Often times when a new ministry is inaugurated, it's accompanied by an air of enthusiasm and may initially attract a lot of participants. But as time goes on, and sometimes it's not a very long time, attendance wanes. Since the Western church is presently captive within a consumer-driven society, any decline in numbers among the ministry participants is very often interpreted as belonging to an "unsuccessful" ministry and so the approach is deemed in need of revision or the entire effort dropped altogether. The issue is whether or not one is measuring a ministry according to biblical metrics rather than those more akin to marketing hair spray.

(more…)

We need to read this carefully and make special note of who exactly Paul is referring to. He's not advocating that we stay away from everyone, but only the "brother who leads an unruly life". Whenever Scripture references a brother it is referring to someone who's supposed to be a fellow believer. Paul is providing not just an alternate definition of a hypocrite, but is advising that to associate with those who are obedient in word only places our own faith at risk.

(more…)

One of the amazing things about Paul's writings is that he often summarizes in just a few sentences what it means to be a Christian. You can condense it even further by just highlighting the main words of each concept: "beloved…chosen…called…stand firm". What entire books on Christian living and church growth attempt to identify and illuminate, Paul succinctly provides in a couple of sentences.

(more…)

When I was a kid a friend of my parents returned from the mission field, married, and had a very difficult childbirth. The result was that to get the proper care at the time because of their dire financial situation, they needed to enroll the baby in a government program. The problem was that this required issuing the baby a social security number. The baby's ex-missionary mother refused to do so, believing that this was most likely the mark of the beast warned about in Scripture. I have known many Christians like her over the course of my life who carry with them the fear that they will be deceived into receiving the mark of the beast and so lose their salvation. In reality, the only one's who will be marked are the ones who are "marked" already.

(more…)

An interesting sidebar about the second chapter of 2 Thessalonians is that if we didn't have the major portions of Scripture devoted to the End Times such as Revelation, Zechariah, Ezekiel, and so forth, everything we'd need to know is right here. The first step Paul provides is the very first step Jesus Himself provides in the Olivet Discourse devoted to this same topic: "Don't be deceived". The first and foremost thing is to cling to His Word so that we cannot be dissuaded from the Truth, because the very first wave of events is Satan's all-out attack on the truth which Scripture calls "the apostasy" — the great spiritual "falling away".

(more…)

When someone posits that if God exists, how could He allow pain and suffering on earth, why is it that they never theorize about the other side of that coin, that if God exists He will hold everyone accountable for the pain and suffering each person causes? The answer's actually a human form of denial which for some reason is quick to embrace the concepts of love, mercy, and compassion while at the same time denying the existence and influence of sin, evil, and wrongdoing. In a recent evangelism training exercise using materials from Evangelism Explosion, one of the main points is that "God is merciful and doesn't want to punish us, but He is also just and must punish our sin". It really comes down to how willing you are to believe in God the Judge.

(more…)

I am constantly amazed at the things which Paul prays for, especially in contrast to my own prayer "list". While my approach is often more akin to a child's Christmas list to Santa of all the things I want for myself or others, Paul's requests are always variations of the same thing: to be even more established in one's faith. This scenario has been played out many times in small groups or church services where prayer requests are taken, the majority of which again can be mostly categorized as "things" we'd really like. Perhaps the sorry state of the church in Western society is at least in part due to the fact that we spend so little time praying for each other's spiritual condition.

(more…)