Erin Church Devotions: Real faith

Audio version here

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote to you about Pastor Daniel, an evangelist from Indonesia. He, along with 40 other Christian leaders, has been sentenced to five years of imprisonment, just because he prayed for the Muslim community to be open to Christ’s Gospel. I informed you that I was handwriting a letter to him in phonetic Indonesian, so that his family and friends could hold on to their hope in Christ.

Two weeks have passed and Daniel has received over 1400 letters from pastors and people around the world. The authorities are beginning to sit up and take notice. Daniel’s family are heartily encouraged by the amount of international support that he is being given. It truly is a wonderful way of sharing and expressing the Gospel to people in other lands. I hope and pray that Daniel and the others are released soon.

Daniel is a God-fearing Christian, who takes Christ’s message to heart and is unwilling to compromise its integrity. A week on Tuesday, I am going to our local Presbytery meeting and already I am feeling torn by it. Two new pastors will be presented at the meeting for approval. I’ve read their statements of faith online and once again, I am bewildered. I’ll have to ask one of them what is meant by salvation and is Christ the Only Savior of the World. The other one does not mention God as Father, nor of Christ as being His true Son.

It may just be a slip of the pen or keyboard, and to other people this will not seem important, but when I think of Pastor Daniel languishing and suffering in an Indonesian prison for not compromising his faith, I feel really ill at ease with those pastors amongst who all too readily set aside traditional beliefs and replace them with what they’ve learned from seminary professors, instead of holding fast to the words and teachings of Christ and His apostles.

I’ll probably endure some criticism again for asking these questions and voicing my concerns, but it will be nothing compared to what Daniel is experiencing. I hope and pray that my passion will not overload my reason; and that my heart will not overwhelm my head.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, You are the Son of God and He is Your Almighty Father. We are adopted as daughters and sons of God through our allegiance to You and by Your sacrificial death. Help us to value our salvation and keep us revering Who You really are. In Your Holy Name, we pray. Amen.

Verse for the Day:
Titus 1:4 To Titus, my true son in our common faith:
Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.

No Turning Back

Hebrews 3: 6 But Christ is faithful as a son over God's house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast. (NIV)

I couldn’t believe what happened at our Presbytery meeting yesterday. A candidate for the ministry made, what I believe to be, two apostate statements and still had her call upheld! In front of everyone, she stated that she wouldn’t be bound by the scriptures, and that Christ was not the only redeemer of humankind. I asked her directly if she believed Jesus to be the sole redeemer of the world, to which she answered, “I would hesitate to say that. That would be putting God in too small a box for me.”

So, it’s okay to put Jesus in a small box? It’s all right to diminish His Lordship and ministry of salvation? When did we start to become Deists and Universalists in the Presbyterian Church? What are they teaching our candidates for ministry at seminary? Why is it that no one sees the link between accepting universalist pastors into our pulpits and the decline of church membership?

The first Christians were surrounded by thousands of pagan gods and idols. Do we honestly think that if Jesus was just a localized, personalized redeemer that His earliest of followers would have allowed themselves to become martyrs? Do we really believe that first century Christians refused to say “Caesar is Lord” before Roman authorities and be led to savage deaths in the Coliseum if they thought that salvation could be found outside of the Christianity? They knew that to be in and of the house of Christ that they had to hold on to their courage in the face of cruelty and terrifying persecution.

We have become so biblically illiterate, so theologically ignorant, and so arrogantly apostate that we don’t see ourselves becoming blatantly heretical through wanting to be culturally sophisticated and religiously tolerant. Our need to be liked and courteous is leading us down a narcissistic path that takes us outside of God’s Kingdom and Christ’s household. Unless we put the brakes on this apostasy now, unless we draw lines of belief in the sand, the Presbyterian Church is going to continue to die. God will not bless or honor that which does not honor His Son.

We need to seriously start reading the Bible again and stop using it as a pathetic panacea to ease our consciences. We need to understand that Christianity is not a leisure pursuit that we shape to fit our lives. We need to recognize that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation, the only Truth, Way, and Life, and that our work in the world, according the first stated end of the Church in our current Book of Order, is to preach the Gospel in order to save humankind.

I am fed up to the core with faithless statements and false ideas. I am a sinner saved by Christ alone, whose work of salvation saves the world alone. There is no other name given to humanity under heaven that can save the earth. There is no other Savior than Jesus Christ.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, please stop the Church from wounding itself by giving up age-old beliefs about You. Grant us the courage to stand up to those who would diminish Your ministry and devalue Your Gospel. We are all sinners in need of saving; we are all imperfect in need of redemption. Help to do what is right and not what we think to be right. In Your Holy Name, we pray. Amen.

Coming Soon

Revelation 22:7 "Behold, I am coming soon! Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy in this book."

There’s a lot of disruption occurring in the Presbyterian Church, which is dividing our ability to witness effectively in the world. Different pastors and elders hold diverse views about what’s right and wrong for the church, and the people in the pews are being led like sheep to the slaughter on the altars of adversity and discontent. Congregations are leaving the denomination across the country, which is weakening our influence throughout many communities. Instead of being washed in the blood of Jesus, we’re hemorrhaging. Instead of bringing the good news of the Gospel to the world, we’ve actually become bad news.

I worry about what’s happening. I try to understand why people want to polarize their faith. Is it because we hate one another so much that we have no room for love? Is it because we’ve too much pride that we have forgotten to be humble? Are we so focused on currently making things right for ourselves that we’ve jettisoned the future of the Church? Are we so sure that we’re on the Lord’s side and not servants of Lucifer?

Christ is coming soon. If I live till I’m eighty, then for me He’s coming in the next thirty years. Time is running out for all of us, and He will judge us according to what we have done. Can we honestly say that He is more interested in the divisions we’ve created, or in the people we’ve attracted to Christ? Will Jesus commend us more for doctrinal purity or compassionate conversions?

In the end, Presbyterianism is just another thin branch of the whole Christian Church. Even if it breaks, the tree will survive.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, we are Your Church and we are Your people. None of us are perfect; not one of us is pure. Grant us wisdom and discernment, compassion and love. Keep us from dividing the body and diminishing our witness. In Your Holy Name, we humbly pray. Amen.