Living in a Christian World

^{KJV Ephesians 5:18} …be filled with the Spirit;  ¹⁹ Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;

^{Phillips  Ephesians 5:18} l…let the Spirit stimulate your souls. Express your joy in singing among yourselves psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making music in your hearts for the ears of God!

^{NASB Phil. 4:8} Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

^{Message – Phil 4:8}Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.

The verses above usually receive a fairly specific application. The first, from Ephesians, has to do with allowing the Word of God (in a parallel Colossians passage) and the Spirit of God to overflow from your heart resulting in worship to God, in this case worship that is specifically musical; with the result that Christianity is essentially “a singing faith.”

The second verse from Philippians is usually used in reference to controlling our thought life; controlling what we allow to control us. Both verses have been referenced here at C201 in their primary contexts.

But today I want to think in terms of the everyday lives we live on Monday morning, after weekend services are over and we’re back to work, or school, or raising children. We spend at the very least an hour on Sunday in the “world of church” or “world of faith.” But many people walk out the door when the service ends and find themselves back in a culture situation that afford no opportunity for “psalms and hymns” and makes it hard to think about things which are “pure, lovely and of good repute.”

Their connection with Christian culture vanishes.

Those of us that blog, or work in vocational ministry at a local church or parachurch organization can be thought to represent one end of a continuum which has, at the other end, people who attend a church, but don’t allow the a Christian “seasoning” to permeate their lives throughout the week.

They possibly don’t read a daily devotional either; in print or online, so we’re not speaking to readers here necessarily.

Now having said that I can anticipate two objections.

The first is that we’re supposed to be “in the world” (though “not of it.”) This means that we’re not to spend our week living in the religious bubble or the Evangelical bubble. We’re expected to be out there getting our hands and feet dirty. Our time at worship before God is a type of retreat from the cares of the world, but then we return to the mission field where God has placed each of us.

The second objection would be that Christian culture, such as it exists, is somewhat flawed. ‘Christian’ is not an adjective that can be layered over music, books, radio, movies, web channels, restaurants, video games, etc. Reading Christian blogs — which I do a lot of — doesn’t make me more spiritual.

And yet, it bothers me that despite these valid objections, there are people who choose to almost abdicate from the world of faith for the other 167 hours of the week. They don’t have a preset for the local Christian radio station, they don’t take advantage of the resources available from online ministries, they don’t read any Christian books in the course of a year. Some don’t read their Bibles all week either; whatever reading is done in the worship service constitutes their only direct contact with the God’s Word throughout the week. (No pressure, pastors; right?)

Personally, I could survive a month on a deserted island with just my Bible, but in general, I need help. I am a better person in terms of my interactions with the world at large if I can approach those interactions with the flavor of faith. I need books to keep me thinking on things that are “true… honorable… right…” and I need music to keep me “singing and making melody to the Lord.”

I’m not trying to justify an industry, or several industries, or those industries’ excesses, but I’m saying that I do believe that at their genesis, there was a noble purpose of fanning the flames of faith; fanning the flames of what the Holy Spirit is already doing in our lives and wants to do.

And I’m concerned for people who are missing out on programs, resources, and opportunities that could greatly enhance their relationship with Jesus and their knowledge of God’s ways.

 

 

20 Indicators of your True Idols

Bogdan Kipko was born in Kazakhstan and now serves an assistant pastor in Orange, California, USA.  He blogged this list a week ago.

Before we can eliminate the idols in our life, we must first realize what (who) they are.

We all have idols. We are all idolaters to one degree or another. We all are in need of repentance and restoration. We all are in desperate need to undergo serious spiritual alignment so that our passions are proportionally directed at God and not at a god or gods.

So, how then do we discern what are our idols? How can we become increasingly clear-sighted rather than remaining in their power?

Here are twenty questions that we need to transparently answer in order for our idols to be revealed to us:

1.What do we fear the most?

2.What, if we lost it, would make life not worth living?

3.What controls our mood?

4.What do I respond to with explosive anger or deep despair? 

5.What dominates our relationships?

6.What do we dream about when our mind is on idle-mode?

7.To what do our thoughts effortlessly drift towards?    

8.What do we enjoy day-dreaming about?

9.What am I preoccupied with?

10. What is the first thing on my mind in the morning and the last thing on my mind at night?

11. Where or in whom do I put my trust?

12. What occupies my mind when we have nothing else to think about?

13. Do we day-dream about purchasing material goods that you (we) don’t need, with money you (we) don’t have to impress the people you (we) do not like?

14. What do you habitually, systematically and undoubtedly drift towards in order to obtain peace, joy and happiness in the privacy of your heart?

15. How do we spend our (God’s) money?  

• Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there is your heart also” (Matt. 6:21).
• Your money flows most effortlessly toward your heart’s greatest love. In fact, the mark of an idol is that you spend too much money on it, and you must try to exercise self-control constantly. Our patterns of spending reveal our idols. 

16. What is my real, daily functional savior?

17. What is my real – not my [professed] – god?

18. How do I respond to unanswered prayers?

19. When a certain desire is not met, do I feel frustration, anxiety, resentment, bitterness, anger, or depression?

20. Is there something I desire so much that I am willing to disappoint or hurt others in order to have it?

 When we ask ourselves these penetrating questions, there yields a continuity of our idolatry. The answers to these questions uncover the following:

• Whether we serve God or idols
• Whether we look for salvation from Christ or from false saviors
• Whether we rely on our Deliverer or other pseudo-messiahs.   

In the next post, I want to talk about where within our being idols are conceived and what we can do to protect that place from idolatry inception.

Question: How else can you honestly assess your situation to ascertain your current idols?

Bogdan Kipko

There is a link above to a second article, and in a third one in this series, Bogdan discusses Six Antidotes for Idolatry.

When Your Mind’s On Other Things

If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.  But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind.   Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.  Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.

James 1:5-8 (NLT)

The last sentence above, verse eight, is the one many of you know as “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.“

I often think of double-mindedness as meaning a person who is doing one thing one minute, and something quite different or contrary the next minute.  In other words alternating between two distinctly different purposes, such as we see in this verse:

Elijah went before the people and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.”

I King 18:21 (NIV)

But double-mindedness can also exist when we are actually wavering while we are on task.  I discovered years ago that I could be reading my kids a Bible story, and my lips were moving and I was saying all the right words, but I was thinking about something completely different; occasionally something not all that wholesome or encouraging.

I thought of this when I read the note someone had left with one of those confessionals where you write your comment on a postcard and mail it in, and then some are selected and posted.  Trust me, I don’t revisit this site anywhere  as often as I once did and especially since elsewhere I’ve commented how some seemingly innocuous things — like reading advice columns in the newspaper — can be a gateway to more problematic things. However, it does provide a window into the lives of many broken people.

The writer describing reading this website — and who knows what others — while sitting in the choir loft of a worship service is bad enough, but the parenthetic remark at the end suggests that sometimes the images constitute what we would call soft porn.  And so, there we are sitting in church, and we see the pastor and the choir is sitting there, and it never occurs to us that one of the choir members might be…  I mean, why would you want to sing in the choir if that’s where your mind is at?  Does the one activity somehow cancel out the other?

A more accurate scripture — not that the two already mentioned don’t apply — would be

  “These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
   but their hearts aren’t in it.
…[T]hey act like they’re worshiping me
   but don’t mean it…

Isaiah 29:13 (The Message)

Therefore the Lord said: “Inasmuch as these people draw near with their mouths And honor Me with their lips, But have removed their hearts far from Me

Isaiah 29:13 (NKJV)

This verse is referenced by Jesus as well, and may be found at Matthew 15:8 and Mark 7:6. 

Because it’s possible to be spiritually multi-tasking; or multi-tasking on one thing that is outwardly pious or spiritual, but one other thing that is far from God, we need to guard ourselves from this letting this situation happen. When it does, we are guilty of the “spiritual acting” or hypocrisy that Jesus so often addressed, in fact the scripture actually takes this one step further:

“I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish that you were one or the other!

Revelation 3:15 (NLT)

Finally, I think it’s necessary for those of us who see someone committing an act of blatant hypocrisy to call them on it.  Someone was sitting next to that choir member and would have had occasion to glance at their mobile device; especially given that they would have to hold it a good distance away to avoid it being seen by the congregation. It’s a time for reaching out to help, not a time for condemnation.

If you see a Christian brother or sister sinning in a way that does not lead to death, you should pray, and God will give that person life.

I John 5:16a NIV

~Paul Wilkinson

Thought Monitoring

Recovering alcoholics use the phrase “one day a time” as a reminder that progress, to be successful, has to take place on a daily level; and resultant sobriety is measured in weeks, months and finally annual celebrations.

When it comes to controlling our thought life however, our progress can rise or fall in minutes, or even within the seconds of a single minute.  However, as long as we understand that, we won’t be defeated when unwanted thoughts creep into our heads.  We can say, “Okay, my mind may have been going down the wrong path that past few seconds, but I can now get back track for the next few seconds.”

Falling asleep and waking up are probably the toughest times for me.  As in any professional sports match, I can be more effective when I run a good defense.  For myself, I find in those minutes I can slam dunk some of those thoughts simply by reciting the phrases of the Lord’s Prayer. 

Of course, in the morning, simply getting up and starting the day a few minutes earlier also solves the problem.  I remember Larry Tomczak saying years ago that “most Christians are defeated between the bed and the breakfast table.” 

So if the AA program can claim the phrase, “one day a time;” I propose that we appropriate the phrase, “minute by minute.” 

II Cor 10:5 in the KJV contains the phrase, “Bringing every thought into captivity.”  Here’s how the NLT renders that passage:

 ³ We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. ⁴ We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. ⁵ We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ. ⁶ And after you have become fully obedient, we will punish everyone who remains disobedient.

In verse 5 Paul personifies our thoughts and writes that we teach our thoughts to obey Christ. In The Message read how Eugene Peterson looks at this:

^3-6The world is unprincipled. It’s dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn’t fight fair. But we don’t live or fight our battles that way—never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity.

Note the phrase, “fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ.”  Yes, there are going to be “loose thoughts,” but we redirect them. 

Last year I wrote on this subject for three consecutive days, and if you want to continue reading here are the links on this vital topic:

• Wandering Thoughts: “Partial Depravity”
• Detoxifying our Minds: “Think on These Things”
• A Defensive Posture “Capturing Every Thought”

We can also help each other by praying for specific people God brings to mind and asking for His help for them to keep their thought life focused on things that are pure, lovely, praiseworthy, containing good news and virtuous.  You pray for me, and I will pray for you.

~Paul Wilkinson

Capturing Every Thought

This is the third of a series of three posts on the subject of our thought life.   It’s time to take prisoners.   This is something I’ve been working hard to put into practice — even more diligently in the last 48 hours or so — but it takes a great deal of discipline.

First we’ll start with 2 Cor 10:5 in the King James version of the Bible:

Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ

The NLT paints a different picture:

With these weapons we break down every proud argument that keeps people from knowing God. With these weapons we conquer their rebellious ideas, and we teach them to obey Christ.

The KJV (and the NASB) envisions thoughts being rounded up and taken captive — possibly appropriate language to the time of writing — while the NLT (and the NIV) talks about teaching “them” to obey Christ.   Who or what is “them?”   It could be “people kept from knowing God,” but it seems to be “their rebellious ideas;” it’s their ideas that are being “taught,” this is reinforced by the NLT of verse four (the preceding verse) which talks about “the Devil’s strongholds.”

The Message Bible breaks out into similar, but different language:

We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ.

The danger here is losing ourselves in the word pictures and missing the bigger point:  It is incumbent on us to guard our thoughts, our hearts, our minds.   We have to do this by being gatekeepers of what we will allow to come in; and as gatekeepers we have to never be asleep at our post.