So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better. -- Colossians 1: 9-10 (NLT)
We should be pursuing the complete knowledge of the will of God and spiritual wisdom and understanding. Not a spiritual experience beloved. What pleases the Lord? How can we find out? All of the answers are in His Word. When the church starts to chase after the latest Christian fad or church growth theory in lieu of actual Scripture -- beware! Carefully determine what pleases the Lord. Where is the fruit? Be careful to not confuse social works with Spiritual fruit. Social works are important but the world also thinks they are important. Because a church has a clothing ministry or feeds the homeless is not an indication of Spiritual fruit. Carefully determine what pleases the Lord! Do as the Bereans did:
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Searching the Scriptures to see if what they were being taught was truthful! That is what pleases the Lord and protects you! The second instruction is to take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness. I saw an interview recently with a popular preacher who was asked when it would be ok for someone to leave a church. His answer was only if they had another church to go to and they were called. That is absurd because it poses the notion that the church is somehow infallible. I know well intended believers who sit in apostasy willingly with some hollow rationales. I had one person tell me that she was waiting to hear from God before she left. I told her she had heard from Him already:
And what union can there be between God's temple and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God said: "I will live in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they will be my people. Therefore, come out from among unbelievers, and separate yourselves from them, says the Lord . Don't touch their filthy things, and I will welcome you. And I will be your Father, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." -- 2Corinthians 6: 16-18 (NLT)
Come out from amongst them! We tend to over-spiritualize things God has already clearly instructed us about. I have heard people use the excuse that they are praying but there is a big difference between praying and staying. You can pray (and we should) but that does not mean that you have to stay. Realize also what your continued attendance says to people who may look up to you. People who may not be as advanced in their walk. Please hear me well. I am not suggesting church hopping or leaving over minor details. We are speaking about apostasy -- which means the church has fallen away from the Gospel. We are speaking about heresy -- where there are teachings being made that are clearly opposed in Scripture. There should be an established pattern of such teachings. Everyone can agree to disagree about one thing or another but when critical portions of Scripture are ignored or marginalized then it is time to give the gift of goodbye. Never assume you are so grounded that you would never fall for false teaching. It is the small lumps of leaven that do the most damage because they sound so right. It is the Joseph Prince grace alone heresy that sounds so right but is fraught with so much danger. It is the Joel Osteen mantra that this is your year of blessing that makes us want to accept the teaching even though it is false. Realize that the majority of the false teachings in this country fall into three primary areas. They are prosperity, seeker friendly secularism, and experiential emotionalism. There is some overlap but there are distinctive patterns in each. Prosperity includes heresies such as word faith, name it and claim it, blab it and grab it etc. The main thing here is that the preacher is selling you temporal happiness instead of eternal joy. It seeks blessing upon blessing while not appreciating all the blessings God has already given us. There is an abuse of the tithing Scriptures to turn the church into a big pyramid scheme where the people on the bottom have to "sow their seed" if they are to expect God to bless them. God has warned us:
You see, we are not like the many hucksters who preach for personal profit. We preach the word of God with sincerity and with Christ's authority, knowing that God is watching us. -- 2Corinthians 2: 17 (NLT)
As with the hucksters, do not fall for the seeker friendly secularists either. Many a church has gone down this road today. The church has asked the advice of the world about how to grow the church despite the fact that Acts 2 says that God is responsible for who is added unto the number saved. The high sounding nonsense the church has bought into is that the Gospel is somehow no longer relevant to the next generation and we have to "reach as many for Jesus as possible." Again, it all sounds nice but if you compromise the Gospel than you reach them with a compromised Jesus. That will be fine as long as everyone is singing kumbya but when the devil or the world comes against them they will discover they are not walking in any real power. You cannot pay lip service to the nature of spiritual warfare because you essentially do not believe it and then hold a prayer vigil and think God is going to answer. The Gospel is seeker friendly enough -- it saves you from your sins and eternal separation from God. If that does not motivate someone to salvation than rest assured your next big Easter egg hunt and outreach most certainly will not.
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