Faith

Links for This Inauguration Day

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Seeing as the incoming president pretty much trademarked the use of the word We, I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon and fire up the ol’ linkage and share the blog love, adding a few personal remarks here and there.

Enjoy!

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Proving once and for all that they are more right than God, World Net Day jumps the shark with a post by their founder that illustrates Christianity at its ugliest. And I say that as an archconservative, born-again Christian. Obviously, in WND’s view, God’s grip on his sovereignty must be slipping, as it seems He’s a little befuddled about this government thing. His word on the issue is a bit too lax as well, ITHO. (Note: The “100 percent at odds” statement is especially braindead. If you need a reason why the prevailing conservatism crashed and burned, this kind of kneejerk thinking is behind it.)

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Sticking with the government theme, “Mish” Shedlock of Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis, the best financial analysis site on the Web, states what should be the obvious in this post. His calls are not only completely correct, they will, sadly, be largely ignored unless taxpayers demand that the powers that be shape up or ship out. My commentary: The difference between great men and cowards is that great men understand they must be the ones who sacrifice first. Cowards make everyone else sacrifice before they do. I’ll leave you to guess what kind of men we have today.

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To add to the above, I have read in a couple different sources that my state, Ohio, has 37-39 percent of its citizens working for a local, city, county, state, or federal government agency. That’s insane.

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If you need anymore proof that believers are fiddling while Rome burns, witness this piece of fluff. It’s this kind of crapola that occupies the minds of Christians rather than the tough issues of life. No wonder we’ve become irrelevant in the U.S. to most people.

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Too little, too late?

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Is it me, or are more and more “About” sections of Christian blogs noting how much the blog authors love to shop, watch TV, play video games, and go to movies? Call me shrill, but those seem like the wrong priorities in this difficult hour.

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“Tales of my demise are greatly exagerrated.”

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An odd thing started happening with this blog recently. In Google,  keyword searches  are landing people on the variable  front page rather than on the specific post page that holds the correct keywords. In the past, the front page was indexed but was not the main source for specific keyword searches. If any of you WordPress/SEO gurus out there can tell me how to restore the proper functionality, let me know. I have no idea what changed.

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David Wayne of Jollyblogger is facing a difficult struggle against metastisized colon cancer. Would you take a few minutes of your time today to lift him up in prayer? Pray for healing. Come before God in expectancy.

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And while you’re praying, pray that our new president will govern rightly. Unlike some, I believe that we Christians are called to support our leaders, even when we disagree with some of their policies. That kind of humility is something that God honors all the time.

Chilling Effect

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Knowledgeable Web denizens know Google’s motto: Do no evil.

Cute, right?

Well, that motto was put to the test when Google opened in China and conformed to the Chinese Communist government’s wish to censor search result. But that’s China. You expect that out of China.

Recently, a site opened here in the States that should bother any sane person. It’s not a Google site per se, but it uses Google’s Map API to a chilling effect.

Witness eightmaps.com.

What eightmaps does is correlate required political donation data to pinpoint the houses and businesses of each person or company that donated money to support Proposition 8 in California. A roadmap to vandalism--or worse...A yes vote on 8 demanded that California enforce the statewide ban on homosexual marriage that voters enacted a few years ago, effectively eliminating the recent localized rulings in favor of such marriage, such as those in San Francisco.

It doesn’t take a genius to extrapolate the message sent by the posting of these names, home and business locations, and donation amounts in such an easily accessed image.  Nor is there any need to ask why these maps only feature donation info for those who voted in favor of Prop 8.

Rather scary, isn’t it?

Regardless of where you stand on Prop 8, the reality is that many Prop 8 supporters are Christians. As I cruised through eightmaps.com, I could envision the maps becoming the names and locations of people who preach such wacky truths like “the Bible is true,”  “Jesus is the only way to heaven,” and “unless you repent of your sins and turn to Jesus, you will be eternally separated from God and cast into hell.” You know, hatemongering. Or at least that’s what the kiddies call it nowadays.

Think how easily the inhabitants of two ancient towns (no longer on the map, by the way) could have tracked down the house of that Lot fella if they had a cool tool like eightmaps, powered by Google. Do no evil, indeed.

Get ready people, the persecution is coming. Perhaps sooner than we think.

My Hope & Prayer for 2009

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I opened 2008 with a post that laid out what I thought was the key for the Church for the year: listening to the Holy Spirit. If anything, 2008 proved without a shadow of a doubt that the American Church went deaf.

Last year saw the financial meltdown and the Lakeland “revival.” Do I need to say more? Okay, I do. Preparedness for the financial meltdown: zero. Was anyone listening to the Holy Spirit on this? Among charismatics, the Lakeland thing was all the rage, but it turned out to be charismania cranked to the nth degree. For a group of people who claim to be hearing the Holy Spirit, charismatics crashed and burned concerning Lakeland. Hugely. Sadly, so did a lot of noncharismatics.

How long are our churches in America going to wander through life with closed eyes and plugged ears?

God, please let us better know your heart in 2009. Please help us to read the times and know how we should live, not as the pagans do in chaos and fear, but as a people directed by You, with your purposes as our own.

As much as we still need to do a better job listening to the Holy Spirit, I believe another issue has taken on new urgency. It seems to me to be an issue that I cannot escape, as it has truly consumed my thoughts the last few months. For 2009, I am convinced that the word of the Lord to the churches is this:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
—Matthew 28:18-20

Given what I’ve written here over the years about preparing for a financial meltdown and the need for proper discernment, you can imagine how I feel about 2008.

But 2009 can’t be a replay of 2008. If we didn’t listen to the Holy Spirit as we should have last year, we absolutely must get serious about evangelism and training converts to Christianity in the truths of Christ.

My confession? I’m terrible at evangelism. I wish I didn’t have to think about evangelism. Training and challenging people who are already Christians is something I feel I do naturally. But evangelism is different. I don’t think about it enough. I don’t worry enough about the souls of the lost. Evangelism doesn’t chart on my list of daily activities. My burden for people who don’t know God is light at best.

That needs to change in my life. And I’ll be bold enough to say that it probably needs to change in yours, too.

Some of you may claim I inhabit a dream world, but given the number of professed Christians who live in this country, how long should you or I go without a stranger engaging us randomly to discuss Jesus? Getting the message outA week? A month, perhaps?

In my own life, I would say that it may be pushing 15 to 20 years since a stranger last approached me and started a conversation about Jesus. Now I would like to think that this lack is because the aroma of Christ is so strong on me that fellow Christians who are strangers are keen enough to sense that aroma and therefore can bypass talking with me because I’m already saved.

That’s what I would like to think. But I know better. Fact is that too many of us rely on someone else to do the witnessing for us. The upshot is that hardly anyone is doing the work. That unnerves me. It tells me that we don’t care about the eternal destiny of lost people.

Some of us out there can at a moment’s notice preach a thousand words on our pet theological topic(s). But if we can’t articulate a decent presentation of the Gospel to a lost person and follow it up, we’ve got the wrong priorities.

I pray that 2009 sees those priorities changed in the American Church. They’re going to change with me, so help me God.