"Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage - with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry." 2 Timothy 4:2-5
They say that I am sometimes inflexible, to the point of separating myself from the very people that God wants to reach, because I am not one who appreciates, condones, or edifies the church doctrine of "revelevancy to the culture" type of preaching. When man decides what God is saying, rather than seeking God's wisdom that stands above and beyond man's interpretation, we find ourselves recreating God in our image. This leads to the hard questions of "Why?" and "Good and Evil; which does God do?" and "God is love, but He punishes the wicked."
In today's world, we have defined God by human characteristics and action. This so that we can feel unburdened by the sheer separation that lies between us and God, due to our own sins and the failure we face as we struggle to be the men and women that God intended and designed us to be. We figure if we can make God human, then we won't face judgment and God would give us the 'freedom' to make our own morality and ethics. This is what is preached and why churches are the size of thousands (called mega), because we all want to feel good about our relationship with God......without accountability, without fuss. The smaller, intimate churches of old are dying--- if not already dead --- because that would call into the spotlight the folly of our making of God in our image. Truth would destroy the fantasy of the Mega-God.
"God is not a man, that He should lie. He is not a human, that He should change His mind. Has He ever spoken and failed to act? Has He ever promised and not carried it through?" Numbers 23:19 (NLT)
God is beyond man's complete understanding and therefore is immeasurably unknowable, in our linear mindset. What He said, stands. What He did, remains in silent testimony to the will and the power of this Almighty God. His message hasn't changed in thousands of years, only the way and the amount of truth that the Church decided to deliver to a culture that doesn't want absolutes, but watered and leave alone gospels. That is why true bible-teaching, accountable churches are slowly dying in the landscape of the American consumerism culture.....if you don't preach what I want to hear, I'll leave and find some place else that does.
An up and coming church, once finding that 'elusive' formula that dances with the Truth and appeals to the masses, will refuse to hear any descension from anyone else; branding them intolerant, haughty, and demon-possessed. As one preacher told the congregation, "You bible theologists and teachers who don't agree with Henry Wright's theology (God wants us never to be sick), think that you are God's gift to the church and you can just leave."
Just because the fulfillment of this scripture is seemingly coming true, it doesn't not relinquish me from the calling to speak what I believe is truth. In all situations, circumstances, and communities.
Even the saved can stray.....
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