Repentance

My wife has asked me to join her in this blogosphere quest of sharing our one word commitments for the year. For those of you not familiar with this program I invite you to check out http://oneword365.com/ to learn a little more about it.

The one word that I have chosen for myself this year is repentance. I believe that this is an area that a lot of Christians have issues with. I am a youth pastor and have attended events now in which I have watched students ask to be resaved, not realizing that what they really wanted to do was just repent.

Repent means to turn away from sin and turn towards God. What exactly does this mean? I am not entirely sure, but it is definitely something that I am going to dig into and get a handle on. I know that true repentance requires a change, and for some people including myself, that is hard. It is crazy though to know that through repentance we can continue to receive God’s grace and forgiveness.

Therefore I take back my words and repent in dust and ashes. (Job 42:6)

To me that is just powerful. I mean Job had been put through the ringer. He had lost just about everything in his life and still never once cursed God. He was mad at God, and wanted to tell Him that, but he never cursed God. His friends told him time and time again to confess to God and all would be forgiven, but that was not what was needed since Job had done nothing wrong. The one thing he did do though was repent (turn away from sin and towards God). Each time Satan attacked Job; he would turn from the easy answer of cursing God and look to God for advice. Whether that was to express his anger or his happiness, he always turned (repented).

That is what we as Christians should do each and every day. We should live in a state of continuous repentance. God’s word tells us that doing what is good is not of our sinful nature; therefore we should be in this state of repentance.

There is no one who does what is good, not even one. (Romans 3:12)  

 

Greg

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Should the Truth be Sacrificed for Feelings

So I was kind of excited last night. I got my new text books in for next semesters classes. I am taking another youth ministry class and I am excited to see what I will be learning this semester. So I open the box and this one book stands out to me, it’s called Almost Christian and it’s a book based off the results of the National Study of Youth and Religion. So of course I grab this book first and decide I am going to start reading early to prepare for my class. Well I made it all the way to page 15 before I decided it was time to put the book down and start putting my thoughts down on paper. So here we go.

I am going to throw out a very long and confusing name and then I am going to explain it a little. Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. I mean look at that, it just looks like a big bunch of mumbo jumbo. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that there is someone that actually comes up with words like this, but that is for another day. What this long word actually is talking about is the following believe system that is currently being adopted by our younger generations.

1.     A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.

2.     God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and other world religions.

3.     The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4.     God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem.

5.     Good people go to heaven when they die.

Am I the only one who is bothered by this? I read about this and then notice that the author’s are not saying that the youth is to blame for this thought process rather that the congregations themselves are. So that begs me to ask; what exactly are we teaching our children/students today to where this kind of thought about God is even entertained.

What the authors or facilitators of the National Study of Youth and Religion are saying is that a noticeable trend has been to sacrifice and soften the truth of the Gospel in an effort to bring more students/children into the church. I ask you this if you are one who is willing to do this; are you still the church if you soften and/or sacrifice the truth of the Gospel for numbers?

A little while back my pastor presented a message on the salt of the earth. In his message he actually used props in order to present the message and it wasn’t until just now how much I realized that message applied to us. Human nature tells us we don’t enjoy pain and that the truth is indeed painful, therefore we should do everything we can to not present the truth to people so we don’t hurt their feelings. WHAT.

Have we actually gotten to the point nowadays were we are so desperate to tell people about Jesus that we compromise the message. I mean I look at it like this if we are softening or diluting the Gospel in an effort to reach the lost, aren’t we in fact helping them come closer to hell. Not to mention, by diluting the truth of the Gospel how are we glorifying our God? I mean there are just too many variables out there to play with in this realm and subject matter.

I for one will not compromise the truth of the Gospel when I am preaching or teaching to those who need to hear God’s Word. I am not afraid of the truth of the Gospel and what it represents. I will ensure that my students/children understand the truth of the Gospel because I love and respect them that much. I owe that to them. Don’t you?

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. For in it God’s righteousness is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith. (Romans 1:16-17)

 

Greg

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Growing Pains

What can we do to continually impress upon our children/students that doing what is right by God is not just what is right but it is what is necessary? I mean I understand growing pains, believe me I do. But at what point and time do we stop contributing their behavior to our children/students trying to figure out who they are and what boundaries that they can cross.

See for me with what I have learned through my experience in the military is that people, whether kids or adults, will always test you. It is up to the person being tested to put a stop to it and until they do they will never stop being tested. This right now is becoming a reality in my own household with my youngest son, and let me tell you it is driving me insane.

I am not sure where he has learned it but my youngest son has come to the decision that being disrespectful is the cool thing to do. When he first started this months ago we approached the situation as it being just a phase. I mean everyone does it right. We are a good Christian family who have all accepted Christ and been baptized. So each time he would act out I would make sure to point it out to him that he doing things that displease God. I would get angry (because the one thing I cannot stand is disrespect) and treat my children in a way that wasn’t glorifying God; this in turn would upset my wife and make her resent me.

Well one thing that I have learned throughout this process is that my son has no fear of punishment. What I mean by this is that he is not afraid of getting punished for anything because as of late he has not been disciplined when he has done something wrong. This was due to a conscious decision by his mother and me to try and let him work through whatever it was in his little world that was wrong on his own. Let me tell you this much, that was not the right direction to go.

All this came to a head yesterday. He came home and was so happy that he had gotten all A’s from last week’s grades that he was bouncing off the walls with excitement. Now keep in mind he got grounded last week for having bad grades and was grounded until this Friday. Well while I was outside doing his chores, he approached his mother and asked if he could go out and play, and upon being told no he decided that would be the opportune time to show his mother his conduct slip that he received from school. He has been misbehaving and disrespecting his teacher for the last week. Almost to the point to where he gets sent to the principal to get paddled. Well safe to say, last night momma and I took back the power. There is hopefully a little fear back in his heart of consequences for his actions.

I think that we are so busy nowadays trying to make sure that our children/students like us that we forget that we are the adults and that we are not here to be their friends. Instead of getting into that mode where we all of a sudden believe our children/student might think that they know what is good for them, maybe we should just continue to be the adult and make the tough decisions that we sometimes don’t want to make for their well being.

“For God loved the world in this way; He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world that He might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16-17)

See God has already made the tough decisions for us. He has also left His word so we know how to care for our children and ourselves. He has left us directions on what we need to do to teach our children about Him and how to glorify and honor Him. That is what we should be focusing on as adults/parents, setting the proper example for our younger generation to follow. Make the hard choice, God did.

Greg

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