The Death of Faith in America

 

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

What is causing the quarrels and fights among you?  Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you?  You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it.  You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them.  Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it.  And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.  You adulterers!  Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God?  I say it again:  If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God.  Do you think the Scriptures have no meaning?  They say that God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him.  And he gives grace generously.  As the Scriptures say, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”  So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world.  Let there be tears for what you have done.  Let there be sorrow and deep grief.  Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy.  Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.  James 4:1-10

On a pleasant Sunday afternoon drive my bride and I passed an old church on a country road.  We stopped to admire the setting.  As a church-aholic I couldn’t resist trying the door.  To my shock, there is at least one unlocked door in 2020. 

We went inside, and Elizabeth played the piano while I took some pictures, one of which was the mourner’s bench in the front…the place where those who were under deep conviction for their sins, and, declaring their repentance, would sit, until examination of their lives by church elders was deemed sufficient and successful to formally join, or rejoin the congregation.  As I examined the bench where such examinations were held, I noticed what may be wrong with faith in America…spider webs on the repentance bench.  It seems we have (as one writer long ago observed) lost the ability to blush at our sins. 

Most everyone in America must be wondering, what in the world has happened?  Why the hostilities, the wars, the anger; why this road rage existence we live?  Many have a ready answer, and much of it solves nothing.  Perhaps the reason is because we are chasing the ghost of fond memories; that which is long past and was never so.  By that I refer to longing for better days, when people were good to each other, and life was young and beautiful.  We want to know why this is no longer so, and how can we get it back. 

The illusory image of what President George H.W. Bush called a kinder, gentler nation, is a rose-colored glasses version of reality.  America has ever and only been great, or kind, or gentle in its nobler moments of sacrificing its own comfort and self-aggrandizing for the sake of other’s liberty and fair treatment.  The moment the motive shifts to self is the beginning of the descent into death of our faith and honor.

The Apostle, James says we have quarrels and fights ongoing because of the evil desires at war within.  The antidote for such attitudes and lifestyles, says the half-brother of Jesus, is to run to the mourner’s bench, humble ourselves before God, let the tears flow over our sins, and trust Him for forgiveness…and then DO live the way Scripture teaches.

The kinder, gentler moments and memories we have of so-called better days are no more than the aftermath of the several Great Awakenings[1] in America.  These were times of flaming pulpits, and revival, that of the kind of holiness which can only be God-inspired.  During, and for a short period after, such times good will and better behavior were the norm.  But, like combing your hair will only last so long as you keep it out of the wind, reforms without discipleship will soon fade like a morning mist.  As the Proverb writer has it, like a dog returns to its vomit, so sinners return to what we want.  And a human being in revolt to the Spirit of God repeats the process without fail.

Short version:  unless people walk in the Spirit, they will live in the flesh.  And if there are, as people are wont to say, dead churches in our land, it is only because faith, and the will to live as people of faith, died first.

For You Today

Shall we let the dead rest…or shall we begin to pray that the pot be stirred?  It’s time to dust off the spider webs on the mourner’s benches!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today.  Have a blessed day!

VIDEO

Title image Russell Brownworth (own work)  ∞ Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on James 4 see: God's Way --- My Way and Devilitis and the Piano and Shrewd and Harmless

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[1] Read about the Great Awakenings in America

 

To Repent is to Turn

[i]

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away.  Acts 3:19^(NLT)

Everything God did in sending prophets, the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, his miracles, his teaching, his crucifixion, and resurrection, point to this sentence Peter speaks…repent of your sins and turn to God!  This is the theme of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation.

The words “repent” and “turn” are so tied together it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.  Repent (in Greek) means to have a turning in the mind – a change of thought, so as to act differently.  Turn is a Greek compound of two words indicating a conversion from what is to what once was. 

Peter is encouraging the listener to do what is impossible, twist time back to where they left-off their relationship with God.  To “repent” is to come back to God in mind AND actions.

Years ago I saw a cartoon drawing of a young George Washington, head-down in shame, holding his axe, and standing next to the cherry tree he’d just chopped down.  George’s dad was speaking to his young son:  George, I’m glad you can’t tell a lie, but if you don’t stop cutting down these trees there won’t be a cherry left on planet earth.

Repenting is an inward feeling of remorse for having travelled the wrong pathway, but is also accompanied by a change of heart to do right in the future.  It is a turning away from your old life’s direction; it’s like when a soldier does an about-face to turn around 180° to face the other way.  It’s not a dance – it changes the soldier who has been marching East back the other way; he now travels West.

And that is the nature of repentance – a heart and mind change that leads to a change of actions, which eventually reforms the character and habits of the person.

A few centuries ago the church mourner’s bench was a familiar sight; these days it is largely gone with the horse, buggy, and 8-trac tapes.  The bench was a place where newly repentant persons sat in church, as a sign that their heart and mind had changed.  It was there they sat before being allowed to join the church membership, as a testing ground to make certain their conversion process would “take”.

We have seen it over and over in nearly forty years of ministry – a supposed conversion in the emotional moment of revival; the weight of sin is convicting, the Spirit is moving, and an invitation is given by the preacher to come down to the front and be saved.  The next night the new believer is baptized and in three weeks’ time they’re serving on six committees, teaching Sunday School and nominated for the Board of Elders.  Another two months pass, and you wonder why they don’t come to church anymore.

Fact:  Many “conversions” are head and heart genuine, but, as easily as you can repent, or turn…you can also repent again, turn back away from God. 

John Wesley called it backsliding, and it is as real as original sin.

Seasons of revival are necessary for the Christian, and for the church.  Church folk may indeed be saved, but we are far from perfect in our character and actions; we need times of refreshing to turn back to God.

Don’t forget, Peter’s sentence, now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away, was spoken to good church people, leaders of Israel, not the criminals.  They had lost their way…and it led to Christ’s crucifixion.  God help us!

For You Today

When you consider the words repent and turn today, don’t tune them out; take them in!  And…

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today…have a blessed day!

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NOTES

[i] Title Image: By takomabibelot (Repent (National Mall: Washington, DC)), via Wikimedia Commons

Forgiven Witnesses

[1]

Thursday, March 31, 2016

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Then he said, “When I was with you before, I told you that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and in the Psalms must be fulfilled.”  Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.  And he said, “Yes, it was written long ago that the Messiah would suffer and die and rise from the dead on the third day.  It was also written that this message would be proclaimed in the authority of his name to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem: ‘There is forgiveness of sins for all who repent.’  You are witnesses of all these things.   Luke 24:44-48^(NLT)

When Jesus appeared to his disciples after the resurrection, it took a while for some of them to fully grasp that he wasn’t dead.  I can easily imagine the dropped jaws and that doe-in-the-headlights-look on their faces. 

As the two Emmaus travelers were rehearsing their encounter with Jesus he was suddenly just there!  They thought he was a ghost.  Jesus encouraged them to feel with their own hands the places where nails and a spear had pierced him.  And when they’d been assured they weren’t dealing with a ghostly spectre, but the risen Christ, Jesus then began to help them understand the meaning of everything they’d been through since the day they met him.

In teaching them, it all came down to:

‘There is forgiveness of sins for all who repent.’  You are witnesses of all these things.

Luke 24:47b-48^(NLT)

Peter would later preach that exact message:

Now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away.   Acts 3:19^(NLT)

That message hasn’t changed; even today, when sinners repent they are forgiven and become witnesses of the Lord’s love, forgiveness and power.

Throughout the centuries since Jesus’ resurrection and appearance to the disciples, the message hasn’t changed, but it has been blurred at times.  Too often, perhaps in our haste to be released from the penalty of our sins, we slide into accepting forgiveness without genuine repentance.  The evidence of this is the “backslider” – those who have expressed an interest in God, claimed forgiveness, and then live like nothing is changed. 

It makes me wonder if, in our modern era, we did well in doing away with the mourner’s bench.  The “bench,” although a 19^th century addition to church life, is actually a throwback to John the Baptist warning those who came to him for forgiveness, to not put the cart of being forgiven ahead of the horse of repentance.  

Repentance always comes first. 

Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God. 

Matthew 3:8^(NLT)

The bench was a place for seekers to work through their intentions in coming to Christ.  Herschel Hobbs, the great Baptist preacher and speaker on the Baptist Hour for many years was fond of saying:  there’s never been a sin too big for God to forgive, except the unconfessed one.[2]

Now, honestly, I don’t advocate bringing back the mourners bench, because there were abuses by those in power in the church.  Some ministers and church officials used the bench as a shaming tool towards those whom they wanted to control. 

However, we ought not take sin too lightly – and its inherent result which is insulting God’s holiness.  The darkness of our sins should create at least something of a mourner’s caution, if not a public bench; there ought to be solemnity about repentance, which is befitting of that which causes death.  That backdrop of sackcloth and ashes in the one who repents highlights that much more joy when forgiveness births a sinner from death unto life! 

It makes the witness of the resurrection that much more powerful!

For You Today

Did the presence of the living Lord make your jaw drop when you realized your sins could be forgiven?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today…and have a blessed day!

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[1] Title Image: William Blake [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

[2] He said four or five times to an early morning study group at First Baptist Church, Crystal River in 1979