Anyone else like me?
I know whose I am but I often do not live like it. Take for instance, Life.
What is life? Is it just the living, the breathing, and being conscious? Yes, those are necessary in order to sustain life.
But what is life?
Is life what we do?
Is life who we are?
What is life?
When I was a younger man I didn’t think of these things. I took them for granted. I was… therefore I was alive. And if alive then I had life. I never questioned what life actually was/is. So what is life?
Genesis 1:26-27
¶Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
¶So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 2:7
…then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
So…
All these years I have misunderstood what life was. I was under the delusion that life is about me. It’s actually about God. Just as I have misunderstood the Bible. It’s not the story of man but of God. Man is secondary. Man is the result of the will of God. Life is the result of the will of God.
John 1:1-4
¶In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
Are you beginning to see as I see?
Life is a gift of God. When one speaks of the sanctity of life this is what they are talking about. Life is not man’s to give and therefore it is not man’s to take unless according to God’s Law.
Obviously I have much to learn about life.
At this point I see my learning is sorely lacking as to what life is and how I should regard it. I have only seen life as a series of circumstances and how they affect me personally. My life has been based on my reactions to the events of life and I haven’t stopped to think on what life is, and where life comes from. Right now I see through a cloudy, dimly lit, out of focus glass. I pray I will grow, mature and begin to see with more, and more clarity.
Yesterday at church, Pastor Kyle mentioned that when we are in distress and need clarity (at least this is what I got from what he said) we should give thanks in everything, and for everything be thankful. That caused me to think of the most basic thing of all,”Life.”
Now as scripture says, “the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” we see life is literally, God breathed.
Later, in the Garden of Eden, man disobeyed God’s one command and became spiritually dead, becoming separated from Adonai through his sin. Thus Death entered the world.
And so death reigns from then until now on the physical body. But God had, before creation, prepared for us a sacrificial lamb, without spot to take away our sin and restore us to himself: his son, Jesus, the Christ.
John 14: 6
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the LIFE*. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
(*Emphasis mine)
All of John 14 is Jesus’ witness to the Truth, of himself, and of the Father.
Our restored life is in Jesus Christ, who is in the Father.
Again, “life” is a gift from God.
Yet how lightly we esteem it. How flippantly we care for it… how often we neglect and abuse it as if it were our own.
Anyone else with me?
Do you see what I see?
Do you understand what I’m trying to say?
God has to deal with me in degrees, as with an infant. I have to learn to crawl, and then walk before I can run. In this case I have a small taste of the truth and small understanding about life now.
So here is something I was given earlier as I was thinking about all of this. How do I start my morning? What is the first thing I do when I wake up?
I reach for my phone.
I check in on the world before I recognize the very one I claim is Sovereign Lord over all Creation, Adonai.
What if I change that?
What if instead of reaching for my phone I would recognize Adonai first and as Kyle said, give thanks. What if a prayer of Thanksgiving was the first thing I do every morning?? How would that affect my day? How would that change my life? My approach to life?
I found this Prayer
Morning Prayer
I give thanks unto You, Adonai, that, in mercy, You have restored my soul within me. Endless is Your compassion; great is Your faithfulness. I thank You, Adonai, for the rest You have given me through the night and for the breath that renews my body and spirit. May I renew my soul with faith in You, Source of all Healing. Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, Who renews daily the work of creation.
Maybe seeing life as less about me, I will appreciate the life I have more… because I will see it for what it really is a gift from God.
The Heresy of the “Altar Call.”
Posted in Americanized Religiosity, Charles Finney, Church?, doctrines of grace, God, Gospel, IFB, Just Thinking, Livable philosophy, Manipulation, Obedience, Orthodoxy, Questions, Reformation, Religion, Religiosity, Revival, Revivalism, Semi-Pelagian, Social commentary, Sovereignty of God, Thinking, Toxic Faith, Traditions of Men, Worldviews, tagged BELIEF AND BEHAVIOUR, Control and Power, cult of personality, DANGEROUS CHRISTIAN ACTIVITY, Fundamentalism, Independent Fundamental Baptist Cult, Religion, Sloppy Preaching, Sovereignty of God, Toxic Faith on Sunday, December 29, 2013| 3 Comments »
The altar Call is an outward show of how the pastor can emotionally manipulate his followers to do what he says through guilt and other pressure tactics. It is a power play so that there is visible evidence of a successful sermon. The (so-called) “Altar Call” is the pastor’s way of “proving that he is worth his paycheck.” It is part and parcel of the Man-centered Gospel of the Church Growth Movement in Modern Churchianity.
The church lecture series is all about the man in the pulpit no matter how much he claims to the contrary. The Cult of Personality is the glue that really holds the congregation together. Take away the charisma in the pulpit and the so called church that meets in the temple they have built for themselves will dwindle down and die. The sheeple will find themselves another proxy god to put in the pulpit. They must have their very own idol to listen to and to worship.
“Not a god,” you say? Really? Pastors are the gods over their congregations. His is the only voice allowed to speak during the lecture and he cannot be questioned about anything he says from behind the so called sacred desk. He is infallible and not to be questioned. He demands loyalty and obedience. His word is law. The sheeple are conditioned to passively, and unconditionally accept what the man in the pulpit is saying no matter what he says. The pastor is in fact speaking “ex cathedra” as he is the head of his church no matter who he gives lip-service to.
“I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by full authority. There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it.” -Lord Acton expressed this opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887
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My premise is that any man who is given authority over others will, if left unchecked, make full use of that authority for both personal gain and personal power. The amount of corruption by this person will ultimately be decided by the amount of power that is available. As Lord Acton says, “Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by full authority.”
In modern Christianity most church congregations are based on a simple design. The authority is vested in the persons of the (so called) clergy, usually at the consent of, or at least the tacit agreement of the (so called) laity. This Catholic Idea of Clergy/Laity came from the teachings of Ignatius, Irenaeus, Cyprias, and Augustine who created and promoted the whole “Christian” class/ caste system. While not addressing the theological issues of this problem Lord Acton actually does a marvelous job of attacking just such a system, “There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it.” As true today as when Acton said it.
-excerpted from my blog: https://persifler.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/corruption-is-directly-proportional-to-the-level-of-control-that-is-available/
The “Altar Call” is nothing more than a way for the Pastor to practice his manipulation tactics while stroking his own ego. I dare say that what most people claim to be a movement of the Holy Spirit is at best ginned up emotionalism brought on through guilt and spiritual/emotional manipulation. Why would I say such a thing? Because the “feeling” is generally gone by the time you reach the parking lot, that’s why.
Finally, and most importantly, the Altar Call promotes a man-centered humanistic approach to religion and “salvation.” It portrays a weak frail god who can only work in “his building” following the pastor’s sermon. I have heard testimonies from folks who sweated bullets all week long until they could get to the Altar Call part of the service so they could get saved. That screams of a god in a box who is so weak and so inept that that he has to have the work of the Man of god (little “g” on purpose) in order to save someone. I have also heard of so called soul winners who got people to say the sinners prayer on visitation coaching them to come to church on Sunday and come down during the altar call in order to make their decision official with the preacher. *groan* No, no I don’t have all the answers. I’m just now asking the right questions. I just know that this Kabuki theatre that is being called “Church” these days is a sham and a shame.
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