Obedience

Driving a Stake Through the Heart of “Christian” Nihilism

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Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.”
—Mark 10:27

Read that verse again. Now I want to ask a question: Is it true?

If any of us had to think even a split second about the answer, then something’s wrong. If any of us pondered for the briefest of moments a situation too impossible, then something’s wrong.

I can tell you with a straight face that something’s wrong with us American Christians. Winston Churchill said it...And that something is that we do not believe in our heart of hearts that all things are possible with God.

Frankly, I’m sick of fellow believers telling me what is and what is not possible. I’ve had it with Christians telling me, “Well, that’s just the way it is.”

If anything is “just the way it is,” then it’s that way because you and I don’t have faith. Period.

Folks, there’s a heckuva lot of nihilism out there masked as “practical” Christianity. Plenty of “mature Christians” will attempt to calm you down when you see something wrong and start asking why Christians in whom the Living God of the Universe dwells can’t tackle that thing and make it right.

Does anyone here think the Apostle Paul looked at Rome and said, “I think I’ll go someplace easier to evangelize”–anyone?

Look, all this naysaying talk comes down to one thing: unbelief.

One of my favorite quotes by the late revivalist Leonard Ravenhill went something like this:

One of these days, someone’s going to open this Bible, read it, and truly believe it, and then we’re all going to be ashamed.

I get a little fed up with people calling me a utopian. You know what I am? I’m someone who believes that nothing is impossible with God. I plead the same w0rds as the three Hebrews:

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”
—Daniel 3:16-18

Even if He doesn’t, I’m still believing that He will. Because nothing is impossible for Him. And I simply will not bend my knee to another idol of unbelief. Our churches in America are filled to the rafters with that idol, and I’m sick of encountering it everywhere I look.

This world is filled with far too many people who say_____________ can’t be done. Considering the times we live in, we Christians simply cannot fall in with that crowd. Yet how easy it is to do:

We may believe that God can save a hardened old curmudgeon of a sinner,  yet we resign ourselves to thinking that He can’t heal someone of cancer.

We may believe that God worked in the lives of the patriarchs, yet we resign ourselves to thinking that He can’t work in our lives today.

We may believe that God can lead a nation of people through the parted waters of a sea,  yet we resign ourselves to thinking that He can’t fix a broken socio-economic system.

We may believe that God came in the flesh and fed five thousand with a handful of loaves and fish, yet we resign ourselves to thinking that He may not come through with our daily bread.

I don’t want to hear what God can’t do coming off the lips of anyone who claims to be a Christian.

My God can do anything. Why can’t yours?

Not-So-Good Samaritans

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Driving to church Sunday morning at 8:15 a.m., I spotted a man walking on the other side of the divided highway. Having never seen a pedestrian on our highway in nearly eight years of living in the area, I found him incongruous. He wore casual business clothes, something out of a Dockers ad, and had a nice outdoor jacket with the collar turned up. He looked about 40, with that quintessential “used to be an athlete, but now gone to mush” body type. Heading into the rising sun, he kept his eyes straight ahead, content to seer his retinas.

Of course, I looked for the broken-down car, but there wasn’t one. Nor was he in an area that had many houses or destinations nearby.

He was just out of place.

And I had places to go.

I soon reached the horizon point for assistance and crossed over into that land of questions and regret. When I prayed for insight into the man’s disposition, the image I got in my head was of him walking for miles until he came to a lake, whereupon he continued his stroll and let the waters come up over his head until there was nothing left of him to see.

Barring the truth that I had been up too late the night before, plus being useless for anything before 10 a.m., I didn’t give the image much thought. But then the message at church touched on the desperation many Americans feel right now, and the image of the man walking into the lake jarred me.

Driving home, the parable of the Good Samaritan popped into my head. What got me was the idea that the man left beaten by robbers bore contusions that marked him as a victim of violence. His wounds cried out. A quick visual would tell anyone that this was someone in dire need of medical attention.

But what of the people who have been mugged by life, whose bruises are internal, on the soul, the psyche, who have been beaten up by simply existing? Walking into the waters...They look normal on the outside, but on the inside they are hemorrhaging emotionally. Because we can’t see the wounds, we think everything is peachy with them—until one day they get up, put on a nice pair of slacks with coordinating shirt, tell the wife they’re going to clear their head by taking a morning constitutional, turn up their jacket collar against the world, gently close the door behind them, and proceed to walk into dark, chill waters.

I don’t think we have ever had the opportunity in our lifetimes (speaking of those under 50) to reach out to desperate people in search of greater meaning than we do now. If I were a leader in a large Protestant denomination or parachurch ministry, I’d have someone shooting a commercial to air on TV at every opportunity that says, Each of us has a story.  We will listen to yours and help you write a better ending. Because Jesus cares, we care, too. Your story matters to us.

I think millions of people out there are dying for someone, anyone, to care. Listening has never been a great strength of modern Christians, but I’m convinced that we have got to get better at doing it. Not offering advice, not quoting Romans 8:28 at people, but just listening. The need for this kind of ministry has never been greater.

But it takes time. It means laying down your life, not in a “bloody martydom” sort of way, but laying down schedules and busyness. Because taking the time to listen takes…well, time. It takes commitment to listen to someone who is hurting. Sure, we may take time for people laid up in the hospital after being in a physical car wreck, but what time are we willing to give to people who have been in a mental one?

Some of us long for opportunities to be Good Samaritans, yet we ignore this vital, vital means to bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted. It’s not as flashy. Nor is it over quickly. But God knows it’s never been more needed.

Epic Fail, Epic Win

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In the lexicon of the English language, failure may no longer be an option.

Instead, we English-speakers bring you fail. Not as to fail, but simply fail. (If you aren’t tracking with this, Slate has a fine article explaining this latest twist in the mother tongue.)

Of course, being the the lovers of the extreme that we Americans are, fail is itself a fail unless we can find a way to magnify it. This becomes epic fail. And because all extreme language needs its counter, we have coined the term epic win.

The landing of US Airways Flight 1549 is an epic win.

An epic fail? Think Jan. 22, 1973.

Yes, Roe v. Wade was an epic fail for Christians in this country.

Asleep at the wheel. Knocked out. Comatose. Guard dropped. You name it, the Church of the early 1970s didn’t react to what was happening under its nose. Didn’t stick to the game plan. Didn’t get it. So we got Roe v. Wade and millions upon millions of barbarically destroyed human lives. An entire generation of people culled. Epic, epic fail.

You witness a lot of handwringing over Roe today. What wasn’t big news leading up to that day in January 1973 is now. With a new president who believes Roe was an epic win, Christians are even more alarmed about the course of our country and its attitudes toward abortion. Many frantic calls will emanate from pulpits and burn up the Christian radio and TV airwaves. We will hear a million outlines for courses of action which we have all been hearing for decades.You can almost recite them by heart.

In the language of fail, let’s look at those familiar calls to action:

Voting Republican – FAIL

The Republican Party has done next to nothing to end abortion even though the rhetoric of the party reeks of pro-life talk. But talk is cheap. As long as Christians keep devoting their time and energy to this do-nothing party of talk, we will not end abortion.

Supporting Pro-life Candidates – FAIL

See above. Candidates are often very vocal about their pro-life sentiments. Funny how we hear about this incessantly come election time, then all goes quiet immediately afterwards.

Demonstrating/Protesting – FAIL

I demonstrated with Operation Rescue. I was on the frontlines of protesting at abortion clinics. Another anti-abortion tactic fail...Yes, there were small victories when a child was saved once in a while. But the scale gained is not the scale that will save this country from judgment.

Educating – FAIL

We can show pregnant women pictures of aborted fetuses. We can fire up the 3D sonograms. We can talk and talk and talk about the horrors of abortion. Yet 36 years of pro-life education has given us one thing: the surety of more than a million babies aborted in 2009.

Praying – FAIL

Prayer a fail? How is that possible? How can God not honor our prayer to see abortion end?

Prayer fails under one critical condition. If I am outside on a bitterly cold day and I encounter a destitute man rubbing his chilled hands together while mine remain snug and warm inside my gloves, do I need to pray about what my course of action should be? Haven’t the Scriptures informed my direction? Isn’t the Spirit in me telling me what to do? What is the point of me praying, “God, I really need to know what to do about this man and his cold hands. If it be thy will, let him come over to me and strike up a conversation. Then I will know that I need to do something”? Do I need to pray this? No, I don’t. I need to do what the Spirit and the Word, both of which I claim to know, have already told me to do.

When we use prayer as a means to look spiritual while failing to do what God wills of us, prayer is a fail. Disobedience does not move the heart of God toward us. What should we expect from God when we know what to do but do not do it?

And there is one enormous thing we are refusing to do even though we know we must do it.

This brings us to the most epic fail of them all. It’s an epic fail larger than Roe v. Wade. A million Roe v. Wades combined could not be as epic as this fail. And it is this epic fail that explains entirely the epic fail of the American Church when it comes to abortion.

Making disciples – EPIC FAIL

In the early 1960s, the Church in America abandoned its primary mission to make disciples in the name of Jesus. We got sidetracked into culture wars, fighting the commies, worrying about hippies, looking at every threat in the world while ignoring the fact that lost people were remaining lost because we forgot what we were supposed to be about. I believe that’s the main reason why abortion became the law of the land.

If we have tried every other means to stop abortion in America and nothing has worked, the simple reason comes down to this: When a nation is filled with people who have not been born again, that nation will not honor righteousness.

That is the American Church’s epic fail. We simply stopped making disciples.

Want an epic win and an end to Roe? Make disciples. If every Christian in this country committed to actively sharing Christ with a half dozen lost people this year, just one every two months, I think we would begin to see change. If we stopped toying around with discipleship and got serious about raising up the next God-fearing  generation within our very own churches, we would see change. We would know that epic win that we have craved for 36 years if we dropped all the other skubalon that has distracted us and focused on our primary mission of making disciples.

Because a nation of people filled with the Spirit would have no need for abortion and would abolish it in a heartbeat.