Category: Pastor Tim’s Blog

We are to live lives of holiness. ‘BE HOLY AS I AM HOLY” SAYS THE LORD.  WE are to live in the world….surrounded by our culture; caring about the issues that the world cares about, even understanding the culture. However the Bible qualifies that kind of contextual lifestyle of cultural immersion by warning that we are not to become like the world. “Come out from among them and be separate says the Lord…and touch not the unclean thing.” That’s the balancing act.  HOW do we walk the very thin tightrope of living in a pagan, idolatrous, God-denying culture and balance our testimony, our credibility, and our profession of faith without, borrowing a phrase from Kevin DeYoung, punching a “hole in our holiness?”

WE LIVE OUT our faith and our testimony, our conviction and our commitment the same way we would eat an elephant: One bite at a time.

The question becomes, not “can you live the rest of your life in holiness and righteousness?” but “can you make this next decision before you in a way that is God-honoring, Christ exalting, and Biblically faithful? It is God’s promise to give us the strength to overcome if we ask.

The challenges to living out our faith are becoming more and more difficult in this world.  Even Christian people who should be living in the trenches with us are abandoning their posts.

But the call is to stand fast….one battle at a time…one blow at a time…one temptation at a time.

And one day, and that day is coming….

The elephant will be gone.

This Valentine’s Day a bombshell movie is going to drop into the consciousness of our culture.  Fandango has already called it the fastest selling advance ticket movie in their history.  Anticipation abounds as fans await the release of the movie version of EL James’ book “Fifty Shades of Grey.”  (Ironically, the name “Grey” in the title is spelled after the name of the book’s main character.  The double reference, however, is to the morally “gray” areas of what the book is really about).

But should Christ followers watch it or even read the book?  This has become the controversial question swirling around what is now a cultural phenomenon, even before the release of the movie Valentine’s Day weekend.  Is it appropriate for Christians to use, read, or view video erotica?

The UK has already banned children from seeing the movie (at least in theaters).  While I wish the same would be done in the US, we are not going to see that.  But then, the pros and cons of legislating morality versus freedom of expression is not my intent here.

I want to ask the question over the next few blogs, what does Christian morality look like?  How much of the world do we imbibe before we are washed out into “a whiter shade of gray?”  What does it mean, practically, to stand before the world as blood-washed, forgiven, transformed people of God?  Does Christian distinction mean we have to live prudish, condescending, isolationist, and judgmental lives of holiness or is there “wiggle room” in our position?

Several texts inform our stand in relationship to the culture around us:
“Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”  (James 4:4b)

“Do not love the world or anything in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (1 John 2:15)

“For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from immorality.”  (1 Thessalonians 4:3)

Each of these texts have something in common with us today:  They were all written to Christians living in sexually saturated, seductive, and immoral cultures.  It is clear from each of these texts that the expectation of Scripture is that it is both possible and expected that we live differently than the world around us.  And that this specifically works itself out in how we handle sexuality.

Here is one of the main reasons I would advise you not see this movie:  The movie will not be over when it’s over.  It will remain with you  (multiplied millions of dollars have been spent already to insure that).  The images, concepts, and ideas will be sugar coated, airbrushed, and placed in an attractive, appealing, and oh-so-innocent seeming context.  And they won’t leave you for a very long time.

In reality, they are not innocent.  And they are not ok.  It is not “gray.”
Spiritually….. they’re just black.

Grow up.  How many times have we told our children that, or heard it ourselves (maybe from our spouse)?  Growing up is a spiritual reality for the normal  Christian life. The omega point-the end game, if you would-is maturing into Christ-likeness in our attitudes, our worldview, and our personal relationships.  It involves how we are relating to God, as well as to others.  Are you growing up?

One sage advised that spiritual growth can be evaluated by using these diagnostic questions:

1)  Am I less likely to become disappointed?
2)  Am I less likely to become impatient?
3)  Am I less likely to become embittered?

•  Are we likely to become disappointed when life does not work out like we’d planned or like we would want it to?  If so, we are disappointed with God.  Our spiritual growth sags when this happens.  If we really believed “all things are working together for the good,” (note:  not necessarily OUR good) then we will be less likely to become disappointed.  This is a measurement of HOPE.

•  Are we likely to become impatient?  Now I don’t think this means we don’t become impatient and sometimes irritated with others, though there is some of that implied in this word.  I think this means we are becoming more patient with OURSELVES.  This is a measurement of FAITH.  Do we have faith that God is at work shaping us into the image of Christ?

• Are we likely to become embittered?  This has to do with how we react in relationship to others.  Do the actions, attitudes, and decisions of others tend to leave us bitter?  Do we hold on to grudges (pronounced “grrrrrr-udges”) when others cross us or fail us?  This is finally a measurement of our LOVE.

In short, are you growing up?  Are these things becoming less characteristic of life as we grow in the “grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ?  They should if we are really “growing up” in Jesus.

“For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they will keep you from becoming useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  (2 Peter 1:8 HCSB)

Recently I received a note from David Clippard of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.  In this note David told of a tragic story that took place earlier this fall in Northern Iraq.  The family, headed by a single mother named Faithful, was warned by IS insurgents that they must leave their home and village since they refused to convert to Islam.  Faithful refused to do so, and several days later while she was away the insurgents returned, poured gasoline throughout their home and covered her 23 year old daughter, Rita, with gasoline as well.  They then set the home and her daughter on fire.  Faithful returned home to her daughter’s screams, and the screams of her younger daughter who was trapped in a back room.  The fire was extinguished, but Rita was badly burned over her face and most of her body.  The next days were filled with constant stays at a local hospital as Faithful applied lotion to her daughter’s badly burned body.  Unfortunately, the burns were so bad that Rita could not recover.  Just before she died, she looked at her mother and said, “You have to forgive them, Mother.  Please forgive them.”

We cannot imagine the horror of such circumstances, but people around the world live through this and sometimes worse.  Because of your gifts and generosity through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering this year, you gave our missionaries on the field resources to minister to this bereaved mother and to help relocate this displaced and terrorized family.

Thank you for always making a difference by giving generously.  Your dollars are transformed into Jesus’ love and touch, pouring a salve on the wounds of the world, and preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ into the darkest places on the planet.

The sacrificial generosity you gave mattered.

It always does.

James E. White’s blog Church and Culture carried an insightful article on the trending hashtag  #jesuischarlie…. “I am Charlie.”  Those who post on this hashtag show their solidarity with the victims of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris last week.  The march in Paris over the past weekend has shown not only Paris, but the world of the determination of people to have freedom in the press and freedom of expression.

That is, unless your freedom has to do with expressing your Christian moral values.  Ask fired Georgia fire chief Kelvin Cochran.  His “freedom of expression” in a personal book expressing his Christian viewpoint that marriage was to be between a man and a woman cost him his position.

#jesuisCharlie?  Not in Atlanta, Georgia.

It’s interesting that a paper like Charlie Hebdo, whose satirical writing and cartoon illustrations critique Islam and other targets, expects the free world to protect their freedom to lampoon and criticize religion and politics, culture and government, church and state.  And the world should.  Yet the same people turn a deaf ear and blind eye to the freedom of expression violated in the United States of America when a person expresses a viewpoint not held to be politically correct.  Where is the outcry?

Where are the protests?

#jesuisCharlie?  I don’t think so.

Selective freedom is not freedom.  It is editorial censorship….certainly not what our founders had in mind when this freedom was afforded the people of the United States. Freedom isn’t freedom when one person’s liberty is limited by another.  That’s what is at stake in Paris, France.  I hope they win the battle.

But maybe the #hashtag in America should be changed….

#IamKelvin,too

The most familiar song of the past 12 months is from the Disney film “Frozen”.  Very few parents or grandparents of young children have escaped the refrain sung by the heroine of the movie: “Let It Go, let it go….”  As I write this column a news report I am overhearing features the singer of the song, Jennifer Lee, having to apologize to parents who have been driven crazy by the song! But maybe there’s a reminder:

Regrets in 2014?  Promises made but not kept?  Weight loss committed but not done?

Let It Go!

Grudges held against another?

Let It Go!

Goals set but not kept?

Let It Go!

That’s what Paul did.  “…but this one thing I do; forgetting those things that lie behind I press on to the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus…” (Philippians 3:13-14)

Paul let it go.

In Christ, so can you.

“When the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman…..”  (Galatians 4:4)

How is “the fullness of time” determined?  Ultimately we can never know the formula God used to determine when “the right time,” or “the fullness of time,” or “the perfect moment” came for Christ to be “sent forth.”  We can, however, discern some remarkable things that were happening in the hour of Christ’s birth:

• The Dispersion of the Jews.  The Jewish people by now had, due to persecution, military conflict, and an evangelistic zeal among some of them, moved to most parts of the known Roman world of that day.  The first thing they did when establishing a colony was to build a synagogue where Torah and Law could be taught.  These were the birthplaces of some of the earliest Christian teaching with ready-made public platforms.
• The Protection of the Jews.  For the first seventy years following the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, the Christian faith (“The Way”) did not exist as a “stand alone” religion but instead was considered legally a sect of Judaism under Roman Law.  Because of their inability to break the Jews by making them worship Caesar as every other religion under Rome was forced to do, they granted an exemption to this idolatrous act.  Christianity was protected under that same principle of law.

  The Culture of the World.  The culture of that day had been overtaken by Greece.  While the Romans conquered the world militarily and enforced the rule of law of the people conquered, Greece captured the hearts and minds of the people.  Koine Greek was spoken almost everywhere by nearly every person.  It was in that common (koine) language that the New Testament was first written.

• The Peace of Rome.  Christ was born into a world no longer at war.  Rome had conquered the world.  This left thousands of unemployed soldiers looking for work….and they were hired by Rome as “security guards” to build and protect the intricate highway system that interconnected the empire.  Early Christians could travel safely on these roads and even the waterways courtesy of the “pax Romana…” The peace of Rome.

These factors alone made this “the right time;” the FULLNESS OF TIME for God to send forth His Son into the world….to redeem those who were under the law.  The early church thrived in this environment socially, culturally, politically, and philosophically.   It was, indeed, a time of the Father’s choosing.

The “fullness of time.”