me.  Love means I will pray for my enemies.

Here is the problem with loving our enemies, we are so worried about offending people that we will never have any enemies to love. 

 Apathy is the other great elephant in the room that we must discuss.  Christians have become lazy and really don’t care until they realize Rome is on fire.  It is at that moment that we spring into action.  Here are some signs of the problem; you drive by a ball park on Sunday and it packed full of Christians playing some type of sport and the church parking lot is nearly empty.  We see people’s enthusiasm for a sports team is more fervent than their love for Jesus.  People would rather worship the god of personal peace and affluence instead of the living God of Heaven.  When the early Church wanted to make a difference they worshipped.  Notice in Acts 4:31 that when persecution arose it was worship that brought action.  Worship is an act of spiritual warfare that we take for granted.  But apathy doesn’t end there.  We are apathetic about reading Scripture.  2 Timothy 3:16 says that Scripture is God breathed.  The same breath that brought life to man in Genesis 2:7 brings life to us through the word in Scripture.  The Hebrew writer says that the word of God is living and active.  Many Christians cannot form a response to the gay marriage debate because they don’t even know that the Bible teaches on the subject. 

What is our response?

Of course it would make sense that we should start with Love.  It is the love that Jesus had when he gave His life as a ransom.  He came to serve and not be served.  We must be willing to get in the mud and love people that may disgust us.  We vehemently disagree with people on the issue of gay marriage but we have to engage them and teach them the truth.  We can’t teach them the truth from afar.  We can ‘loft’ Bible verse bombs from some place far off.  We must evangelize by meeting, befriending, and teaching them.  That is true love.  True love is knowing the salvation you have in Jesus and wanting to share it with others.  True love is seeing everyone as being made in the image of God and wanting them to reach the fulness of life. 

We must have courage.  God has given us a spirit of power not of timidity.  Recently, I was studying Revelation 21 and noticed that in verse 8 that those that will go into Hell will be the ‘cowardly’.  I realized that I never considered that an attribute of the ungodly is cowardice.  I then remembered how much the Bible says about courage.  How many times have you read, “be of good courage’?  We must be like the Peter and John before the Sanhedrin and be bold in our proclamation.  We need Christians that understand the Gospel is a proclamation of truth and not something to be apologized for.  I believe the Gospel is like a lion.  What I mean is that no one has to defend a lion but only has to unleash the lion.   It is time for the Gospel to challenge every strata of our society.