Tearing Down Idols
October 20, 2003
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Uncategorized Feedback : 2 comments
We need a new vision.
If God is going to shake up his people, it has to happen inside the Church.
Recently, God has shown me that whenever a righteous king took over the thrones of Israel and Judah, two things happened:
1. The heathen idols and temples were torn down.
2. The broken-down things of God were raised up again.
I think that the Church in America has to start tearing down idols and getting back to the “main and the plain” in living out Christ’s life as believers in the 21st Century.
I believe there are a few idols that must immediately go:
1. Psychology
Psychology and Christianity are worldviews. Each has its own set of knowledge and practice. Both attempt to explain how people live. Only one leads to salvation.
Psychology attempts to build up the Self. Christianity deems the Self utterly corrupt and worthy only of death. This is the whole point of the cross. When a person comes to Christ, he crucifies the Self and let’s the Lord give him a new Self, a justified Self, a heavenly Self.
Disciples of modern psychology have overrun the Church, bringing us to a point where psychological theories have equal weight with Scripture. Our sermons are inundated with this syncretistic nonsense.
Transactional Analysis, the Human Potential Movement, B.F. Skinner, Carl Jung - we don’t need that so-called wisdom. We need Jesus. Please pastors, give us a revelation of Jesus! If knowing Jesus is eternal life itself, why are we getting so much Henry Cloud and so little Jesus Christ?
2. Cultural Relevancy
When the Spirit of God departs the temple, we compensate by saying, “Wow! Look at all the fancy gold things in here!”
Our churches have compensated for a lack of true, Spirit-filled preaching, worship, and community by shifting everything to be “culturally relevant”, hoping that by being as hip as the world, no one will notice what is missing.
Instead of being the counter-cultural people that will be hated by popular culture, we have assimilated that debased culture so effectively that we no longer have anything to say to the lost. We look just like what we are supposed to flee.
3. Seeker-Sensitivity
Here is a simple translation of “Seeker Sensitivity” - take the Gospel and remove the difficult parts (like the cross), promote a Jesus that asks nothing of anyone, mix in a man-centered “theology,” some sort of media overload, topical preaching based on tidbits of Bible verses taken from a hundred different translations, and messages that are three points and a conclusion (because we all know that is how the Spirit speaks.)
What you wind up getting is a “seeker” who never really gets a chance to meet the real Jesus, never understands the Bible, never learns how to let the Spirit lead, and never comes to the cross. In short, there is good reason to believe that this seeker, when he/she makes a profession of faith, perhaps is not putting their faith in Jesus, but in some manmade, syncretistic illusion of Jesus. Perhaps we are making them far more a child of Hell than they were when they walked into the church building.
The best way to be seeker-sensitive is to preach the full Gospel and not try to make it palatable. If we truly believe that the Spirit guides into all truth, then we must rely on the Spirit to work in the life of the seeker and not second-guess the Spirit’s ability to truly work conversion. The best way to be seeker-sensitive is to be utterly counter-cultural and let seekers see that we are the peculiar people, people who have rejected the debauched culture of our day and taken on a new culture: that of the Lord of All.
We now believe that it is about numbers and not real conversion or else we would be more willing to let people walk away. Not everyone will make it. We need to try to reach everyone, but compromising our message should not be the way to attempt this.
Next time, we’ll talk about raising up the broken-down things of God.
No tag for this post.
Where did Dan go?
October 15, 2003
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Announcements Feedback : add a comment
For those of you wondering where I went and why I have not posted for a while, I’ve been sucked into TheOoze website. Lots of ideas going on there, some good, some bad.
I’m up to my neck in writing assignments and will shortly post a summation of where I will be going with Cerulean Sanctum. My goal is to find ways for us to explore how to get the Church in this country back on track spiritually. I believe that the “old ways” might be made new again if we simply listen to the Spirit and hold fast to the Scriptures. Making that happen is going to be a struggle, though. I’m hoping we can work together.
Trust me. I’ll get the basic gist up soon!
No tag for this post.
The Backstory Behind Cerulean Sanctum
October 4, 2003
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Announcements, Blogging Feedback : add a comment
Back in April 2003, I was in church worshipping and had an experience in which I was overwhelmed by the fact that many people were worshipping a god of their own creation, not truly knowing God to worship Him in Spirit and in truth.
I was staggered and had to sit down. This was in the midst of 3,000 worshippers.
I went home and could not think. But even as I lay there, I finally realized that what I had heard was true. As I examined my own heart by the light of the Spirit over the last few months, I realized that I was one of those people.
How can it be that I really don’t know the Lord? I gave my life to Christ twenty-six years ago on a cold, starry February night in the chill air of a Christian camp in Ohio. I’ve prayed, ministered in dozens of ministries, been baptized with the Holy Spirit (ironically at the same camp in a February years later), pursued a degree in Christian Ed, and certainly influenced lives in a number of places.
Truth is, over the years I was lulled to sleep. Much of that is my own fault, but I also believe that some of that fault rests with what is happening to American Christianity. We are falling asleep or abandoning the Truth altogether at an ever-increasing rate.
I’ve talked to others since that time and I am appalled by what people are telling me about what is going on in their Christian walk. More and more dedicated Christians are revealing to me that they really don’t know the Lord, either.
Now this is not a matter of salvation - at least I don’t believe it is in most cases - but it says how easily we have let the world consume us with its vacuous thrills and empty promises.
How many of us spend the hours a day needed in order to really know God? Is a half hour quiet time going to get us all that much closer to knowing the deep things of the Infinite One? How much of the Bible do I have memorized? If it really is so transforming, why have I not memorized it from cover to cover? We’ve held on to things that don�t matter and forsaken the eternal in favor of perishing things. We all know what they are, so I don’t have to state them all here.
I hope to think that like Paul, the scales are falling from my eyes and I am seeing the depths of how far we have fallen.
Through all this, I have realized that effort is needed and have been girding my own loins, so to speak. I hope to discuss all this here in days to come, but the point still remains that if we as the Church want to live out our calling we cannot let this continue.
Long ago, God called me to be a Barnabas that raised up Pauls. Perhaps now is the time for that to kick into high gear.
Do you really know Christ? Do you settle for tiny fragments of Him even though the fullness of His life can be lived in yours? Have you really died to this world at the foot of the cross? Are the sick healed when you lay hands on them? When you minister, do you get the feeling that it is mostly your own effort rather than the Spirit moving in power through you?
Good. Keep on asking those questions and let yourself be disturbed by the answers.
Then let�s do something about it.
No tag for this post.
Why the need for Cerulean Sanctum?
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Best of Cerulean Sanctum, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Godly Character Feedback : 1 comment so far
Every day, throughout the world, children wake up to abuse. A drunken father beats his five year old son - just because. A drug-addicted mother fails to feed her toddler, using the little money she has to buy drugs instead of food. An uncle sexually molests his retarded niece. A hearing-impaired boy is beaten senseless by a school bully.
Does this make you angry? Does it make you want to do something? Do you love those children?
Me? I love the Church. I love the people of God who want to know Him, who want to behold Him with unveiled faces. And I believe that in many ways the Church is being abused by people who want to drive it into the ground. People who are only after acclaim. People who love error and hate the Truth. And even those people who simply don't know any better.
Aren't we all meeting people who are thinking, "No church for me please, it's too screwed up" or "not right" or "not meeting my needs" or "not showing me God" or any of the myriad reasons why people are out there trying to "re-image" the Church?
Why would anyone want to do that if the Church is truly being the Church?
I don't want the sickly Christianity that I see so many preaching today. This pop-psych, powerless, hopeless, error-ridden thing we are preaching is not right.
When your shadow falls on the lame do they get up and walk? Is God more real to you than your own life? Have you hidden the Word of God deep in your being? Do you go to bed at night thinking, "I can't wait to wake so I can spend more time with Christ in prayer?"
Where is the Church that turns the world upside down? That confronts injustice? That tears down strongholds? That goes to the lost and says, "We know the way out of the darkness and we will do everything possible by the grace of God to help you out of that darkness."
Ironically enough, I'm listening to a jukebox of several hundred Christian music MP3s and guess what randomly started playing when I was typing the last couple paragraphs? Keith Green's "Asleep in the Light":
Do you see, do you see, all the people sinking down,
Don't you care, don't you care, are you gonna let them drown,
How can you be so numb, not to care if they come,
You close your eyes and pretend the job's done.Oh Bless me Lord, bless me Lord, you know it's all I ever hear,
No one aches, no one hurts, no one even sheds one tear,
But He cries, He weeps, He bleeds, and He cares for your needs,
And you just lay back and keep soaking it in, oh, can't you see it's such sin?Cause He brings people to your door,
And you turn them away, as you smile and say,
God bless you, be at peace, and all Heaven just weeps,
Cause Jesus came to your door, you've left Him out on the streets.Open up, open up, and give yourself away,
You've seen the need, you hear the cry, so how can you delay,
God's calling and you're the one, but like Jonah you run,
He's told you to speak, but you keep holding it in,
Oh, can't you see it's such sin?The world is sleeping in the dark,
That the church can't fight, cause it's asleep in the light,
How can you be so dead, when you've been so well fed,
Jesus rose from the grave, and you, you can't even get out of bed,
Oh, Jesus rose from the dead, come on, get out of your bed.How can you be so numb, not to care if they come,
You close your eyes and pretend the job's done,
You close your eyes and pretend the job's done,
Don't close your eyes, don't pretend the job's done.
Come away, come away, come away with Me, My love,
Come away, from this mess, come away with Me, My love.
We're wrapped up in technique and we're "Purpose-Driven." We're conferenced, seminar-ed, and meeting-ed to death. We have all the talk in the world and yet there is no revival. I don't think anyone here can take a look at the Book of Acts and say the Church today resembles what we see written in those pages. Why not???
I have a zeal for the Church. I want the Bride of Christ to be strong, beautiful, unblemished and holy. I hope to think the anger I am said to have is a righteous and holy anger at seeing that Bride reduced to being less than she can be.
Some say the Church of the 21st Century is apostate. That may be true, but I am going to see what I can do to make certain that is not the case. I may be a fool, but I will God's fool, because I believe Him and because I believe He can do more if we simply abandon everything for Him. The man who sold all he had to buy the Pearl of Great Price did so because he knew the unparalleled treasure he held in his hand.
If you want to join me, please do.
Tags: Best of Cerulean Sanctum, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Godly Character
Posts
Comments
