Culture Wise

 
“Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil; cling to that which is good (Romans 12:9).

You and I know what it means to go from lost to found, from darkness to light, from the kingdom of Satan to the Kingdom of God. Any person who has been saved knows the difference. We know what it means to go home and to be right at home.

We have been rescued and redeemed and thank God we have a right-standing before a loving God. But why is it that so many are perplexed regarding how to stand firm in that place? While we stand around, the ground seems to be shifty, uncertain, and unsafe. We don’t seem to know how to be conduits of redemption in a world that desperately needs to be redeemed.

What are we to do? Here is how to live rightly in a wrong world. First of all, we are to think scripturally. Know what you believe. Know why you believe what you believe. And defend that truth every day of your life.

Also, we are to live purely. We have the Holy Spirit of God living inside of us, enabling us to practice a lifestyle that is pleasing to God. Don’t inch closer to the cultural fire. Why? You will get burned.

Love generously. We overcome evil with good. We overcome darkness with light. And we overcome apathy in all its awful forms with generous helpings of love. Be known for your great love. As you love others, you show them the love of the Father. As you care deeply, you show them He cares.

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  • Revival and Integrity

    “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” (Psalm 85:6)

    Authenticity is a product of integrity. Integrity is defined as “wholeness, completeness, soundness.” A person with integrity is not divided (that’s duplicity) or devious (that’s deception) or merely pretending (that’s hypocrisy). People with integrity have nothing to hide nor anything to fear. Their lives are transparent. Though, and it is very unfortunate, they are also somewhat rare.

    There is a shortage and a crisis of integrity today. The church has blemished itself with integrity issues. The church is more like a defeated army, naked before our enemies, and unable to fight back because they have made a frightening discovery: the church is lacking in integrity.

    Warren Wiersbe said, “For nineteen centuries, the church has been telling the world to admit its sins, repent, and believe the gospel. Today, in the twilight of the twentieth century, the world is telling the church to face up to her sins, repent, and start being the true church of that gospel.”  Wiersbe said this back in the early 1990s.

    We boast that we are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, but perhaps the gospel of Christ is ashamed of us. It seems as if ministry and life does not match our message and lips. The salt has lost is potency. It has become good for nothing. The world has influenced and contaminated the message of the messenger. And now the world walks upon the church.

    The integrity crisis has infiltrated the church and it involves the whole church. In the body of Christ, we belong with one another, we affect one another, and we can’t escape one another. When one member suffers, all the other members suffer with them (I Cor. 12:26). What the church needs today is not a quick fix that touches only the surface, which is only cosmetic; what we truly need is a surgeon who cuts deep and removes the cancer.

    Remember this: God is wanting to make integers and Satan is wanting to make fractions. God’s purpose is to “gather together in one all things in Christ” (Ephesians 1:10). God does not accept neutrality. Let us look up, look around us, and look within.  The Christian whom God wants to bless and use must have the courage to be different and the conviction to keep going in the right direction, come what may.

     

     

  • The Flesh

    “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh” (Romans 8:12).

    “The flesh” is that urge within us toward total autonomy and rebellion, toward being our own little gods–accountable to no one, responsible to no one, obeying no one, respecting no one, and running our own little worlds to suit ourselves. It has inherent in us an element of self-centeredness and selfishness that keeps us from being completely and totally His.

    The Lord Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega–The Beginning and the End. He demands submission to Himself and that means every area of our lives are to be submitted to Him. To leave a pet sin is wickedness when He died for every sin. Also a good God expects us to capture every thought and denounce the flesh and announce that your mind belongs to Christ. The flesh does not run you for we run it by the Spirit of God. We are to resist the devil and the improper advances made available to us. We are to master them and punish every sign of disobedience that rises as a vagrant soldier to cut us down.

    Persistence and patience is what I get to do. For we are never free from an attack of the the world or the flesh. Don’t lay down your armor until you get home. There is no vacation when it comes to the exterior foe–the world, the interior foe–the flesh, and the infernal foe–Satan. But we have won in Christ, for what He has once delivered for us now, I must and have the privilege to deal with my interior life moment by moment and hour by hour. It is possible and plausible. Praise His name!

  • The Third Day

    For God To Be Seen

    “And be ready on the third day; for the third day the Lord will come down in the sight of all the people upon Mount Sinai” (Exodus 19:11).

     

    Why the third day? Why not the first day, the second day, or even the fifth day? Everything God does He does in His whole Person. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are in total agreement. God is three in One. All is done together to show completeness and holiness. Without oneness there is fragmentation.

     

    Everything we do we ought to do as a whole person. We are to worship God with our “whole spirit and soul and body” (I Thessalonians 5:23). What God does in us He does through us. Why? Our worship of Him effects our wholeness in the world. When we are whole-the body of Christ-then God moves.

     

    We (all born again Christians) belong to God. He has redeemed us from our old way of life (individuality of choices). We have left that life behind and we belong to God. Because we belong to God, we must be separated from sin. We are set apart from the world and set apart unto the Lord together. Why? For oneness in Him. For His glory to be revealed in us.

     

    “Whether, therefore, you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God,” Paul admonishes the Church at Corinth (I Corinthians 10:31). We are not our own for we belong to Him and therefore to each other. When we realize we belong to Him then we will begin to understand we belong to each other in the household of faith. “Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s well-being” (I Cor. 10:24).

     

    When does God reveal Himself in strength, holiness, and power? When God’s people ready themselves to become what we are already in the body of Christ: One body of believers. “Consecrate Yourselves” is for the whole church to know we are one body with many members in Him. Revival in great power happens when we see the power of the third day.

  • No Bones About It

    “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones” (Ezekiel 37:1).

    Where are the young pastors and young people or old people who are captured and carried by God? Where are those in the church today who are set down right in the midst of dry bones? Where are the people of God that are not nodding in the pew but noticed by God and used by God?

    The blessing of dry bones has to begin with us being a blessing. We are to be captured by God, carried and set in the middle of the dry bones, and we are commanded to preach to the bones. Ezekiel was told to do the same. We are to “tell forth plainly.” Instead of being tossed on a dry dead bone heap, we are told to preach plainly to “them there bones.”

    When we listen and we tell plainly, then a miracle will happen. The dry bones began to find moisture, life, and begin to stand up. Instead of being famished, they become fat. They march around speaking of the resurrected Lord. Oh the sound of awakening will be heard in your village if you will listen and then tell. God specializes in graveyards. It is just a affirmation of allowing Him to capture us, then carry us, and command us to preach to the bones. Watch for the breath of God to blow!

     

     

     

     

  • Influencers Who Refuse to be Influenced

    “You are here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage” (Matthew 5:13, The Message).

    You know that salt seasons and stings. When you go to the movie theatre and order a drink you have to get popcorn and you want it seasoned with salt and butter, lots of it. It just makes all things taste better. Then you chase it down with an extra-large Coke that you pay too much for that cost them pennies on the dollar.

    You also are aware that salt stings. If you step into the ocean water after a scratch or cut to your body, you realize quickly that you do not have to go far into the shallow water before you wince with pain. It burns and it truly stings.

    You and I are to thirst after God. We are to craft our lives in such a way that our thoughts, our habits, our actions and reactions make people who know us simply crave God. We are salt in a dying society.

    Even if others do not want our God, our lives will cause others to feel the sting inwardly of rejecting the One who loves them. If you live for the Lord Jesus you will encounter those who do not appreciate those who live and tell the truth. It is a stinging rebuke to their godless life, and inside, they wince in pain.

    We are called to be salt – and not sugar! – in our world. We are called to season and to sting. It is good to be in a big salt shaker known as sanctuaries, huddled in fear of a big, bad world. But salty people do not need seasoning! It’s the ones who are headed to Hell who need to know there is a God who lives in us. It’s the blind who need seeing! We are not to be the bland leading the bland.

  • Salvation

    “If, then, I do what I will not do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me” (Romans 7:16-17).

    When you’re saved, God doesn’t fix you to where you can’t sin anymore but where you can’t sin and enjoy it. Romans 7:14 says, “…I am carnal, sold under sin.” Romans 7:18 says, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells…” Romans 7:21 again, “I find then a law, that evil is present with me…” Then in Romans 7:24 says, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

    We are free from the penalty of sin but we are not free from the presence of sin that causes temptation. We are free from the power of sin but we are not free from the possibility of sin which can cause failure.

    We, who have been born of the Spirit of God, born from above, still have that principle of indwelling sin. The more mature we become in the Lord the more we see that we are sinners before God. Sin is no longer your Sovereign but sin still produces a stain upon the soul and it is your adversary. We do not become better, for in Christ we are positioned righteous, but we do run to Christ, turn to Christ, depend upon Christ, knowing our sinfulness but knowing His Saving Power over sin.