How Dare You!

Today an acquaintance of mine came to me with an expression of both excitement and pride. "Guess what!?" she said. "I'm getting baptized this Sunday!" My heart sank. "Baptized?" I asked. Over the next few minutes she rambled on about how she grew up catholic, but was now attending a baptist church. She said, "They told me that I just needed to pray and invite Jesus into my life. I don't remember what they called it, we didn't do this in the Catholic church."

"The Sinner's Prayer?" I asked.

"Yes! That was it!" After which came more complete ignorance of the gospel. No mention what-so-ever of repentance. My heart was breaking. She had no grasp of the gospel of Jesus Christ. No concept of what it meant to be saved, and no answer as to why she was going to be baptized. These people had taken this girl, who knew she needed God, and convinced her that if she merely repeated a human concocted saiance, she would "have God in her life" and as long as she prayed every day, she would be saved. She did what they said. She "prayed the sinner's prayer." In her mind, she was saved.

I asked her to meet me for dinner. For hours we sat and discussed what she did, why she did it, what she didn't do, what baptism means, why we are commanded to do it, what the Gospel of Christ is, who Christ is, what He did, why it was necessary. I cannot discern if my level of anger with the people she had "prayed with" was righteous or sinful. This precious girl was being tossed into the pits of Hell by professing Christians.

To the indignant reader: Who made you higher than God? Who gave you the authority to pick and choose which portion of scripture is important, and which are optional? Jesus is not a BandAid to "make our lives more fulfilled." Where is the explanation of Romans 3:23 in this? "For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God." Where was the glorious hope, that "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8)

Eph 2:4-9 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

Rom 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Where in Scripture do you find "the sinner's prayer?" Where does anyone "ask Jesus into their life?" I exhort you, do not preach a partial or padded gospel. Do not make the beautiful gift of salvation into a 3-step program to "your best life now."

Mat 23:15 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves."

There is no gospel aside from the gospel of Jesus Christ. In John 14:6 Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by Me." No works. No "prayers." No rules. Only Jesus.

"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel." Mark 1:15


Fallen, Fallen, Fallen! - Paul Washer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qcMdPS5I-8

This will make your day!

If you are down, or just want to smile...this will do it for you! Watch it at least once a day and your body will be healthy with laughter! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-NOZU2iPA8

The Great Divorce

The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

Some of my favorite quotes from chapter 9:

Page 69

’Son,’ he said, ‘ye cannot in your present state understand eternity…But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on Earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say “Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences”: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,” and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.’

This is my favorite:

Page 73 & 74

‘There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself…as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organizer of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares.’

Page 75

’There are two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”’

God may have removed His hand of protection from America

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees.. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, 'Merry Christmas' to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrati ng this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a creche it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too... But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this happen?' (regarding Katrina) Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said something to the affect of, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'

In light of events like ... terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr Spock's grandson committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet? Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.


Written by several people...

Glorifying God BY Enjoying Him Forever!

This quote best states how we glorify God by enjoying Him, by praising Him!

"When I first began to draw near to belief in God and even for some time after, I found a stumbling block in the demand that we should “praise” God; still more in the suggestion that God Himself demanded it. We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue…but the most obvious fact about praise – whether of God or anything, strangely escaped me. I never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. The world rings with praise – lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game…Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible…
Men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?” Indeed we can’t help doing it…because praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation…Our expressions of praise are inadequate – but how if one could really and fully praise things to perfection – then indeed our delight would attain perfect development! To understand what [heaven] means we must imagine ourselves in perfect love with God – drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves…flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression – our joy no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is a separable from the brightness it sheds. The Scots Catechism says a man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But then we will know these are the same thing. To fully enjoy is to glorify – in commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him." – C. S. Lewis

Heads AND Tails

I thought this was a really unique way of putting salvation, and liked it:

“…in Acts11:18 the apostles respond to Peter’s testimony about Gentile conversions like this: ‘Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.’ And in Acts 14:27, Paul and Barnabas report the conversion of the Gentiles by saying that ‘God…had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.’

Conversion, then, is repentance (turning from sin and unbelief) and faith (trusting in Christ alone for salvation). They are really two sides of the same coin. One side is tails - turn tail on the fruits of unbelief.

The other side is heads – head straight for Jesus and trust His promises. You can’t have the one without the other any more than you can face two ways at once or serve two masters.

This means that saving faith in Christ always involves a profound change of heart. It is not merely agreement with the truth of a doctrine. Satan agrees with true doctrine (James 2:19). Saving faith is far deeper and more pervasive than that.”
-John Piper's Desiring God

Praying for Biblical Worship

"We pray that God will give us the discipline to pour our emotions into the mold of sound doctrine." - Jeff Noblit

Do you ever hear a quote that inspires you; one that gives you a new perspective on the way you look at things? This one did that for me! I think there are too many people who are caught up in "emotionalism", where there is no factor of Biblical doctrine, nor true, Spiritual renewal in Christ from a truly repentant heart in their kind of worship at all. On the other hand, I see many dead Christians, trying to die so much to emotion (thinking that to be happy in their worship is not important), that Christ is no longer their joy and ultimate satisfaction in everything they do, when He is to be what brings us the most pleasure in life. There is an extreme to both sides; you either have emotionalism with no Biblical doctrine, or doctrine with not heart-felt emotion. We must pray that God will help us to find the right balance in our worshiping Him (as it is of utmost importance in a Christian's life)!