28October2008
Posted by Randy Davis under: Christian Life; Christian Spirituality; Church; Culture; Pastoral Ministry; Preaching; Theology.
Scripture gives a fairly clear picture of what the church should be, even though many will disagree over the exact structure of the church. Perhaps this is not as important as we think. But what we are and how we live is of the upmost importance. I make a few simple biblical assumptions about the Christian life and about the life of the Church. I am a Southern Baptist but there is a baseline of doctrine that all biblically based churches share. We are to be faithful to the commands of Christ to make disciples and to baptize. We are to live moral, holy lives. We build each other up in Christ and in his values. We are to live simple lives and bear witness to the world. This witness is a personal, one-on-one witness, we can’t do it by remote control or pay someone to do it for us. We are to be in the world but not of the world. And, the Church above all, is an eschatological community. We live for the future because we are now aliens and strangers in this world. We belong to the Kingdom of God, our citizenship is in heaven, and we await that day when God brings us home and we sit at the great banquet table with our Lord. And in that moment he lifts the cup for the first time since his betrayal.
With this simple biblical understanding, we compare the reality of today’s church and we discover level upon level of irrational insanity. I happen to be Baptist by conviction. But I don’t have a problem if you are Presbyterian or Methodist or Episcopalian, which encompasses the three major forms of church polity. However we all have drunk from the same poison and we all exhibit the same forms of insanity. We are not comfortable with the simple presentation of the Christian life that we find in Scripture. It seems simplistic and it makes us stand out in society and we don’t like being different. The great modern sin of the western culture is to be different. We do not want to be strangers and aliens. Above all, we don’t think that suffering of any kind should be a part of our enlightened lifestyle. So, we largely ignore our brothers and sisters in Christ who live in non western nations under oppression for their faith. They live their lives as open Christians knowing the consequences of living as strangers and aliens. Weekly, we hear the horrors of the slaughter of Christians in Orissa, India. A friend of mind went on a mission trip to Vietnam and reported the incredible price someone pays for calling Jesus Lord. But we have an emotional meltdown when someone questions our faith, or makes fun of us. Somewhere deep in our hearts we think that God has failed us. Read the rest of this entry »
Share This
21October2008
Posted by Randy Davis under: Culture.
I have a friend whose daughter is a freshman at LSU. Though she was raised in Louisiana, they currently reside in another state. But her dream was to go to LSU because she is a Louisiana girl. She has all the excitement of an eighteen-year-old looking forward to the next phase of her life. Her parents are proud that she is growing up and is taking such a big step in life. But like all good parents, they worry about their daughter.
When she enrolled, she filled out papers telling about herself with the hopes of getting a roommate she can reasonably live with. She is a committed Christian. Her father has served as the pastor of several churches in Louisiana. So, the powers that be decided that she needed to have her horizons expanded and placed her in a room with a militant lesbian.
This is not a theoretical lesbian, this is real life. My friend’s daughter has thrown up because her roommate brought home another lesbian lover and they had sex in front of her. And when they are not having sex, she and her friends are watching lesbians programming on TV. Can you imagine going from a loving Christian home into this nightmare? What a way to spend your first semester away from home!
Of course her parents are upset. And so far nothing has been done about it. This is my tax money being used to promote homosexuality. Not only am I a resident of the state, my federal tax money also goes to LSU. Whatever one’s position might be in regard to homosexuality, no one should be forced into this kind of situation.
This event is just a small insight into the fact that our universities are often manned by people who do not share the values of the tax payers. Yes I know that the university is supposed to be a place where ideas are explored and tested. But there is a difference between testing ideas and indoctrinating students with amoral, immoral or alternate morals that violates the integrity of the student. Education is not about tearing down the morality of the student, it is about teaching knowledge and wisdom. What we are learning is that we cannot trust our educational institutions. And if you do not know, parents are cut out of the process. The college student is an adult. Though you may pay the bill, you have no right to know their grades, their mental or physical health or anything else that a parent may need to know. Thus, there are lots of indecent things being forced on our children and you will never know about it and you could do nothing about it if you did.
It is extremely important that parents make sure they have taught their children well before they go off to the university. Parents must model morality before their children and they must come to understand that the only institution that will help them to teach their children morality is their church. Parents who allow athletics and other activities to interfere with church attendance are simply setting their children up for failure. The time from birth to 18 is short. When a child gets into trouble or is morally challenged, they will fall back on what you as parents teach your child by word and by deed. It will not be your words but your actions. You can tell your children all you want that church is important but if you don’t get up and go, they will not either. If you do not live a moral and ethical life, they will not either. If that does not scare you, it should. The only well they have from which to draw their moral strength is what you as fathers and mothers have given to your child and you only get one chance at it. You will make it a shallow or a deep well, it is determined by your own life lived before them.
I hope my friend gets this worked out soon. I am sorry that such a thing could happen in Louisiana. He has every right to be mad. And the public, who foot the bill, should be aware of the lack of standards in our universities. But we should not be surprised, it simply reflects the complete moral collapse that has taken place in our nation. Don’t be surprised to hear more stories like this.
Share This
9October2008
Posted by Randy Davis under: Christian Life; Christian Spirituality; Church; Pastoral Ministry; Preaching; SBC; Sermon; Theology; Trinity.
Worship is Trinitarian. We fellowship with the Father, in the Son, through the Holy Spirit. God is the only one worthy of our adoration, fellowship, prayers, and honor. The Father calls us to himself through the advocacy (an advocacy that includes the cross, the grave and resurrection) of the Son and by the instrumentation of the Holy Spirit.
Because we are in the Son and when the Father sees us, he is seeing the Son in whom we are in union, and the Holy Spirit who maintains that relationship. Therefore as the Father and the Son and The Holy Spirit fellowship, we participate in that fellowship as well. In fact, since the Holy Spirit resides with the Church until the end of time, we need to see the profound nature of that work He works in us when the Body assembles to worship. It is he who maintains our fellowship. He is the one who calls us out of sin, enables us to come to faith and then maintains that faith forever. In the last chapter of the book of Revelation it is the Bride (the church) and the Spirit who call unto Christ to return. So, for now, then and until the end of time, the Holy Spirit empowers the church to do all of its functions.
Considering the depth of the nature of this relation, then what kind of worship is worthy of the Creator of the universe who has condescended to man and allowed us into his holy abode for fellowship? Do we not offer our best to him? The best of our income, the best of our time, the best of our voice and heart and mind? Do we sing meaningless jingles or words of depth? Do we prepare our hearts for worship or do we carouse all night, come in late, come to the assembled Body of Christ unprepared to be in his presence? I think the answers are obvious.
If we want to take worship seriously we must forever be aware of who God is and who we are. That means that we live our lives in anticipation of meeting God in worship. But since worship is also an eschatological event anticipating the return of Christ, we must live as those prepared to meet our returning Savior. In Church we are living proleptically (that means we are living future promises in the present) thus we assemble and worship with the same solemn (meaning the with the awe that comes from being in the presence of the living God–the word awe used in its proper way) and depth as those who are worshiping in the Book of Revelation, as if the church were already sitting at the banquet of the Lord’s Table as he lifts the cup for the first time since the night of his betrayal.
When we enter to worship, for those few minutes we are no longer those whose portfolios lost over half its value this week, we are not those whose bodies aches with the pain of age, we are not those riddled with anxiety about what we will do for a living or whose lives are troubled by the brokenness of their family. When we enter to worship, we are the People of God, the Sons and Daughters of the Father, the Siblings of the Son, the saints of God those who reside in heaven, we are the future in the this very present moment. When we worship, we are in the presence of the Father and we gather around his Word as the tree of life. We gather at his table for fellowship with the one who died for us and we find our strength renewed as we drink the cup and take the bread. And our prayers, the prayers of many as one man, are intense and deep words to our Father. And when we sing, we are in chorus with the heavenly angels as we proclaim our collective praise to our King. And for that moment are in a bubble of the future intruding into the present, a bubble that is a new heaven and a new earth. For that short time we are straining to apprehend that which has apprehended us. And when we leave that worship, we should be thirsty for more, a thirst that cannot quenched, a hunger that is cannot be satiated until we stand in his presence forever
That is how we should worship!
Share This
