Charlie's Challenge 2.26.23

 Charlie’s Challenges: Extras from the sermon and links for additional information

Living Like a Disciple in Crazy Times: Learning the Power of the Authority of Scripture

Memory verse:  All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17

The importance of ideas cannot be overstated.  The values and opinions of intellectuals, entertainers and educators will shape us without us realizing it.  How do we develop and maintain a Biblical worldview?  See Romans 12:1-2

The anti-human mindset that we see today was predictively described by C. S. Lewis in his 1944 novel That Hideous Strength.  This book ought to be read by everyone.  

The Scriptures are literally breathed out by God.  How do you think God’s breathing into man to make him a living being works with His breathing out His Word for us?

Paul said that all Scripture is profitable/beneficial/advantageous for us.  The word carries the meaning of working well, fitting together.  How have you seen God’s Word fit the circumstances of your life for your advantage?

Can you articulate the subtle differences between teach, rebuke, correct, and training as Paul describes it in verse 16?  Who can do that in your life?  

What do you think would happen if a soldier went into battle without taking their gear with them?  Do you ever go into the day without being equipped with what God’s Word has for you?

Scripture and prayer are absolutely critical for two way communication with God.  What might happen if there is an absence of Scripture?  What might happen if there is an absence of prayer?

As we approach Easter consider extended meditation time on the crucifixion and your role in it.  Keep asking the question “Why?” at every turn of the story.

Additional Resources

This is the video with which we opened our service.

https://youtu.be/9zRUVtlcdUs

Here is a short video about the importance of understanding the inerrancy of Scripture.  

https://youtu.be/aPtGVtCOlLE

Here is one of my favorite Youtubers reviewing the faith of Lady Gaga.  She is an example of how confused a person can become when their faith is not grounded on Scripture.

https://youtu.be/D6uoynn43EM

This is a link to a discussion by Jordan Peterson about the environmental movement.  It is pertinent because it shows how the anti-human ideals have taken root in this area of academia.   

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0RbSt6JSvdFproZZ6yMsNx?si=d-6-daHlQDSUDFVz0dwhtA

  

Charlie's Challenge 2/19/23

 Charlie’s Challenges: Extras from the sermon and links for additional information

Living Like a Disciple in Crazy Times: What to do about Authority?

Memory verse: The secret of the Lord is for those who fear Him

And He will make them know His covenant. Psalm 25:14

Trouble with Authority

• How are we like a defiant toddler when it comes to our relationship with God?

Is it possible to be an authority figure and a friend in the same relationship?

• Historically, the French Revolution spiraled into “The Reign of Terror” and in Communist China “The Cultural Revolution” became a blood bath.  Which do you think would be harder to live in, total anarchy or total authoritarianism?  Why do you think that is true?

• When everyone does what is right in their own eyes what happens to the moral character of people?  Why don’t people and communities just get better and better?

• If we think of authority in terms of friendship, how does that change the way we think about God?

  

Becoming a Friend of God

Who is someone you became friends with through a “you too” moment?  What was that story?

How are you wrapping your mind around the priority of the friendship within the Trinity prior to the act of creation?  

We talked about three ways of developing a friendship with God; obedience, trusting in His grace, and seeking His face.  Of these three, which is easiest for you and which is hardest?  Why?

How do these three work together in growing a friendship with God?

Passages to review:

Judges 21:25

Psalm 25:14, 1:2, 27:7-10, 34:4-8

Hebrews 2:17, 12:2

John 15:14

Resources:

What are the “you too” moments between these two unlikely friends in this scene?

https://youtu.be/_wRVfzaIRj8

Music from an author who has perfect lyrics:

https://www.youtube.com/@ThePsalmsProject

Here is a Super Bowl commercial that should be a challenge to all of us:

https://youtu.be/f5x1RyJOwP8

Here is a story about Father love.  Pay close attention to 5:38:

https://youtu.be/T5-bwS-hrJ4

Are you a fascist?

 Are we moving toward persecution in America?

Are you a fascist? Apparently, I'm a fascist and didn't even know it. Now if I may remove my tongue from out of my cheek and speak honestly. I am concerned about a move toward persecution of the church in America. I'm not going to try to draw examples of how American Christians are being persecuted. I will, however, offer a glimpse of what may be a tidal shift in the attitude of society at large towards the Church.

 If you do not believe that the general cultural attitude towards the Church is growing more hostile I fear that you may have your head buried deeply in the sand. We will take a quick 3-point stop and tour the evolution of thought towards the Church in America over the last several generations. This is not meant to be a definitive research project, but rather, anecdotal evidence of the change. In the next couple of weeks we will address some positive steps we can take in response.

 First of all, there is no denying that America, from her foundations, operated on a Christian worldview. It is both explicitly and implicitly part of our heritage, our documents and the position of our national leaders. For example, Calvin Coolidge said, “The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country.”

President Coolidge's opinion reflects generally the heart of public leaders toward the Christian faith and the church.  This conviction of the good done by the church for society at large resulted in faith-based organizations operating apart and in some cases above government reach.  That is why faith-based organizations have enjoyed special tax-exempt status.  

Now, fast forward to 2016 when Beto O’Rourke was running for President.  He was asked in one the debates, "Do you think religious institutions — like colleges, churches, charities — should lose their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage?"  His answer was a strong and aggressive, "Yes!”  He went on to say that if faith-based institutions should dare not agree with governmental mandates regarding same sex marriage they should have “no reward, no benefit, no tax break,...”

Now, fast forward to last Sunday night.  During the Super Bowl, a commercial called “love your enemies” aired.  It concluded with the line “Jesus loves those we hate”.  New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded to the ad via Twitter to say,

“Something tells me Jesus would not spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign.”

Her problem with the ad was it was sponsored by an organization that supports traditional family values.  No longer does such a position mean you should lose your tax exempt status, now it means you are a fascist.  What should we do with fascists?  The next step may be to do what we did with the fascists in Germany in 1945-46. 

I consider AOC to be very near the bottom of the list of people I trust to explain the heart of Christ.  So, her opinion on this matter is of no value at all.  However, she is a duly elected member of our government. She represents 1,000s of people and her opinion of the church and Christianity is shared by many.  That is a bellwether we ought not miss.  We have come a long way from Coolidge to AOC.  The question is where will the years to come take us?  

Live like a disciple: Share the faith

The last aspect of living like a disciple is sharing the faith.  The components of the life of a disciple are interrelated and none so more than the calling to share our faith.  To be effective at sharing our faith we must be self learners, people of prayer, living holy lives and sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit.  But strength in these four areas will not immediately make us effective in sharing our faith.  There is the matter of motivation.  Getting off our static position and actually doing it.  

One of the mistakes I have made and I think is the dominant framework for most of Christianity is the idea that if Christians know how to share their faith they will not be afraid and that confidence will result in actually sharing their faith.  As a result, over the years Christian organizations have produced scores if not hundreds of training programs on “How to share your faith”.  Programs from the highly systematic to the foot loose and fancy free variety have attempted to empower Christians to share their faith and be ‘evangelistic’.  Most of these trainings are valid and useful to one degree or another, but that is clearly not the answer.  In my years of ministry, I have trained my church people to use E.E., Love your Neighbor to Life, Thought you would like to know, and the Peace Treaty.  But, interestingly, of all the people I have trained on how to share their faith none of them have actually led someone to faith in Jesus and become a disciple.  All of these have components of learning, prayer, holy living, and being led by the Spirit.  Beyond that I am not active in sharing my faith, outside of my preaching.  I spend a lot of time getting a sermon ready to present to my church.  I don’t spend nearly as much time sharing my faith with non-Christians.

There are two possibilities for the general lack of my sharing my faith, my students sharing their faith and the lack of faith sharing in American Christianity as a whole.  One possibility is that I am a bad trainer, all trainers are bad trainers, and no church has an effective trainer.   But you might expect that I would have been able to do at least one of these well.  Beyond my own failures you would imagine that with the massive production of so many training programs and so many American churches that somewhere one would work. 

There is a second possibility and this is, I think, the correct answer.  We have plenty of training and tools, but we don’t have the motivation. We are neither sad enough nor happy enough.  We are sad about bad stuff in the world, but not too sad.  We may be sad that our church is not growing, but only a little sad.  We are sad to the point of not being able to sleep at night because of a political course that means we might lose money, freedom or our AR-15.  But are we really sad at the thought of people going off into a godless eternity?  Everyone we know will one day be assigned a place in Heaven or Hell based on their relationship with Christ, from that assignment there is no remedy.  Sadly, for any one of a number of reasons we are not terribly distressed about people going to hell.  We may know it is true, and we are a little sad about it, but not sad enough to be motivated to share the good news of the Gospel.

We are also not happy enough.  Because American Christianity of late has not been very good at talking about sin and the marvel of grace we don’t really appreciate our salvation.  We think we were not that bad and only need a little help along the way.  Because we have not been explicit about the bad news we are not overly thrilled with the good news.  We are not that happy about it.  What if I could actually provide for you an elixir that would  restore you to the peak of health and prevent you from ever having to face cancer, or covid, or heart disease? What if this elixir had no negative side effects, got better over time, never lost its power and was free?  If you had cancer or AIDS, took the formula and found all the claims were true, would you be happy enough to tell someone else?  If you are a Christian your condition was worse and your cure is better.  We are not happy enough perhaps because we don’t realize how bad off we actually were or how good we have it now, nor how great it will be.

If we are going to be faithful in being disciples we must make disciples.  And if we are going to share our faith we need to regain holy sadness and grand happiness.

Charlie's Challenge: 2/5/23

 Charlie’s Challenges: Extras from the sermon and links for additional information

Living Like a Disciple in Crazy Times: What did the fall do to me?

Memory verse: His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.  2 Peter 1:3

Double Trouble

• Sin makes us guilty.:

We stand condemned because of the wrong we have done and are therefore subject to God’s wrath. Why does God punish sin?  What is the greatest punishment that God can meet out for sin?

• Sin makes us sick:

Sin twist, distorts, and ruins our created nature so that we are sin-sick.  Does it surprise or shock you that Isaiah 64:6 compares our ‘righteousness’ as a stained menstrual cloth (a used tampon)?  What does that tell us about our condition?  

Double Cure

• The New life:

Salvation begins with regeneration, the new life or being born again.  Look up 1 Peter 1:3-6.  How does Peter describe the new life?  How do we respond to the New Life?

• The New Living:

If a baby grows into a human, a puppy grows into a dog, a kitten grows into a cat then what would we expect a new Christian to grow into? 

The death we deserve fell on Christ, the LIFE He had has been shared with us, as a result and out of love we live holy lives of disciples.  Honestly talk to yourself about how you are doing in this life of discipleship.

Resources:

The video that opened our service

https://youtu.be/mtjMANw2hCA

The writings of the theologian Jack Cottrell.  His works are an outstanding resource on many subjects, but may have the best understanding of Grace of any writer in the last 150 years.

http://jackcottrell.com/

A wonderful presentation of the hymn Rock of Ages

https://youtu.be/KKRdhBK_fts

Live like a disciple: Be a person of prayer

It is my personal conviction that prayer is the most difficult of all the disciplines of the Christian’s life.  That is true for a multitude of reasons, all of which seem to be intertwined with each other.  It is also my personal conviction that prayer is the most important of all the disciplines of a Christian’s life.  It is for this reason that the powers of darkness, our own flesh, and the world as a whole want to keep us from prayer.  

It is pretty easy to talk about all prayer, about the correct or incorrect focus, the theory and methods of prayer.  I have read books and articles on how to pray, I have listened to sermons, podcasts and lectures on praying.  There is no end to the advice from those advanced in the life of prayer and from supposed, prayer experts.  Some of the things I have read and heard have been thoughtful, insightful and helpful.  Others have been rehashed talking points that do not appear to have much substance.  So, enough of the theory.  

How do we become a person of prayer? It is somewhat like what the Oracle told Neo in the Matrix, “The future, the only way to get there is to get there.”  The only way to become a person of prayer is to pray.  We will never become a person of prayer by reading about prayer or by listening to sermons about prayer or having discussions about prayer.  Forgive me for saying this but, sometimes (not always), attending “Prayer meetings” keeps us from becoming a person of prayer.  If you want to be a person of prayer you start by praying.  By the way, you will not be very good at first and it will be a struggle.

Allow me to illustrate.  About 10 years ago, two of my frat brothers (yes, I was in a fraternity and we were really cool) died of heart attacks.  They were in their early 50’s and my age.  After a little grieving I decided I would do something to get into better cardiac condition.  I decided to run, so  I measured and found it was just over ⅓ of a mile around our block. My first day I took off and managed to get about a quarter of the way around the block before I had to slow from a jog to a walk.  The next day, I went a little further, but had the same result.  But I kept at it.  Eventually, I got to where I was running one mile on Monday and Tuesday, a mile and a half on Wednesday and Thursday, and a 5k Friday.  I also did a vigorous calisthenic workout on two of those days.  Some days, just for fun, I would go to the high school and run sprints.   Other times I would load my backpack with books to make it extra heavy and go for long, fast walks in a nearby state park.  I was never fast, that wasn’t the point.  The point was heart health and at my peak my BP, RHR, and weight were pretty good. As long as I ran, I could run and I enjoyed it.  I hurt my hip joint and had to stop running. I almost had to stop walking because it was so bad.   I never started up again.  (I know I should and hope to someday).  But the only way to exercise my heart is to exercise my heart.  

A life of prayer is the same.  The only way to be a person of prayer is to pray.  Even if your beginning is a faltering, stumble start.  Don’t worry about being great at prayer, just pray.  The only specifics I will offer are these: 1) Begin with the Lord’s model prayer.  Take each line of that beautiful prayer and use it to direct and form your own prayer. 2) Begin today.  Like my plans to start exercising again, until I begin I will not have begun.