Author: Spreading Light

2014 – The Year of Grace

Christianity, General

Theologically speaking, grace is God’s righteousness at Christ’s expense.  It is what is given to us on account of our faith.  It is what is needed for salvation.  And absolutely everyone needs grace because we’re all sinners.

More generically though, grace is unmerited favor.  Grace is something that is given to us that we didn’t earn and can’t possibly repay.  We need grace for salvation but God’s grace doesn’t stop at just salvation.  And that is my focus for this year.  I need more grace in my life.

Taking a cue from a friend who placed a theme on upcoming years, last year I declared it to be a year of Jubilee.  This didn’t turn out anything like I expected but God was still praised and celebrated in 2013 as I wrote about in my previous post.

The reason I decided on making 2014 a year of grace is because I could really use some unmerited favor.  Now, this may just sound like I want to rub a genie’s lamp and expect to have some wishes granted.  That would be great but it obviously isn’t happening nor would I want it to be so.

Instead, I want grace because more and more I’m beginning to realize that I have little control over what goes on in life.  Certainly there are aspects that I can control.  With regards to my health I can eat properly and exercise regularly.  But that isn’t a guarantee that I will be healthy.  With regard to my finances, I can work diligently at my job and wisely save and invest my money.  But that isn’t a guarantee that my job will remain or that my investments won’t crash in the stock market.

There is just so much of life that I have no control over.  And just maybe, the things that I do have control over I obsess about too much.  The more difficult life gets, the greater our tendency becomes to control what little we have control over.  Rather than hand things over to God, we claw and scrape and try to hold onto the last things that we do have control of.

And that’s why I need grace and that’s what I’m asking for in particular this year.  I’ve been working too hard to make things happen on my own.  Some people rely on themselves because of a lack of faith in God.  I don’t feel like that’s the case with me.  But instead, my feeling is that often we ask God to do things for us and His response is “I’ve given you all the tools you need to accomplish this already.”  And then people get upset at God because they continue to do nothing and blame God for not answering their prayer.

But I’m on the other end of that.  Yes, I’ve prayed but I’ve continued to work as hard as I can to make things happen.  My work hasn’t accomplished what I hoped for.  I need grace.  It’s not that I deserve what I want in life.  It’s not that it’s owed to me because I’ve worked so hard for it.

Once I finally reach the point of saying “God I can’t do this” and completely handing it over to Him, all I can do is rely on His grace.  Because God doesn’t owe me anything.  My faithfulness to God does not warrant that I get what I want from Him.  My past struggles do not mean that God needs to right the balance sheet now in order to be fair.  All I can say is that I don’t deserve what I’m asking for but I can’t do it myself and I need the Lord to make it possible.

So that’s my theme for this year.  I need unmerited favor.  I don’t deserve it and I certainly don’t deserve it more than anyone else.  That’s the point of being unmerited.  All I can do is ask and expect God to provide.  And in the meantime, I need to stop trying to do God’s job for Him and allow Him to work.

The End of Jubilee

General

At the beginning of the year, I declared 2013 to be the year of Jubilee.  From an outsider’s perspective, I could not have been more wrong in my declaration.  Without getting into all that has happened this year, I will say that this has been the most difficult year of my life ten times over.  At the top of my difficulties was discovering that I had colon cancer and having 18 inches of my colon removed.

I am a man of faith and I can honestly say that at no point during this year was my faith in God shaken.  That being said, I really believe that the word cancer is the scariest word in the English language.  No matter how you fare, there is life before cancer and there is life after cancer.

How can I possibly look back and declare this year to be a year of Jubilee?  Because in the midst of your greatest difficulties you get to see how great God is.  Through the entire process I was surrounded by a peace that can only come from God.  I was blessed with tremendous doctors and ended up seeing one of the top doctors in the country even though that wasn’t my original intent.

In May I ended up in the hospital due to bleeding.  What I learned later was that most people don’t even experience bleeding like mine with colon cancer.  Because I am young, doctors typically overlook typical symptoms of colon cancer.  And indeed this actually happened as a CT scan saw the large polyp in my colon but diagnosed it as something else.  It might have only been because I was dehydrated and lost so much blood that I passed out in the bathroom that a full colonoscopy was ordered.

The polyp that was found ended up sending me to Baltimore.  The local doctors didn’t even want to touch it.  While the polyp could have been removed by taking out a piece of my colon, one of the top doctors in the country was able to remove it as an outpatient procedure.  I didn’t spend a night in the hospital.

A week later I got a phone call saying that the polyp was cancerous.  It appeared as though the cancer was contained but there was a chance that it had spread to the lymph nodes.  The surrounding lymph nodes would need to be taken out as well.  I was referred to another doctor who would ultimately perform that surgery in less than three weeks.

My second doctor I had no less than half a dozen nurses tell me – unprompted – was the best one to have for such a procedure and they’d only go to her.  These are the kinds of things you want to hear awaiting surgery and during recovery.  In the end, I had 18 inches of my colon removed and only spent 4 days in the hospital.

My cancer was diagnosed as only stage 1 which means that I have every reason to expect a full recovery.  It had not spread beyond the polyp that was removed, I did not require any chemo or radiation treatments, and I am currently cancer free.  If I go five years without a recurrence, I’ll be considered medically cured.

Through all of this I have been reminded that God is not good; He is great!  This is not the route I would have chosen for myself by any means.  But rather than feel abandoned or forgotten by God, I know that I am blessed.  Most times colon cancer is not discovered until it has reached stage 2 or 3 when the situation is more difficult.  It’s not even typically scanned for if you’re under 50 which means that when it is found in younger people it’s even more likely to be further along.  But for some reason I happened to bleed enough to go to the hospital and despite a misdiagnosed CT scan, my cancer was still discovered – and discovered early.  Many people would consider me unlucky to have cancer in the first place.  I consider myself blessed that it was found so early.  I don’t believe in coincidences and I have every reason to believe that the Lord still has plenty of work for me to do.

Was 2013 the year of Jubilee that I had hoped for?  Absolutely not.  Cancer was only the greatest of my trials this past year but not the only one.  But at the end of 2013 I can praise God even more than before because I have seen His hand at work and His power in undeniable.

Sometimes God has to tell us like He told the apostle Paul, His grace is sufficient for us.  We don’t know what kind of ailments Paul suffered from but God told him that His grace was sufficient to deal with his problems.  I learned that lesson in a powerful way this year and it’s a message that I will be able to repeat to everyone who is enduring hardships.

Jubilee is a celebration of God’s goodness and I have certainly experienced that this year.  It’s not what I wanted but I’m sure that God didn’t make a mistake that it was what I needed.

The Real Story of Santa Claus

Christianity

While Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas time, there is another person who is just as strongly associated with Christmas.  That person, of course, is Santa Claus.  While it is wrong to emphasize Santa at the expense of Jesus, the two are not incompatible if you know the real story of Santa Claus.

To begin with, there really was a Santa Claus.  He was known as Nicholas and was declared a saint by the Catholic Church after his death.  December 6 is Saint Nicholas’ Day in the Catholic Church – just about every day is a celebration of some saint.  Saint Nicholas became Santa Claus because of the way names get translated.  Saint became Santa – just like all of those city names like Santa Fe, Santa Monica, Santa Cruz, etc.  Nicholas was shortened to Claus.  Thus Saint Nicholas became Santa Claus – both names mean the same thing.

There are lots of stories about the real Santa Claus and it is very difficult to determine what is actually real and what is legend at this point.  What is widely accepted is that Nicholas lived from 270-354 in the region that is modern day Turkey.  He was a devout Christian man who went on to become bishop of Myra.

Nicholas likely came from a wealthy family but was orphaned at a young age.  He is known for sharing his wealth with gifts to the poor.  Many of the stories associated with his gift giving are more likely tradition rather than truth but they involve placing coins in shoes left outside or tossing coins into socks that were hung by the fireplace to dry.  Another popular story involves Nicholas paying the dowries of three poor girls in order to prevent them from being forced into slavery.

After Nicholas’ death he was declared a saint and his legend grew.  Every culture seems to have its own stories about Saint Nicholas.  These were certainly embellished but the idea behind them was to promote giving to others and aiding the poor.

Our modern day Santa Claus most likely originated in 1821.  In the book Children’s Friend “Sante Claus” appears from the north with a sleigh led by flying reindeer.  It’s impossible to know the origin of this version of Santa Claus but it is a likely adaptation of numerous cultural traditions that had become associated with Saint Nicholas through the years.

In 1823 the man we know as Santa Claus became solidified.  It was then that “A Visit from St. Nicholas” was published.  We know the poem better today as “The Night Before Christmas.”  Ever since, Santa Claus has been a jolly elf with flying reindeer.

While we should be careful not to emphasize Santa Claus over the true meaning of Christmas, he can be a helpful reminder of what Christmas is about.  The real Santa Claus was a man who gave gifts and helped the poor.  He also serves as a reminder that God gave us the greatest gift of all at Christmas time.  God sent us Jesus so that our sins could be forgiven at the cross.

The end has come for Harold Camping but it’s not the end of the world

Christianity, Current Events

You might not know or remember the name Harold Camping but you probably are familiar with his work.  He was the man who had convinced many of his followers that the end of the world was coming in May 2011.  When this didn’t come about as predicted, rather than learn his lesson he stated that he misinterpreted what the rapture was but still called for the end of the world in October of 2011.  This was undoubtedly little comfort for his followers who had sold their homes and toured around in RV’s touting the end of the world.  It probably also didn’t make the people happy who had given his ministry $80 million over a five year span.

Harold Camping died at the age of 92 on December 15, 2013.  I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead but I must question whether Camping’s contributions to Christianity were undone by the embarrassment that he caused.  I never followed Camping’s teachings and even if I did, only God can judge the heart of a man.  I truly hope that he was a genuine Christian who was just misguided in a particular belief and not a man who led many astray under the guise of Christianity.

I get very frustrated when Christian leaders cause an embarrassment to Christianity.  I’m not talking about getting caught in affairs and scandals, those are bad obviously but that is different than what I’m talking about.  I get mad when Christian leaders claim to speak for God when it doesn’t appear as if God has spoken.  We have lots of revelation from the Lord, it’s called the Bible.  What the Bible declares to be sin, we should boldly proclaim to be sin.  But too many leaders take things a step further and declare things that the Bible does not say.

God does punish sin but He doesn’t always bring disaster upon cities or nations because of their sins.  Unless God has spoken directly to an individual to proclaim this as truth, they should parse their words.  Boldly speak the truth about sin but don’t make sweeping proclamations about what God is doing in response to that sin.  God will judge sin, it just might not be here on earth.

Likewise, we know that one day “the end” is coming.  I can definitively say that we are one day closer today than we were the day before.  Beyond that, we simply don’t know.  Jesus gave us signs of the end and we do see them in the world today.  However, every generation has looked around them and has seen those signs.  And perhaps this is the point – Jesus could return at any moment because the signs have always been there and always will be.

Of further embarrassment on the end of the world front though, Jesus said that no one knew the day or hour of His return – not even Him!  There is no secret Bible code that Jesus couldn’t figure out but math whizzes today can crack.  In short, I can’t think of any way to say it other than the fact that people who want to declare they know more than Jesus that they reek of arrogance and ignorance.

Unfortunately Christians sometimes adopt an “end justifies the means” mentality that does more harm than good.  In an effort to prevent sin, broad proclamations about judgment are made which may make Biblical sense but are not Biblically supported because frankly the Bible just doesn’t tell us that a hurricane today is indisputably the judgment of God for a particular sin.  It could be, but not every disaster is the judgment of God.  Jesus made that clear when He discussed the tower of Siloam killing 18 people in Luke 13:4.

Perhaps Camping’s great fault was that he was overzealous to warn people about the judgment that awaits unrepentant sinners.  I can’t claim to know what his true motivations were.  If this were it, he could be excused for wanting to get the gospel out.  But I will never excuse the methods that involve misinterpreted scripture, no matter what the intended result was.

In the end Harold Camping went to meet his maker about 2 1/2 years later than he expected.  I can only hope that the word he receives from the Lord is a “well done” to a well intentioned but misguided man and not a “depart from me, I never knew you.”

Devotions for Life

Spreading Light Ministries

devotions cover

So I wrote a book.  Actually this is my second book and technically the material has been written for some time, I just finally edited it.  This is a collection of a year’s worth of devotions in book format.  The paperback version is available for $11.99 (or less depending on Amazon sales) while the kindle version can be purchased for only $7.99.  There are two nice deals available along with the book purchase.  The first is that the book is available through Amazon Prime which means that shipping is free for members.  The second is that this book is enrolled in the kindle matchbook program.  That means if you buy a paperback (perhaps as a gift for a friend) you can download the kindle version for free.

Because the devotional book is twelve months of devotions, it is broken down into twelve themes as well.  I have compiled each theme into its own short little book as well.  You can see the entire list at devotional books.

I’m not big on self promotion but I’m rather proud of this book and if you read devotions or have a friend who does, I highly recommend checking it out.  I’m hoping that there is at least a small amount of success with this book as a I have a few more planned for the future.  Next on the docket is a second edition of my first book on evangelism.  That was actually published in 2005 and the print version is no longer available.  I plan on updating the information a bit and doing some reformatting.

One nice thing about being a pastor is that I’m rarely out of material for books.  Depending on how things go, I have material written for sermons that will be reworked and reformatted to go into books on Genesis and Exodus.  Whatever I do next, I’ll be sure to update things here to let everyone know what is going on.  And of course I’ll continue to publish more sites and articles as well.  I have a couple of Bible studies that I hope to complete before the end of the year, so I’ll be pushing to get them done to reach my goal.

Are you a Pharaoh or a Nebuchadnezzar?

Christianity

The Bible has its share of villains whether it’s King Herod, Pontius Pilate, or Judas Iscariot.  Even King David plays the role of villain before repenting of his sin with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah.  There are two Old Testament villains who stand in stark contrast to one another who can teach us a lot about Christianity.

Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar are two of the baddest guys in the Bible.  Both enslaved the Israelites.  They both contended with two of the greatest heroes of the Bible – Moses and Daniel, respectively.  The difference is that Nebuchadnezzar learned his lesson while Pharaoh did not.

When you read through the account of Exodus, you will see a lot of heart hardening on Pharaoh’s behalf.  Every time Moses performs a miracle Pharaoh hardens his heart.  At first it may appear that he acknowledges the power of God but then he will quickly go back on his word.  This happens repeatedly during the first several plagues that strike Egypt.

After a time though there is a slight change.  Instead of Pharaoh hardening his heart, we’re told that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.  This thought may make some of us uncomfortable but it’s important to remember that this hardening of the heart is not arbitrary and it only happens after many times of Pharaoh doing it himself.

It appears as though Pharaoh crosses a point of no return, a place where he will never repent and God turns his sinful heart against him in order to bring about the destruction of Egypt due to the hardness of Pharaoh.  History tells us that after Pharaoh’s army is drowned in the Red Sea, the nation is no longer the world power that it had been.

Compare this to Nebuchadnezzar.  By all accounts Nebuchadnezzar was more ruthless than Pharaoh as he conquered a large part of the Middle East.  Pharaoh was considered a god in Egyptian religion but Nebuchadnezzar’s word was just as unquestioned.  Pharaoh killed a lot of Israelite baby boys before Moses but there were still those who defied him.  When Nebuchadnezzar called to execute all of his wise men for being unable to interpret his dream, nobody questioned him in this.

The ultimate difference between the two men is that Nebuchadnezzar ultimately humbled himself after being humbled.  Pharaoh was put in his place time after time through the plagues and yet even after the death of his own son he went back on his word and sent his army out after the Israelites.

Nebuchadnezzar was humbled on multiple occasions as well.  His wise men were shown to be foolish.  Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego refused to bow to the idol he created and they walked away from their punishment unscathed.  Nebuchadnezzar didn’t learn his lesson completely from these incidents but one could argue that God at least kept them on his mind after each subsequent failure.

Eventually it would take a seven year madness to humble Nebuchadnezzar.  God humbled him just as He did with Pharaoh.  But Nebuchadnezzar decided that he was no longer going to fight against the Lord’s will and he thereby humbled himself.

Christians and non-Christians alike have similar choices to make.  When we mess up – and all of us will – will we humble ourselves and learn from those mistakes like Nebuchadnezzar or will we proudly and stubbornly harden our heart and continue to do things our own way?

God can use a man, even one as wicked as Nebuchadnezzar, when they repent.  On the other hand, Pharaoh got exactly what he had coming to him for defying God and ignoring His hand at work.

Shuffling chairs on the Titanic

Christianity, Spreading Light Ministries

There’s an expression – shuffling chairs on the Titanic – that is meant to express frustration and futility.  The idea is that the task is pointless because the ship is going down and it doesn’t matter what seat you’re sitting in.

It’s a bit of an exaggeration to use this expression to sum up my summer – really most of my year – but I do feel as if I’ve put a lot of effort into some futile tasks.  I’ve written some about my illness this summer (and one of those posts was lost in a server move – see below.)  The short version is that I was diagnosed with colon cancer this summer.  Two operations, almost a week in the hospital, and lots of bills for my insurance company to pay and I’m pleased to say that I’m cancer free.  Praise the Lord for this and for providing great doctors to take care of me!

The strange thing about this summer is that my struggle with cancer hasn’t been my frustration.  I didn’t enjoy surgery or all of the doctor’s appointments and I’m still physically recovery from losing 18 inches of my colon a month ago.  However, I always had complete faith that everything would be alright in that regard.

My frustration and sense of futility actually comes from my web ministry.  About two months ago I decided that I needed to upgrade my servers.  Spreading Light Ministries has become a network of sites totaling more than two dozen domains and each year I’ve been adding half a dozen more or so.  This meant that it was time to upgrade.  Unfortunately my upgrade was a disaster.  Things were sold to me as an easy switch from one system to another.  After they already had my money I discovered that things were not an easy switch and I never would have agreed to such an upgrade if I knew it required me to manually move my sites and reconfigure each one.  This required about three days of constant work.

To make matters worse, my upgrade was anything but an upgrade.  My new server just didn’t work right and my sites kept becoming inaccessible.  Tech support was good when I called them but things kept crashing about every other day and I didn’t feel as if I should be required to inform them of a problem that they should be monitoring.  In the end I just couldn’t stick with the service as it was far too unreliable.  I ended up switching to a new company that I had done business with before but not for servers.

My new server has been much more reliable and I’m feeling comfortable with where I am at.  However I am still not 100% back to where I was two months ago.  A few files were lost because I restored my backups from June and anything that I had written since then was inaccessible with the crummy server.  If it seems like I’m venting a bit of frustration, well I am.

Christians are not immune to frustration.  It doesn’t mean that we lack faith.  It doesn’t mean that we question God’s goodness.  It simply means that we are human and we live in a fallen world.  Last week I preached that God is still good and I really do believe that despite fighting cancer at a young age.  But we all get frustrated at times.

I have taken this new server move as an opportunity to update a few sites.  Some of it is a necessity and some is just practicality.  But the truth is that I’ve been doing a lot of work and I haven’t really been able to create anything new.  Two months have gone by and there is really nothing to show for it despite all of my work.  That is why I feel like I’m shuffling chairs on the Titanic.

Fortunately, I don’t believe that I’m on a sinking ship.  In the end, this will be more like changing the wall colors in a room that otherwise didn’t need to be painted.  Perhaps it was unnecessary but at least I’ll have a new, brightly colored room in the end.  At least that’s the goal.  Hopefully in a week or two and things move into fall, I’ll have some new great content to add once again.  And hopefully this will be the last digital move that I have to make in a long, long time.

Maintainence work

Spreading Light Ministries

The Spreading Light network sites are undergoing maintenance work.  In short, we switched servers about a month ago and this ended up being a disaster so now we’re switching again.  If you expected to see a different site and instead ended up here, we hope to have all our other sites up and running as quickly as possible but in the meantime please check out our main site.

Peace that passes understanding

Christianity

It is easy to say that a person has faith as a Christian.  But often this is said when there is no stress and no actual call for faith.  Real faith amounts to trusting God when times are difficult – when you fear losing your job, when you have relationship issues, when there are medical problems.  I consider myself to have a decent amount of faith even in the toughest of circumstances but I will be the first to admit that my faith is not complete and that it waivers from time to time.

There are times that I have experienced a faith that is so complete that I know it is not my own.  I have been swept up in a peace that passes all understanding and can only come from God.  I don’t share any of this to brag about my own great faith because it is not about me at all but about God.

I’ve had some medical issues this spring.  This can be traced back to back problems that I had in the fall and really goes back over three years when I developed a hernia.  In short, I’ve been dealing with issues on and off for three years now but I say this without complaining.  Things have come to a head this spring however.  Right at Easter time I discovered that my ongoing back issues were the result of a ruptured disc that I’ve apparently had for many years and was unaware of it.  Therapy has helped alleviate the pain a great deal and I’m very thankful for this.

Just as I was getting better from my back issues (it was literally the day after my chiropractor cut my treatments back) I found myself in the emergency room.  Without being graphic, I’ll say that it involved bleeding and a bathroom issue.  I expected to discover a minor issue that I’d be given medication for and then be sent on my way home.  Instead, I ended up passing out in the bathroom of the emergency room.

This was the first time that I’ve ever passed out and I must say that it was a very surreal experience.  One minute I was awake, the next moment I was surrounded by doctors and nurses in a hospital bed where they were hooking up IV’s and monitors.  As I was stabilized, it became apparent that what I thought was a minor issue was going to involve at least spending the night in the hospital.  My passing out was a result of dehydration and minor blood loss.  The doctors would be running multiple tests to determine the cause of my problem.

At this moment, despite not knowing what was really going on, I found myself overwhelmed with peace.  I was exactly where I needed to be.  If I had waited to get checked out, as my first thought had been, in all likelihood I would have passed out at home.  There’s no telling what the effects would have been on my body but I’m certain that it would have at least scared my wife to death and of course I’d have ended up in the hospital anyway.

As I was stabilized and the doctors and nurses cleared out, I found myself humming “God is so good.”  At this point my ears were still sort of ringing and my tongue felt like three times its proper size.  Every logical, human response says that I should have been freaking out at this time.  But instead my thought process led me to “God is so good.”  This is a peace that has no earthly basis and can only be from God.

My tests ended up showing that I have a large polyp in my colon.  The size is unusual to begin with but furthermore doctors usually don’t even begin checking for polyps until the age of 50 which gives me some time before a normal scan would even be done for this.  As it was explained that this polyp would have to be removed and there was a slight chance that it was cancerous, I continued to feel the peace of God about the situation.  The surgery would require a week long recovery in the hospital which I wasn’t looking forward to but I’d do whatever was necessary.  Once the biopsy results came back, I’d then schedule surgery to have it removed.

My biopsy results came back that the polyp was benign but the doctor wanted to send me to another specialist who could better handle my problem.  The doctor I was referred to turns out to be one of the top rated doctors in the country for this kind of problem.  Instead of cutting me open from the outside and having a week long stay in the hospital, this doctor can do my surgery as an outpatient procedure.

Because of the size of this polyp, there is still a chance of cancer despite the biopsy coming back clear.  Fortunately the procedure is the same whether this polyp is cancerous or not, it has to come out.  Either way I will have to closely monitor this from here on out.

As I await surgery in a couple of weeks I continue to have a peace that passes understanding.  I know that God is with me no matter what my circumstances are.  Cancer is one of the most frightening words that a doctor can say and I don’t like hearing it any more than any other person.  But even in the worst case of scenarios, I know that God is still good.  In my consultation with the surgeon, he said multiple times that I was extremely fortunate to catch this when I did.  And that is the way that I feel as well.  I am not unlucky or smitten by God to have this problem.  Instead I am blessed to have caught this problem and God will see me through it with His peace.

Why the church needs to change its approach on gay marriage

Church issues, Current Events

To be quite clear up front, I do not believe in homosexuality, regardless whether its participants are getting married or not.  There are plenty of places in the Bible that condemn these actions.  In Romans 1 alone, it is called unnatural, shameful, and we are told that it is the result of depraved minds.  I am not concerned about being in line with public opinion, only in being in line with what God has clearly taught us.

With that in mind, I believe that the church has completely blown its approach on the issue of homosexuality.  We have the Bible on our side and we should NEVER abandon God’s Word for public opinion or even fear of persecution.  But the question is, why are we holding fast to God’s Word?

The prophets were instructed to draw a line in the sand of what God said.  People were either for God or against Him.  I believe that there are still prophets in the church today.  Not men and women who predict the future but who draw the line in the sand and state that God’s commands are not to be trifled with.  But not everyone has the gift of prophecy and I question the idea of whether the church is to do the work of the prophets.

The church has an obligation to declare the Word of the Lord but that is far more than just standing against the tides of popular culture.  Jesus didn’t give us instructions of “Go into all the world and tell them everything that they are doing wrong so they’ll stop.”  Our standing orders are to make disciples.  Making disciples does mean that we instruct people to repent of their sins but that comes through a process.

I believe that we have inadvertently created a mindset to the outside world that they first have to get their lives right because they can come to God.  Because the church talks so much about sin, we forget who we’re preaching to.  People outside of the doors of the church need to hear the gospel about the forgiveness of sins.  Those inside of the church need to know about the garbage in their lives that needs to be dumped.

But we’ve gotten it backwards.  How many times in the gospels do we see Jesus preaching against sin?  Jesus encountered plenty of sinners and He was never wishy washy in calling sin for what it was.  But Jesus always had the big picture in mind.  Rather than just fix the sin, He aimed to fix the whole person.  When Jesus called for repentance, it wasn’t for one particular sin but rather a general call for salvation.

The church only needs to look at its previous efforts to see how well it does to preach against sin rather than focus on saving souls.  Issues such as prohibition and divorce certainly haven’t gone the way of the church’s teachings.  It appears as though the issue of gay marriage is also headed that way as well.  I believe that the church needs to be more concerned about preaching salvation and changing lives in that way rather than continually preach to non-Christians about what the Bible says.  Non-Christians have no reason to respect what the Bible says but we continue to preach sin rather than salvation.