Culture Wise

“I looked on my right hand…no man cared for my soul” (Psalm 142:4).

When it comes to witnessing for the Lord Jesus Christ, I remember while I was in college that no one every spoke to me about my soul.  As a matter of real knowledge, I do not ever recall anyone speaking to me directly about my eternal destination.  It was all so vague to me.  As a young man, a teen of maybe fifteen, I remember shutting my Bible during a worship service and saying to myself, “One day I will understand but for now I choose to wait it out.”

I did not shut my Bible in rebellion but in mild frustration.  I said “Maybe one day I will understand.”  I just didn’t get it.  I wasn’t trying to harm or hurt anyone; I, with all of the changes going on in my body, mind, and soul of a teen, just gave up and I just shut down.

There are a lot of youth walking around the same way today.  They don’t know what the Bible, Jesus, the Church, and prayer, etc., is all about.  They are lost and headed toward a dream world that does not exist.  And there are hardly any out there who care enough to pray and prepare their own lives to tell the good news to them.

Do you remember in the first paragraph that I remarked that no one spoke up for my soul?  Well there was one.  I was in my second year of college and I traveled to the State Fair in Raleigh, NC.  While there, minding my own business, I was walking with a girl and out of nowhere God appeared.  You say, “What?” Yep!  In just a moment in time this girl stopped out in front of us and asked ME “If I were a Christian?”  I said, “Yes,” for I was taken by surprise.  The next step, I took after giving her my answer, the Holy Spirit of God stopped me dead in my soul and in such a real way said to my lost soul, “You are lying.”  And He was right.  Never before had I been confronted in that manner.

God used that girl to speak to me.  He was awakening my soul out of the lap of the evil one.  Later I understood the gospel!  He opened my eyes.  I have never gotten over it.  Someone cared for my soul.  She doesn’t know what she did for me.  I laughed inside when I saw her in front of me with her “Howdy Doody smile“.  But now it is me who has the smile.  I can’t wait to see her.  I don’t know exactly how it will happen, but one day I will thank her for her bravery, courage and her love for a lost college boy headed toward Hell who didn’t understand.  And one day I will thank the Lord God Almighty for using this young college girl in my life who stood up for Him!

“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:24).

How do we explain…

1.   The massacre in a Florida High School.
2.   A barrage of sex scandals from Hollywood to Congress to our Seminaries.
3.   Continued attacks on Christianity.
4.   The willing slaughter of our nation’s unborn children.
5.   Growing distrust.  Violence.  Confusion.  Turmoil.

Nothing that is happening in our world today — not one act of perversion or evil — is an anomaly or an accident. What we see today are symptoms of an accelerating moral and spiritual unraveling of our country and world — the natural result of a nation that has turned away from the absolute truths found in the Bible.

The only way for change in the direction of America is the change that happens through hearts of human beings, and that catalyst is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  That change must first happen to God’s people.  W.A. Criswell said it this way, “The nation cannot turn to God if I do not turn to God.  The nation cannot repent, if I do not repent.  God doesn’t win nations or companies or crowds or throngs.   He wins souls one by one.  And the only way we can lift our nation Godward is if I am moved Godward.”

The true church can never rest and a faithful pastor’s work is never done.  We need to constantly preach to the world and to ourselves the true gospel, and strive for greater clarity and precision — not less.  By so doing, we cultivate our own spiritual growth, we protect the health of the church, and we strengthen our witness.  Salt and light is what we are to be and that is what will retard the leaven of sin.

“And it came to pass, when David and his men were come to Ziklag on the third day, that the Amalekites had invaded the south, and Ziklag, and smitten Ziklag, and burned it with fire” (I Samuel 30:1).

As David’s exterior world collapsed, he returned to his interior, rebuilt his primary identity, recovered his base. David had escaped Saul, duped the Philistines, now endangered by his own men, and God brought David back to Himself and reliance upon Him.

What do you do when your world collapses? You return to your interior, the interior of where God lives. God allows trouble to bring you to where we belong. We are united and in planted in Christ. Allow God to work. Allow His discipline to take hold.

Christ is capable of living the Christian life, for the obvious and simple reason that He is the Christian life. Allow the grace of God to work in your bad situations and good situations.  As David faced much we are grateful that the Christ who lives in us is more than able to face anything and conquer

“Righteous art thou, O LORD…Thou hast planted them, yea, they have taken root; they grow, yea, they bring forth fruit; thou art near in their mouth, and far from their heart” (Jeremiah 12:1a,2).

We are living in a day of cardboard Christians, pseudo saints, and plastic preachers. Far from being true in the innermost being to God there is falsehood and deceitfulness. Any nation that finds itself in this position is a nation in great decay and headed for destruction.

Words will never move the hand of God to bless unless they are words backed from a righteous life found only in God. God desires truth, humility, honesty, and that is found only in Yawheh, the Covenant Making God.

The prophet Jeremiah was planted in God and true to the core of his being. He was wheat among the poisonous tares of his day. He saw planted around and next to him those who had taken root in the land and who had filled the air with their words that were religious but unrighteous, in other words people far from God.

Friend we are in conflict with the world. It will only get worse and the affliction is real. As long as the world becomes more religious and God’s people become compromised then we can be assured it is all shaping up for judgment. Yet you and I do not have to fall into despair. Jeremiah said, “But thou, O LORD, knowest me; thou hast seen me, and tested mine heart toward thee” (Jeremiah 12:3). God tests us that we may be proven. Character develops in Christ as we understand the times and we are aware of the devil’s tactics. We are on the winning side!