Where is that speck?

If the Church is going to be successful in her fight against the militant homosexual movement she is going to have repent of her own sins first.

I do not have the time to list all of our sins, but only a few.

God is displeased with the sexual sin of homosexuality but we can't stop there, we need to back up.

God is also displeased with the heterosexual sins of fornication and adultery.

The evangelical church seems to want to focus on the one, while at times ignoring the other.

High divorce rates do not seem to be addressed or dealt with by church governments.

Unlawful divorces and remarriages...do we hear the evangelical church passing petitions of these around for people to sign, to stand against?

In large mega-churches how do you know what the history of the people are?

It is sort of like going to the movies, a good show but the audience doesn't really need or care to know the others in the crowd. This means that common law marriage can go undetected because one couple looks just like the other.

Where do many of these sins stem from?

I believe that they flow from a misunderstanding of the objectivity of God's covenant.

I have often heard churches talk about how many people became "Christians" at this or that outreach service.

By Christians they mean people who made a "decision" for Jesus and NOT people who "trusted Christ and were baptized into the name of the Triune God".

The Bible teaches us that the husband/wife relationship mirrors or reflects the relationship of Christ and His bride [the church].

In marriage you have the exchange of oaths before God, you have a servant of God [who has God's authority] who proclaims or announces that the two have become one flesh, you have a covenant relationship, its objective and binding on the parties involved.

Before this cermemony, this covenant ritual, if the man and woman have sexual intercourse it is called fornication...it is sin.

After they have gone through the cermemony or ritual the sexual act is blessed by God.

But what if the man says to the woman, "but honey, I do love you, we don't need a piece of paper to prove that I love you".

It is not the declaration of love that makes the sexual relationship right, it is the covenant relationship that God has ordained.

Many people say that they love Jesus, but without them being baptised, this is like the common law marriage.

Many are coming to the marriage feast [Lord's supper] who haven't even entered the marrriage covenant.

Yes, they have declared their love to the Lord [and many do really love Him] but they have never really been married.

Reformed blahs

Lord please bring change into our lives. The Reformed church has many good strengths but alas we also have our weaknesses.

There is so much to do, and yet the temptation to 'talk about doing' is always standing right next to us.

We read books on hospitality and yet neglect having people into our homes.

We lock ourselves into our rooms and read really good books on reaching out to our cultures and changing them.

We isolate ourselves and read some good books on how to be friendly.

We hang around with our Christian friends and occassionally talk about the importance of evangelism.

Because we keep ourselves busy with always learning about these things we subtly ignore the fact that we never actually put to practice all the great things that we learn.

We aren't hospitable, But we have read 13 books on hospitality...maybe after the 14th book we will find that missing piece to the puzzle that will put a fire under our butts.

We aren't changing our cultures, because we are too busy reading about it.

We really aren't that friendly, unless the objects of our friendship are as mature as us.

We don't evangelize, and don't really care to begin, because that might risk having some pagan come into the church...and hey, they probably won't agree with the confessions right away.

I wonder what would happen if we spent less time with our faces in the books and more time practicing the volumes we already have read?

Don't get me wrong, I believe we need to study, but not study for study sake.

Quotes

It is easy to win people to the cross, but it is a cross that leaves them uncrucified

Andrew Murray

Blast Thru The Past

I was looking through one of my old journals. It was dated Aug 1994, just a couple months after Bonita and I were married. One of the sections was called Quotes, over the next few days I will share some of these quotes with you.