Friday, May 4, 2012

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Do You Believe Prayer Changes God’s Mind?

This week someone in my church asked, “I don’t get prayer. What’s the point?”

I immediately shot back, “Prayer changes God’s mind.”

Puzzled, she asked for clarification.

“Listen,” I said. “Prayer does lots of things.”

I told her that I believed…

  • Prayer aligns our will with God’s.
  • Prayer brings us closer to him.
  • Prayer allows us to spend time with our heavenly Father.

Then I finished by saying, “All of these things are incredibly important, and are tremendous privileges of prayer. But at its core, when you reduce prayer down to its essence, in addition to the things I just listed, the main reason we pray is to change God’s mind.”

Do you agree with that?

Most think that the central part of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is about homosexuality and God’s judgment on human wickedness. I contend that while that is obviously a key part of the story, what precedes it in Genesis 18:17-33 sets up what the story is really all about:

17 Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? 18 Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. 19 For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”

20 Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous 21 that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”

22 The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. 23 Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? 25 Far be it from you to do such a thing —to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

26 The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

27 Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, 28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?”

“If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.”

29 Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?”

He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.”

30 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?”

He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”

31 Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?”

He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.”

32 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?”

He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”

33 When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.

The overarching point of the entire Sodom and Gomorrah narrative is about prayer, and how God responds to it.

And my point today is simple: I believe this.

God changes his mind in response to our prayers.

Period.

Do you?

Please leave a comment and make sure to connect with me on Facebook and Twitter!

in Biblical Issues

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

8
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Why I Never Read Anonymous Letters, Comments, Emails, or Notes In The Offering

I have a simple rule: whenever I receive anonymous letters, notes, emails, or blog comments they go straight into the trash.

I never read a single word. Ever.

Why?

  1. People who write anonymous letters want to avoid the hard work of discipleship. Matthew 18 makes it quite clear that Jesus’ followers are to take conflict resolution seriously, and very specific steps are given on how to resolve it – all face to face.
  2. I make mistakes, lots of them to be exact. And I can’t grow and learn from them if those who want to point out my mistakes aren’t credible sources.

I get 4-5 such items a month (usually letters, emails or notes in the offering bowl), some of them quite cruel in nature. In talking to my friends who are pastors (and bloggers) it appears I’m not alone.

What that means is there are at least 4-5 people out there every month who…

  1. Rob me of the opportunity to learn and grow.
  2. Rob themselves of the opportunity to get all the facts.
  3. Have wasted a lot of time writing something that no-one will ever read.

Actually, #3 isn’t entirely true.

Because of an episode a few years ago with some really bizarre anonymous letters, we took the advice of law enforcement and no longer throw these letters/notes away.

They are handed over to my Executive Pastor and are sealed and placed in a file.

Every. Single. One.

I would encourage you as a leader to do the same.

When needed we’ll take those letters and turn them over to FBI/law enforcement friends of ours who will draw DNA/fingerprints from them and formally log them as documents of interest in potential harassment cases.

99% of the time they amount to nothing.

But that 1% turns out to be the linchpin in nailing someone.

Trust me. :)

How do you handle anonymous letters/emails/blog comments?

Please leave a comment and make sure to connect with me on Facebook and Twitter!
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in Biblical Issues, Rethinking Church

Monday, April 23, 2012

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The Painful Cost Of Unity

Unity within a church is the indispensable key to accomplishing the Great Commission.

Show me a church with tremendous talent, resources and potential, but no unity, and I’ll show you a church that is already dead in its tracks.

But show me a unified church with limited resources and significant challenges, and I’ll show you a church that will find a way to win every time.

Church unity is never accomplished by wanting to feel unified. The feeling of unity is never the goal. It’s the by-product of church leaders focusing on 5 extremely difficult and often times painful actions:

  1. Unity comes through installing good leaders and removing bad ones.
  2. Unity comes through casting a clear enough vision that the wrong people don’t join your church.
  3. Unity comes through confronting sin.
  4. Unity comes through teaching sound doctrine, even when you think people will leave as a result.
  5. Unity comes through leaders insisting that the entire church follows the biblical path of conflict resolution found in Matthew 18:15-17, without exception.

Unity is a funny thing.

If as leaders we focus on trying to obtain the feeling of being unified, we’ll ultimately accomplish anything but.

But if we focus on simply doing what godly leaders do, unity somehow always has a way of showing up on our doorstep.

Have you seen examples of churches avoiding the five actions I listed? What happened? 

Please leave a comment and make sure to connect with me on Facebook and Twitter!

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in Biblical Issues, Rethinking Church

Thursday, April 12, 2012

20
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Demon Possession (and the charlatans that promote it)

Shortly after giving my life to Christ when I was 18, I attended Pentecostal TV rock-star pastor Rod Parsley’s church for a brief period of time.

It’s a good thing, too, for if I hadn’t I would never have learned how to eject a supernatural demonic being from a person’s body, all within time to get to Sunday lunch.

Here’s how Rod did it:

1. Place your hand on the possessed person’s forehead and position your body in a Heisman Trophy stance
I’m not sure what it is about the hand on the forehead or the crazy touchdown pose, but it worked for Rod every time. Any time someone came forward with a demon and Rod broke out the Heisman pose, we all knew we were getting to Denny’s in time to beat the Baptists down the street.

2. Yell directly at the demon, preferably in King James English
Evidently demons are either hard of hearing or easily intimidated, so always remember to speak LOUDLY and always have a few handy phrases memorized from 16th century Shakespearean English. “Arise thou foul demon” and “returneth to thy abode” seemed to be a few popular phrases used.

3. If you find the demon doesn’t want to leave, always remember to speak in tongues
Every once in a while Rod squared off with a demon of the black-belt variety, and when Rod saw this coming he always knew what to do: speak in tongues. With hand planted squarely on the forehead, body in assumed demon expunging position, Rod would break out with a few raucous Ho-ba-ba-ba-shinge’s and it was all over.

It can get a little crazy when you’re called upon to cast a demon out of someone, so it always helps to just remember the acrostic F-S-Y-T (forehead, stance, yell, tongues).

It works like a charm.

Unless you have a brain.

And actually believe in demons.

And really want to help people. Continue Reading…

in Biblical Issues

Friday, March 30, 2012

11
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“God Told Me” and other embarrassing phrases Christians use

Whenever someone tells you something that begins with the three words “God told me” you should immediately:

1. Look for the nearest exit.

2. If said exit is locked, attempt to cut them off mid-sentence by poking them in the eye.

3. If they are significantly taller than you and hence out of eye-poking reach, quickly lift your pant legs up as high as possible because you are about to wade through a pile of really smelly stuff.

God has never spoken directly to me, ever…

Not through a dream.
Not through a strange set of circumstances.
Not through a person.
Not in my head.
Not in my spirit.
Not in my gut.

Not one time. Never. Nada. Zip. In all my 45 years of walking on this planet I can say with the utmost confidence that the creator of the heavens and the earth has NEVER spoken directly to me.

But…

There have been numerous times that I’ve felt confident that God had indirectly spoken to me…

Through a dream.
Through a strange set of circumstances.
Through people.
In my head.
In my spirit.
In my gut.

The problem is when those times occurred, I wasn’t sure if it was God that was communicating with me, or if I had too much pizza the night before.

And that’s the issue – we’re never sure. Ever. And that’s just the way it should be. Continue Reading…

in Biblical Issues, Living It Out, Rethinking Church

Monday, March 26, 2012

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Christians Spend Too Much Time Studying The Bible

Most Christians assume that immediately after Jesus died, rose from the dead and went back to heaven that a leather-bound copy of the Bible descended from the sky.

Complete with the 27 finalized books of the New Testament and Jesus’ words etched in red, this Bible was delivered to the church and has been studied in perpetuity by Christians around the world.

The reality is we didn’t have the New Testament in its complete form until 367 a.d. when Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria listed all 27 books of the New Testament for the first time.

That’s three centuries. 334 years to be exact.

Comparatively, that’s like Jesus showing up in the Jamestown colony when it had only 75 people in it, teaching, dying, raising from the dead, and then the Bible coming together in its final form this Thursday right before we head out to Applebees for lunch.

It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to be a Christian without a Bible:

  • 100 years after Jesus left it appears that some churches had copies of the collected letters of Paul and a gospel or two, but that’s it.
  • Many had collections with books of debated authenticity that were later ferreted out.
  • No-one had a final New Testament like we have today.
  • Whatever copies existed remained in the possession of the local church leadership.
  • No-one, it appears, owned their own copy of the Bible for personal “Bible study” unless they were wealthy enough to pay the substantial cost to have it transcribed (see Luke 1:3-4).

Besides, with the high rate of illiteracy among the social groups represented among the rank and file of second and third century churches, having a personal copy of the Bible would have been useless anyway. Most Christians wouldn’t have been able to read it.

I bring all this up to make one simple point: the modern-day church places a ridiculous amount of emphasis on studying the Bible.

It’s obvious, from historical observation alone, that one can be a sold-out, fully devout, willing to die a martyr’s death follower of Jesus and spend next to no time practicing the spiritual discipline of Bible study. Continue Reading…

in Biblical Issues, Rethinking Church

Monday, March 19, 2012

9
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You Pray Too Much

During college I did an internship at a church where the pastor was into a “Get everyone to the church at 5am to pray for exactly one hour” kick. ***

I heard through the grapevine that some well-meaning person slipped him a book on prayer (I believe it was TV evangelist Larry Lea’s Could You Not Tarry With Me One Hour?) and that was all she wrote.

For 13 weeks straight I would get up at 3:45am, take a shower, get dressed, and then make the 55 minute commute to the church building just in time to hit my knees and join the faithful.

For 60 minutes of prayer.

On my knees.

Every flippin’ morning.

For 13 straight weeks.

I kid you not.

“The Koreans are doing it and their churches are growing like wildfire,” I remember him telling me.

“That’s great,” I said, “but can’t God hear us just the same at 9am? And does it need to be a whole hour? My knees start killing me after 20 minutes. After 30 minutes I’m getting butt cramps. And after 45 minutes, honestly, I’m contemplating converting to Zoroastrianism. Besides, is this really the way prayer works anyway?” Continue Reading…

in Biblical Issues, Living It Out

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

21
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7 Uncommon Characteristics Of Masculine Christian Men

Over the years people have asked me what I think the difference is between a masculine Christian man and an effeminate one. Some assume that when I talk about the need for men to fully embrace their god-given manhood that I am advocating that men become (1) chauvinistic pricks or (2) demeaning towards other men who do not embrace their inherently god-given male characteristics.

Simply put, I believe men are created to be different than women. And yes, I believe that a person’s gender is god-given and not culturally ascribed. Genesis 1:27 says “…male and female he created them.”

Men become effeminate when they reject their specific gender differences. Not in the sense that they become “fags” (or whatever hateful and slanderous name you pick). And definitely not in the sense of being more sensitive or emotional. But effeminate in the sense of embracing what is unnatural to their god-given male gender.

Here are 7 uncommon characteristics of masculine Christian men…

1. Masculine men don’t have sex with other men.

One would think this would be self-explanatory, but not in today’s culture. I don’t care how tall, well-built, tough acting and great looking a guy is. If he has sex with another man, he is performing an act reserved only for women. In the truest sense, only effeminate men have sex with other men.

2. Masculine men are comfortable being the “head” of their wives.

Ephesians 5:23 says, “The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.” The word “head” in Greek (kephale) is used to describe an anatomical head, but also to describe the point of a spear, the top of a wall, and the front of a ship. The context of Ephesians 5:23 tells us that just as Christ went ahead of the church to save it as its Savior (dying on the cross), the husband goes ahead of his wife and protects her (and as an indirect result his family). Masculine men lead their wives in the sense that they sacrifice for them, protect them, and keep them from experiencing undue stress, exhaustion, pain and hardship. Only effeminate men push their wives to go ahead of them and experience what they as husbands should experience. Continue Reading…

in Biblical Issues, Living It Out

Monday, March 5, 2012

13
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The Great Miraculous Spiritual Gift Hoax

Whenever a contentious topic of discussion comes up people historically land in one of two polarized camps:

  • Tastes great or less filling?
  • Seat up or seat down?
  • Ginger or Marianne?

The topic of miraculous spiritual gifts is no different. Whenever the subject of prophecy, healing, tongues, etc., comes up, there are usually two fiercely defended sides taken:

Miraculous gifts can’t happen today
Your understanding of God/scripture/life won’t allow them to happen. When people share stories about having witnessed the miraculous in action you conclude they are either lying, delusional, or live in their mom’s basement with 12 cats.

Others fall into the…

Miraculous gifts can and do happen
Not only could they occur, but you believe you’ve seen them with your own eyes – deformed legs grow miraculously, the deaf hear, the blind see. Life is like a non-stop Benny Hinn crusade minus the cheesy Italian suits.

I tend to land, as I do on many issues, in the radical middle. My position is… Continue Reading…

in Biblical Issues, Rethinking Church

Thursday, March 1, 2012

19
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3 Reasons I Don’t Discourage Non-Christians From Taking The Lord’s Supper

Every few months or so an angry churched visitor storms the stage after the service demanding an explanation for why I didn’t provide a detailed warning to non-Christians to not take the Lord’s Supper.

With a scowl on their face they’ll wildly start flipping through the pages of their Bibles until their finger lands on 1 Corinthians 11:27-29:

27 So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. 29 For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.

“Do you understand what this is saying?” they’ll angrily ask.

“Yes, I’m pretty sure I do.”

“Well, I have news for you: you don’t.”

“Do.”

“Don’t.”

“Do so.”

“Do not.”

“Please,” I’ll eventually say. “I have a question for you: do you believe non-Christians are going to hell?”

Continue Reading…

in Biblical Issues, Rethinking Church
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