• Al Mohler says we’ve lost the culture wars, and yet the Church stands as she always has, strengthened by the stripping away of false visions. If Mohler is right, and personally I think he is, how does that relate to the historic mission of the “Church Militant”? Paul says “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh.” If that’s so, what exactly are those weapons and how do we use them? Join us for Men’s Ministry this Saturday at 8:00a where we’ll have breakfast and discussion.
• The coming years will produce a dilemma for American believers, a dilemma due in part to how the faith has been presented to us, or marketed to us. Most of us already know the risk of coming out as someone who holds to biblical ethics, sexual ethics in particular. As the risk increases there will be a disconnect for people who worshiped God while simultaneously pursuing personal happiness. The two will no longer be compatible. To worship God as he has revealed himself in his word will make us first outliers and then outcasts. Worshiping God will mean difficulty and conflict.
• Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things” (1 Cor 4:10-13).
• Paul’s ministry was characterized by “power,” meaning the presence and working of the Holy Spirit. Some of that power was the result of living a life so contrary to expectation and intuition. It is the power of Christ himself to bless when reviled, to sincerely engage the person slandering you. All merely human movements go forward vilifying and despising some other class of human. What do you do with people who love their enemies?
• Though we may be slow to embrace it, the power of our lives will be in our willingness to pay the price, as God gives strength, without hope of revenge or the emotional heroin known as hatred. To worship God in Spirit and in truth now means being considered “the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.” But this is hardly defeat. Paul said to the Philippians that being “blameless and innocent” in the midst of a “crooked and twisted generation” we “shine as lights in the world” (Php 2:15ff). “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Mt 5:16). In a post-Christian era, this is the mission. But, of course, it was always the mission.