March 30, 2010: Do You Know Your Worst Sins? (Part 1)

Do you know what your worst sins are? Quite possibly you don't have a clue.

The other day I heard a radio preacher talk about all the things he did to keep himself from sexual sin. For example, he won't counsel a woman alone, or drive in a car with a woman alone, or even spend a night by himself in a hotel. His computer has moral filters so powerful that they make even his innocent research difficult. He has locked himself out of the premium cable channels on his TV, and only his wife knows the passcode.

Maybe all those measures are necessary for him to preserve his purity. If so, good - he has done the right things to shore up a weak will. But his focused zeal to make it impossible to commit the sins of seduction and lust leaves me with some concerns.

First there is the danger of Phariseeism. The sin that hung most grievously on the conscience of Pharisees - the one sin they wanted to avoid at all cost - was violating the Sabbath. God had simply said "Don't work," but the Pharisees added to that a long list of rules which ensured that they could never even come close to working. For example, they could not take more than 2,000 steps, and if they carried something, it had to be below the waist and not up on their shoulder where heavy items (like bed mats) were normally balanced.

Jesus did not applaud the stern measures they took to avoid Sabbath work. In fact, he found their legalisms insufferable - especially when they made them law for others. Surrounded by such a cloud of ordinances, Pharisees fogged up the whole meaning of sabbath rest and blinded themselves to its purpose. The thick hedges they built around the fourth commandment became walkways to the violation of other commandments, and hard barriers to the grace of God. I believe it is possible for us to do the same with any commandment - even the seventh.

A second concern has to do with the impairment of ministry. The pastor on the radio said that he had lost ministry opportunities because of his policies, and I'm sure that is true. For example, he would not have been able to minister, as Jesus did, to the woman at the well in John chapter 4. Jesus spoke to this Samaritan sinner alone for a while before his disciples arrived. If he had refused to do so, per the dictates of a "never-alone-with-a-woman" legalism, it is unlikely that she would have opened up about her painful life and received his grace.

Recently I and a couple other men, over the course of two months, helped a divorced woman in troubled circumstances prepare her house for sale. Scheduling issues would have made it impossible for two or three of us to be there at the same time. Had we subjected ourselves to this pastor's rule, we never would have cleaned things and moved boxes and made repairs.

Over the years, countless women have been led to Christ by faithful servants of God who - even though they were male - shared the gospel in good faith without seducing (or being seduced by) them. Discretion is always wise, of course, but it must not be turned into a hammer that crushes God-given opportunities to speak grace or perform acts of kindness.

Third, there is the danger of objectifying women. A female student in seminary told us of a time when she went through a spiritual crisis and tried to make an appointment to see her pastor. But he was a never-see-a-woman-alone zealot, and refused to meet her. She was grieved, and felt that she was not being treated as a troubled human being but as a temptress who posed moral danger to men. Thankfully, a less up-tight associate minister did meet with her and helped her through her crisis of faith. (And no, he didn't try to have sex with her.) It is possible to treat women honorably even when you are alone with them. When our policies suggest otherwise, it is understandable if some women think, "Oh come on, what am I to you - a piece of meat? If your wife isn't in the room, are you afraid you're going to jump me?"

There is a simplicity to the Bible's commands about sexual behavior that must not be lost in the thicket of man-made rules designed to safeguard them. The simplicity is this: "Keep the marriage bed undefiled. Be faithful to your spouse. Don't take another man's wife - don't even think about that." Add your own rules to those if you must, but beware the unintended consequences (Phariseeism, loss of ministry opportunity, objectification of women) that they will tend to drag in their wake.

I can think of a fourth danger that stalks hypersensitivity to one kind of sin: I wonder if it plays a role in desensitizing us to the real jaw-dropping evil in our lives. Pharisees who wouldn't swat a fly on the Sabbath were nonetheless capable of falsifying evidence against a good man so that he would be tortured to death. And what was true of the Pharisees can be shockingly true of us. I know it has been true of me. The radio pastor, who, in my mind, is really in no danger of cheating on his wife, has (in my opinion) a much more serious issue about which he feels no guilt at all. More on that next week, Lord willing.

March 23, 2010: Through Seasons Of Lean Spirituality (Part 2)

My wife says that one of the first things she heard me say when she met me just over a year ago was that I felt I needed a sabbatical.

I remember saying that. I was really discouraged. I was pastoring a small church that I couldn't get to grow. I couldn't get anyone in the church to attend Sunday School or Bible study or prayer meeting. I couldn't even get most of them to show up on time for the Sunday morning worship service! The regard for sacred assembly was so low that one member regularly took the start of the sermon as his cue to walk out and get himself a cup of tea. (For further insight into my long-standing frustration, see the March 27, 2005 essay, "Quiet And Respectful In The Worship Service", where I complain about the fact that 20% of my congregation would leave the sanctuary during the service to take a bathroom break.)

But God brings good out of our grief. It was the barrenness there that drove me to attend a mid-week service at another church, and that is where I met the wonderful servant of God who became my wife.

And one blessing led to another. Now that I attend her church, I have been able, by God's grace, to slake spiritual thirst eagerly and often just by meeting with people for prayer. I have found that praying together is part of the culture of Grace Pointe Church. We pray for each other:

1) During Sunday School
2) At Thursday 6 AM Prayer Meeting
3) At bi-weekly small group
4) At Saturday morning men's fellowship
5) At the monthly vespers Communion service

After the sermon you can go forward and pray with somebody while the rest of the congregation sings. I've prayed with people in the narthex after the service - and I see others doing that too. When our pastor was out sick for a month some people arranged a 24-hour prayer service for him and the church. I'd say that on the average I have about four opportunities every week to pray with like-minded believers. It has been a balm to my soul.

And that is what I recommend to anybody who finds himself experiencing and lamenting a season of spiritual dryness. Go find other people to pray with. Do that as often as your busy schedule permits. If you're in a church where nobody prays together - and for some reason you're stuck there - then go to some other church's prayer fellowship. (One of the guys at our 6 AM Thursday prayer meeting attends another church on Sundays.)

Jesus commanded solo praying (Matthew 6:5-6), and he did a lot of that himself, but even he wanted company the night his soul was "overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death" (Matthew 26:38). He asked three disciples to join him as he prayed. They didn't do a very good job of supporting him that night - they fell asleep - but at least they were there. Be there, be there with others when they pray and when they need you to pray for them. You can help each other a lot that way.

March 16, 2010: Through Seasons Of Lean Spirituality (Part 1)

From time to time I hear confessions from sincere Christians who bemoan their spiritual dryness and lack of fervor. They feel they have lost the edge off their Christian zeal, and wonder how to get it back. William Cowper expressed this lament about 250 years ago in his great hymn "Oh For A Closer Walk With God":

Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I sought the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
Of Jesus and his word?

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill

Before I make a suggestion (next week) to spiritually weary people about how to get their zeal back, let me first warn. I believe there is a danger in chasing after spiritually exhilarating moments that once came to us unbidden. It is important to remember that God has called us to faith and obedience, not excitement and thrill. Jesus said, "If you love me you will keep my commandments," not, "If you love me you will wave your hands in the air and moan." It is easy to deceive ourselves into thinking that we are pleasing God when we really aren't doing much more than feeling wonderful.

Spiritual feelings are extras and by-products. They are hard to control and easy to fake, and if we make them the holy grail of our quest we will find ourselves chasing after wind. What really pleases the Lord is simply believing what is true and doing what is right. Doing good and believing truth may seem mundane, but they make God happy - and divine pleasure must remain our central goal. Christians know that God's happiness matters more than our fulfillment, but because we are corrupt, we will tend to pursue things that energize us whether or not they honor the Lord.

There is a lesson to be learned from the tragic case of a friend I'll call Chuck. Chuck was an ordained minister who served as a missionary in the South Pacific. Back in 1985 he told my wife and me how much he careened from spiritual highs to spiritual lows, and how he wanted to maintain a close fellowship with Christ. In 1998 he regaled us with the story of joining a million men at the Promise Keepers assembly in Washington, and how exhilarating it was to be a part of this amazing work of God in history.

Then a few years ago Chuck rejected the Christian faith and left his wife and took a lover and became active in "New Age" spirituality.

Oh Chuck, Chuck, you didn't need spiritual highs and "mountain-top experiences" with the Lord. You didn't need to be "at the center of what God was doing" in the Promise Keepers movement. You just needed to be faithful to your wife and do your job and go to church on Sundays. How hard was that?

The prospect of a spiritually enriching experience can become for some people the idol that replaces God, the feeling that replaces faith, and the rule that replaces obedience. That is why I feel a little reluctant to propose a "cure" for spiritual dryness. First I want to ask a couple questions and make some blunt points: "Who cares about your spiritual dryness? Are you sure you are not indulging a fallen tendency to look inward when you gauge your spiritual humidity? Christian practice demands that you look outward! Look to Christ and obey him! Look to your neighbor and serve him! Forget about yourself and how spiritual you are. You may be in danger of succumbing to unnecessary guilt if you find yourself spiritually "dry", and damnable pride if you judge yourself spiritually "wet".

Having said that - or having warned that - I can say that in recent months I have been able to delight in some real spiritual refreshment. I thank God for it. Next week I'll pass along some personal testimony on the matter, Lord willing.

March 9, 2010: Psalm 27:14: Wait For The Lord

I received a request to write about what it means to "wait on the Lord," a phrase found often in the Psalms.

I believe that "waiting on the Lord" involves deliberate and disciplined non-action on our part. When is it right to "wait on the Lord" rather than take the initiative ourselves? Whenever all our options for doing something are disobedient or unwise.

Some examples may help.

Abraham and Sarah declined to "wait on the Lord" when he told them they would have a son. Instead they took matters into their own hands by having Abraham impregnate Sarah's maid Hagar - a disastrous experiment in surrogate motherhood (Genesis 16). They should have just waited 14 years for Slowpoke Jehovah to give them Isaac.

Saul refused to wait for the Lord to bring the prophet Samuel to Gilgal to offer sacrifices (1 Samuel 13). Defying the Lord's command, Saul offered the sacrifices himself - only to see Samuel arrive just as he was finishing! (See verse 10.) If Saul had waited one more hour everything would have been fine.

Good King Josiah should have stayed home and played Scrabble when Pharaoh Neco went to fight Nabopolassar of Babylon in 2 Chronicles 35. But Josiah's tendency toward decisive action - so valuable in reforming fallen Judah - led him to err tragically when he meddled in the foreign conflict that God had told him to stay out of. Josiah suffered a fatal arrow wound in that battle. If he had waited for God to sort out the corpses he would not have become one of them.

Speaking of corpses, Jesus waited for his dead friend Lazarus to putrefy a lot before going to resurrect him (John 11). Lazarus' sisters were angry at the delay, but Jesus was, as always, going by his Father's timetable (see John 7:6: "The right time for me has not yet come.")

Jesus' disciple Peter was the kind of person who didn't know how to sit tight and do nothing. He learned the hard way. When Jesus was washing the disciples' feet, all Peter really had to do was lie face down and keep his mouth shut - but he couldn't. He raised such a fuss that Jesus had to stun him by threatening him with excommunication (John 13:8)!

Thankfully Peter learned the lesson of holy passivity so well that 30 years later he was urging other people to act that way. In 1 Peter 3:1-4 he did not tell wives of unbelievers to take the initiative with their husbands, but rather to submit to them and try to evangelize them wordlessly. He counseled a "gentle and quiet spirit" rather than an aggressive and noisy one. It is one of those situations where a person has to back off and wait for the Lord to act.

My favorite example of "waiting on the Lord" is David. He knew that he would be king some day - Samuel had already anointed him - but he religiously refused to hasten that process even when his own life was at stake. The current king, Saul, hated David and tried to kill him more than once. But David would not lift his hand against Saul. Twice he had an easy opportunity to take Saul's life (1 Samuel 24 and 26), and his own men were clamoring for him to do it (24:4 and 26:8), but he wouldn't. The Lord raised up Saul and the Lord would take him out. Though David had fought many battles and killed many foes, he knew that this battle was not his to fight.

Waiting on the Lord is not a matter of total passivity, however. It includes trust and prayer, and it demands the muscular effort of standing our ground when pressured to sin, fret, panic or flee. So, for some concrete examples:

If I don't lie on my resume I won't get this job!
Wait on the Lord to provide you with a job where you don't have to lie.

He insulted me by slapping me on the right cheek - I'm hitting back!
Turn the other cheek, and wait for the Lord to take vengeance on your behalf.

If I don't sleep with my boyfriend he'll leave me!
Wait for the Lord to provide you with an honorable man. Or be single.

My severe depression gives me permission to get drunk/commit suicide/cheat on my wife/bully the weak/apostatize/do something else wrong or stupid.
Wait on the Lord. Say a prayer. You may feel differently as soon as an hour from now. But even if you don't, still, wait on the Lord.

March 2, 2010: A Time To Blend

One of my favorite things about the Sunday School class I'm teaching is that it has no targeted demographic. Everyone is equally welcome.

I have attended and led demographically-targeted groups before. Years ago I belonged to a "Homebuilders" class that was designed for couples in their 30s raising children. Then I taught the seniors class for people 65 and older. I pastored a church of English-speaking Chinese people. I met my wife at a church singles group. Currently on Saturday mornings I go to Bravehearts, which is for men only.

I cannot deny that there is a time and a place for dividing people into their natural affinities regarding age, gender, race and marital status. These segregations are particularly useful when addressing concerns that only certain groups have. But I also think that our knee-jerk tendency to "divide and target" can be a little dangerous. Often it leads to bad things and prevents good things.

Remember that whenever you target you also exclude. Let's say you want to have a couples' group. Great - but make sure you understand that by limiting your group to couples you have just shut out the widows. Trust me, widows know this. My mother at 55 and my wife at 40 both experienced a loss of fellowship with married people when their husbands died. "But don't they have a widows' group they can go to?" Maybe, but some bereaved women don't want to go to the widows' group. I know that my mother definitely preferred mixed company. She spoke sometimes about how much she missed masculine conversation once she lost access to it through Dad.

Secondly, whenever we establish tightly constrained demographic groups we deny ourselves and others the benefits of cross pollination. We make it difficult, for example, to fulfill the mandate of Titus 2:4, which says that older women should train younger women. In some churches, the only time that 70-year-old Nancy and 25-year-old Brittany are in the same room is when they are worshiping in the sanctuary - and then they are not relating to each other but to God. We've got to get those two to cross paths somewhere (in informal settings) so that, as necessary, Nancy can set Brittany straight.

Thirdly, sorting people into their demographic niches has a powerful tendency to promote division. Division must not be tolerated, and we have to keep sniffing it out and stomping on it. You will recall that St. Paul, who had worked so hard to proclaim the Christ who broke down the "dividing wall of hostility" between Jews and Gentiles (Ephesians 2:14), went all medieval on St. Peter when his co-apostle started sitting at the "Jews Only" table (Galatians 2:11-14). And Paul's reaction to the economic division of Christian brothers and sisters was at least as strong: when rich people shut poor people out of their private Eucharist in 1 Corinthians 11:20-22, Paul told them that they weren't eating the Lord's Supper at all. He also told them that they were being judged by God (verse 30).

Naturally occurring affinity groups can become demonically exclusionary cliques a lot faster than you think.

It is good for a church to take steps to manifest by overt and tangible means the truth of Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Go ahead and divide into your niche groups for set purposes - as is sometimes prudent and necessary - but then jump out of them again as soon as you can. Mix and blend. And, if you would be so kind, please say a prayer that the 10:30 Chapel Class at Grace Pointe Church would have

1) At least a 50-year age span.
2) A smorgasbord of races.
3) The destitute and the filthy rich.
4) Single, married, divorced and widowed people.
5) Sinners and saints.

Thank you.