I Am Living Proof

(Thanks to Recovering Pharisee for tuning me in to this CNN article.)

And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Florida, area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinn and a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.

Only the blessings didn’t come… [more]

I can  only sum this up by paraphrasing my pastor last weekend: “It is not about giving in order to get.  God wasn’t getting excited because we were discovering the revelation of ‘getting’.”

I don’t know if this worldwide but it has been a long long while since I have heard prosperity preached.  I go to a lot of churches and I listen and watch a lot of sermons and I just don’t hear it much anymore.  Even in Durban, South Africa, I went to a service at a megachurch (seats 500+, multiple campuses) and that pastor was super-extra-over-cautious careful with his words when he had to speak about wealth and riches.  I felt that he truly loved his flock and was careful to raise them in the right way.

When I first started writing this post, I thought it was just about pastors taking the Lord’s name in vain (Exodus 20:7).  But in thinking about that church in Durban, I suddenly realized it really is about the love you have for your congregation.  You love your congregation so much that you are willing to put the burden of responsibility of their spiritual growth upon your shoulders.  When your faith is in Jesus, then that burden is light (Matthew 11:30).

That is a very beautiful thought.

From the archives of Out Of Ur (of Leadership magazine):

October 18, 2007
Willow Creek Repents?

Why the most influential church in America now says “We made a mistake.”

Few would disagree that Willow Creek Community Church has been one of the most influential churches in America over the last thirty years. Willow, through its association, has promoted a vision of church that is big, programmatic, and comprehensive. This vision has been heavily influenced by the methods of secular business. James Twitchell, in his new book Shopping for God, reports that outside Bill Hybels’ office hangs a poster that says: “What is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?” Directly or indirectly, this philosophy of ministry—church should be a big box with programs for people at every level of spiritual maturity to consume and engage—has impacted every evangelical church in the country.

So what happens when leaders of Willow Creek stand up and say, “We made a mistake”?

Take time to read the comments.

A few people are getting on soapboxes and high horses and shouting, “Told ya so!” Truth be told, even a year ago, I would have been just like that. I think I am pretty sure I would have uttered the folllowing phrases, “Which friggin’ idiot thought up of the Seeker concept in churches? How in the world do you deemphasize the Word of God in church? How can you stand on the pulpit and NOT challenge those who attend your church?”

I remember when I thought I knew it all and I knew what living in Christ was all about. Ah, the memories. Those were good times. (Your Sarcastic-O-Meter should be spiking right about now

While the comments on the post have long since been closed (sorry for spoiling it), I couldn’t help to comment on the article now.

The only thing that popped in my mind is this: Willow Creek and their clones have the numbers. Sheer numbers. What if Hybel and Co. stuck to their admission, looked at their numbers and simply said, “We have the numbers. God willingly, let us take our flock and show them what the heart of the Father truly is. Let us teach our flock what it means to love others as God loved us. Let us equip them to make them disciples.”

What about not just the churchgoers of all things WC? What about any big seeker friendly megachurch? What about any of those evangelists on television with the millions of viewers?

What if the those leaders simply shifted gears out of first into fifth, burned up all the nitro and raced to feed the flock in order to ignite the same passions that Christ had for reaching the lost and caring for the poor, weak, widow and the orphan?

What if the churchgoers stopped for just a moment, get out of the rut of cracking their Bibles just on Sundays and started to serve their “Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria”, and to the end of the earth and showing the love of God through their acts for all humans because God loved them so much? What all the seeker and newbies turned all of their attention to the kingdom of God and his righteousness?

Naïve as I might be, there is always hope if we can glorify His name.

Truth be told, it is just wishful thinking on my part. I have no idea what God has in store for the North American church. But if the repentance from the leadership of Willow Creek Community Church is true, then I am excited beyond all measure.

Back home after total hip replacement surgery and four months of physical therapy, my grandmother returned home Friday morning. I took my son and spent the day with her all day Saturday ending the day by test driving her new hip out to my church, Gateway Church in Southlake, TX with Pastor Robert Morris. In exchange, we would take her to her home church (and my childhood church), Bethesda Community Church in Fort Worth, TX with Pastor Desmond Evans.

We were aiming for the 4PM Saturday evening service but we got delayed by a visit from Health Services and ended up going to the 5:45PM service, which traditionally is a video service. (Robert preaches first and last services with the middle being prerecorded from the first service of that same day.) To be honest, I really didn’t think too much about live versus video either way because I usually just end up watching the video screen. My grandmother, on the other hand, has only seen Robert on the small screen or the big screen (when she has visited Gateway before). She has been moved by his testimony, that is for sure, but what I found out later, she always wanted to see him in person.

It is funny how sometimes we take things for granted. I see Robert preach every single time he is on the pulpit so it wasn’t a big thing to me. To my grandmother, it was huge thing to see him live.

We show up to the 5:45 and the service progress as usually. I saw Robert approach the pulpit and thought, “Ah, he is preaching live.” and didn’t give it much thought beyond that. My grandmother’s eyesight is not too good and she didn’t see him right away until he strolled over to our end of the stage. She squeezed my arm and exclaimed, “Oh Robert is here.”

I replied after the service, “Mom, if you wanted to see him live, I would have taken you to the live services. Next time, we will sit front and center, even at the chagrin of the people who have to sit behind me.” (I am 6′5″, 250lbs and a mane of wild crazy hair.)

How funny is it that the littlest thing that you do unintentionally makes somebody else’s day.

The exchange? She gets to see Robert preach an excellent sermon on Salt and Light. At Bethesda, the 100+ member choir with full orchestra performed “Revelation Song”, which is a staple during worship at Gateway.

What a great weekend of services! I go from attend a different church every single weekend for the last five years in the search for a church to getting settled into a home church and having the privilege of attending fantastic churches such as Lake Pointe in Rowlett, Potter’s House in Grand Prairie and The Village Church with Matt Chandler in Lewisville, TX.

I was incredibly moved by Matt Chandler’s sermon (of The Village Church, Highland Village, TX) last weekend entitled “The Role of Men: Part 1; Defining Masculinity”.

What jumped out at me was the very last portion of the sermon (forgive me, the transcript hasn’t been released so I have to paraphrase just a tad):

“If I am lucky enough to make it to 70, can I keep living like this for that long? Can I really do it?

The scriptures say: I will give you everything you need to love and lead your wife, to love and lead your kids, to love and lead this ministry and pursue me with your whole heart. I will give you everything you need in order to do that, today. If you make it to bed tonight, I will give you all the strength you need. Likewise, when you wake up in the morning, I will give you all the strength you will need for that day.”

- Matt Chandler, Senior Pastor, The Village Church, Lewisville, TX

When he dropped that tidbit, the God spoke to me through his prayer:

Matthew 6:11 (KJV) Give us this day our daily bread.

In the last four months, I have kept searching for ways to make sure that I am fully dependent on Him. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn’t depending on my own talents and strength to make it. I wanted to put my entire will and life into His hands so that His name can be glorified.

I have read the Lord’s Prayer hundreds of times in my lifetime but that one particular verse never gripped me until Matt’s sermon.

When I pray, I always pray for strength from the Lord because I know my own strength will fail me. But what if the Lord will provide you the strength you need to just to handle that day?

Is that what He meant in:

Matthew 6:34 (NIV) Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

For a moment, I applied it to my finances. (In that same moment, I wanted to added another chapter to my series on tithing.) What if I trust in God to provide for me to pay a bill as soon as I receive it rather waiting for my paycheck to arrive? What if I can restructure my finances so that I pay bills as soon as they arrive rather than wait for paychecks to arrive?

Food for thought.

If you are at all familiar with my blog, then the title should not throw you for a loop.  Because of the vastness of my music collection, I will occasionally be inspired to use a song title as a fast and easy way to headline my posts.

Unfortunately, I cannot credit for this one (even though I am familiar with song).  (As a side note, I never liked this song not simply because of the content but because I will hear the opening bells sequence and thinking I was about to listen to Metallica’s For Whom The Bell Tolls.)

I was encouraged, inspired and and otherwise, fired up (pun intended) when I found out some of the details in the sermon that Perry Noble (Senior Pastor at NewSpring Church in Anderson, SC) for the weekend of August 4th and 5th. 

He goes a bit old school and talks about hell and nothing but hell in this particular sermon in his series, "Illuminate".  Beyond the calling by God on Perry to see 1,000 people saved in his church, I stood and cheered when I heard he was doing a sermon on hell.  Somehow, in the last twenty years, I missed how it became passé to give sermons that didn’t quite feel so good. 

I don’t know how that trend got started (I will speak on filling pews later on) but this leads me to share my how I became saved on a cool December 1982 morning in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in a Baptist Church who would bus in kids from around the city.

The Children’s Pastor message that morning was simply: hell and how Jesus Christ came to the earth, died on the cross and rose again so that you wouldn’t go to hell:

Up till that moment, I am pretty sure that I have never made an life changing decision.   I have had a lot of decisions made for me such as my mother saying goodbye to me for the last time when I was 5 years old or the fact I had to go live with my father who would abuse me and my brother for the next seven of the longest years of my life.

But the day I was saved, I will never forget.

So a choice had to be made: Did I want to go to hell (Romans 6:23)?  The answer is obviously no.  Was I a sinner?  I understood that I have done bad things in my life but absolute no human was born perfect but Jesus Christ (Romans 3:23).  If I confess to be a sinner, the Lord will forgive us of our wrongdoings and remove all that is wicked and evil from within me (I John 1:9).  If I believe that Jesus is my Savior and Lord and he was raised from the dead after being crucified (Romans 10:9), then I will be saved.

The rest, as they say, is history.

So what say you, faithful readers?  Share your testimony of salvation.