Forever Friends - An Eternal Connection

   

Time never changes a Christian friendship

 Glenn and I have been Christians for 42 years now.  Our journey began, in earnest, on the campus of The Ohio State University where we had an appointment with God through the ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ.  Three months later, we were married.  Not only has this been an adventure in growing in the Lord, but along the way, we have made forever friends.  Though we are miles apart and years removed from daily contact, we are not at all strangers because we share a common bond - the love of the Lord Jesus Christ.
     With the advent of Facebook, I eagerly signed up to keep in touch with our children and be able to see pictures of our grandchildren.  The bonus has come with the ability to connect with high school friends, find out what is happening in my home town, connect with family I have not seen in a while and once again, to fellowship long distance with those we met in various churches whom we have not seen for a long time.  I am amazed that neither time nor distance has diminished our friendship in any way.  Instead, we can encourage one another in the ministries and places where God has led us to be.  I see Facebook as a place to encourage others, share our faith, and pray for one another.  However, at the time when God moved us away from so many of our friends, family and church fellowship, I wondered why Lord?
     In the Book of Acts, the Apostle Peter boldly proclaimed the Gospel to the assembled Jews who had come from other countries to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost (Acts 2).  As a result of his emboldened preaching, 3,000 were added to the church that day.  Those people were to return home changed by the message of salvation they heard.  In turn, they shared their faith.  Then, when Saul of Tarsus began to persecute believers in Jerusalem (Acts 8), many more were scattered.  We read in chapter 8:4:  "Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word."  Among those who left Jerusalem was Phillip who went into Samaria and shared God's Gospel message there.  From there, the Lord led him to Gaza to share the Good News with an Ethopian Eunich.  This man, also, came to the knowledge of his Savior and Lord.
     Of course, we are all familiar with what happened to Saul of Tarsus.  He met the Lord on the road to Damascus and had a mighty encounter with Jesus Christ which turned his life upside down.  This life changing event would lead Paul to become a missionary to the Gentile world and his travels are recorded throughout the book of Acts.
     All of this has been stated to point to one conclusion:  God's plans for our lives may lead us in many different directions but the bond of the Holy Spirit which we share in Christ is eternal.  Therefore, we are what I call "Forever Friends in Christ".  Time, distance, location cannot separate us from the love of Christ nor can it separate us from loving one another in Him.
     I have a dear friend whose family moved away many years ago.  However, we are still in touch and pray for one another.  God is using her mightily in her community as she serves the Lord.  She is a writer, photographer and a blessing.  A couple we met in our church in Ohio now live in Colorado ministering before the Lord and blessing the lives of others as he conducts funeral services and comforts families there.  Our music director and his wife from our church in Ohio now live in another state where he continues to lift the Lord  through music.  The list goes on and on.
     God's purposes are not always known to us and we grieve when a friend moves away.  However, I can say from experience and recent contact with these friends that nothing has changed.  God scattered them for His glory to take His Word to other areas of the world and nation.  Nevertheless, our eternal bond in Christ is the same and we pick up where we left off each time we connect.  Genuine faith in Jesus Christ rises above all obstacles, and one day, we will all be reunited again in heaven before the Face of God.  What a great reunion we will share there!
     Social media often gets a bad rap for being a place to share trivial information.  However, I have found it a place to minister the Gospel, encourage my Christian friends whom I have been able to connect with again and to meet new Christian friends from around the nation and world whom I share common values with that we may glorify the Lord together.
     Perhaps you have had to move away from friends and family as I did.  Or maybe some of your closest Christian friends have moved away.  Take heart.  Remember the Scripture is filled with God relocating His children that others might be reached with the message of the Gospel.  Likewise, do not fear that your friends will forget you.  We are forever friends when Jesus Christ is at the center of our lives and nothing will ever change that.  Be comforted in knowing this!  Selah!

Glitz and Glamor or Quiet and faithful?

     Unless you have been out of the country for a few weeks or do not own a television, it would be hard to miss the news concerning the performance of Miley Cyrus on a music awards program.  Her dance can only be described as lurid and vulgar representing the same kind of lustful moves of a sensual Salome as she performed before Herod Antipas (Mark 6:21-26) which culminated in the execution of John the Baptist.   

The Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC

     Not only does this type of performance demean women and make them into sexual objects, but it also defiles the beauty of the sexual act designed for the marriage bed alone.  How did we come to this type of inappropriate public display of hedonism?  What took a young woman from Hannah Montana at Disney that drew in so many young children to a person who would shamelessly act out on stage?

     Part of the problem is the lure of fame.  Power, popularity, performance, and money have a magnetic attraction which is hard to resist in our sin nature.  We want to be the best, the top in any field of endeavor.  There is nothing wrong with wanting to achieve success.  However, if our motives are wrong, we displace God for the idol of our ambitions.  It all "started in the Garden" as my husband is so fond of saying.

     When Satan came to Eve in the Garden, he did not ask her to rebel against God openly.  Instead,   he merely made suggestions which appealed to her senses and experience.  Of course she objected at first saying that she and Adam were forbidden to eat or they would die.  However, Satan told her with certainty that she would not die but be like God in knowledge.  Now the bait was set.  Who would not want to be like God?  Don't we all want to run our own ship, make our mark, rule our own little kingdom?  This is exactly what the sin nature does, and advertisers and programmers know very well how we respond to the lure of having more and more things.  We want the new car, the big home, the glamor and the glitz and we want to be able to sing at the end of our life as Frank Sinatra did, "I did it my way".  What we fail to comprehend is that all that glitters in this world will one day turn to dust.  There is no happiness in having material success if we do not have inner peace and fulfillment which is found only in Jesus Christ.

     Paul, the Apostle, wrote in his letter to the Thessalonians how we should live as believers in contrast to the picture which the world paints of success.  I Thessalonians 4:1-8,10b-12  reads:  "Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing that you do so more and more.  For you know what instructions we gave to you through the Lord Jesus.  For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.  For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.  Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives His Holy Spirit to you.....But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one."

     As we think about this passage, it should become obvious how this type of lifestyle lives in stark contrast to the glitz and glamor that the world touts as the ultimate experience.  Living a quiet life and honoring God both in our bodies and our conduct brings eternal rewards that are not destroyed by moth or rust.  Jesus calls it "laying up treasures in heaven."  

     This world cannot offer us the joy which Christ alone can give us.  When I see a Miley Cyrus acting out on stage, I pray for her that her eyes will be opened.  There are many like her who are caught up in themselves bound by the chains of sin and the lust of this world.  However, we are given clear guidance from the Bible on how we are to live.  Let us walk closely to the Lord so we, as believers, don't get caught up in the performance mentality of this world and let us humbly pray for those who are caught up in this mindset that God will open their eyes.  May we be instruments in leading others to the throne of grace so they can learn their true worth in Christ.  Selah!

A Hard Look at Relevance

 

 Typically, I do not write book reviews, but I recently read an outstanding, short tome by Os Guinness entitled "Prophetic Untimeliness:  A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance."  This brief 119 page book written in 2003 and published by Baker Books is still available and a worthwhile read for all who love the church.
     For those unacquainted with Os Guinness, he has received his doctorate in sociology from Oxford University in England.  He is the author of numerous books on the culture and the church as well as being a well-known speaker.  He has also written a dead-on critique of the church growth/seeker sensitive movement in his book "Dining with the Devil".  In his own words, he says that he has "interpreted the world for the church and the church for the world."  He is an intellectual for the cause of Christ not unlike William Wilberforce.
     In his book "Prophetic Untimeliness", Os Guinness explores the question, "How on earth have we Christians become so irrelevant when we have tried so hard to be relevant?.....Never have Christians pursued relevance more strenuously; never have Christians been more irrelevant" (pgs. 11,12).  After asking this question, he goes on to explain relevance as "the quality of relating to a matter in hand with pertinence and appropriateness" (pg. 12).  He argues that relevance is at the heart of the Gospel.  There is no message more relevant than sin and salvation.  However, the evangelical church has sought relevance in many other ways instead of focussing on faithfulness to the message of God's Word.  This is where the modern church today is missing out.  We live in a time of the megachurch where methods of growth triumph over the message, and unfortunately, the church is losing its saltiness in our world.
     On page 15, Os Guinness states his thesis:  "By our uncritical pursuit of relevance, we have actually courted irrelevance; by our breathless chase after relevance without a matching commitment to faithfulness, we have become not only unfaithful, but irrelevant; by our determined efforts to redefine ourselves in ways that are more compelling to the modern world than are faithful to Christ, we have lost not only our identity but our authority and our relevance.  Our crying need is to be faithful as well as relevant."  With this grand theme to guide us, he breaks his book into three sections.
     In his first section, he explores our obsession with time and being timely.  The watch we wear or the clock on the wall seem to become "the tool that turned into a tyrant" (pg. 25) shaping our lives and our thinking to become more precise, coordinated and pressurized.  The author goes on to say that with our emphasis on time we tend to look at contemporary things as better than things from the past.  We regard the future as even better than the present.  What he ultimately means is that the newest ideas and trends are better than the old traditions.  Here Guinness makes a good case that true progress does not come from accommodating the culture, but through resisting the culture as C.S. Lewis was often known to say.  In our rush for relevance, we often forfeit wisdom and fail to learn from our past.  Somehow, we think being progressive is far better than being traditional.  As we discard our past, we become prey to the passing fads of culture and become unfit to face the future with faithfulness.
     Part two of his book deals with relevance and he outlines four steps to irrelevance:  Assumption, Abandonment, Adaptation and Assimilation.  He states that the faith-world of great believers John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, William Wilberforce, Hudson Taylor, D.L. Moody, Charles Spurgeon, Oswald Chambers and John Stott are fast disappearing.  He writes:  "In its place a new evangelicalism is arriving in which therapeutic self-concern overshadows knowing God, spirituality displaces theology, end-times escapism crowds out day-to-day discipleship, marketing triumphs over mission, references to opinion polls outweigh reliance on biblical exposition, concerns for power and relevance are more obvious than concern for piety and faithfulness, talk of reinventing the church has replaced prayer for revival, and the characteristic evangelical passion for missionary enterprise is overpowered by the all-consuming drive to sustain the multiple business empires of the booming evangelical subculture.  Many evangelicals are blind to the sea change because they know only the present and have little sense of history, even their own" (pg. 54).  Powerful words that should awaken us to what is happening in the quest for relevance in our modern time.  Evangelicals have lost the most relevant message we have and instead, bowed down to popularity, conformity to culture and being fashionable.
     Finally, in his third section, Os Guinness calls for a people who will stand for the Gospel message and its relevance rather than bowing to what the culture calls relevant.  It is costly, but God has called us out to be a peculiar people in the world but not of the world.  The author tells us that we need to stop worrying about what others think of us and the legacy we will leave.  Guinness warns us:  "Signs are that, unless some drastic rethinking takes place soon, the corruptions in evangelicalism will worsen and show through in theology, not just in practice.  Evangelicals have followed the broader cultural shift from 'religion to spirituality' and in the process have become 'do-it-yourself' in their preferences rather than living under authority; they are increasingly syncretistic rather than exclusive and discriminating" (pg. 98).  To remedy this, the author calls for radical obedience and faithfulness to the message of the Gospel if we truly want to be relevant.  We have the answers for which the world hungers.
     In summary, I cannot recommend this book enough.  It will challenge the thinking of anyone who desires to see the church recapture its relevance through faithfulness to the message we have.  Preaching the truth of God's Word is far more important than trying to be trendy to draw people in.  All too often we let the tail wag the dog by allowing the world to shape the church instead of the church shaping the world.  Let us be a people who will tear down the idol of relevance wherever we see it and speak the truth in love no matter what the cost.  This is our call to prophetic untimeliness for God's glory.  Selah!