At least i do, as it is very easy to get complacent in day to day life, and prayers and study can get to be a routine rather than a joyful learning experience seeking wisdom. sorry for the two post my mistake
I wish i could have found this 15 years ago… What a blessing!!! AMEN
I do feel that we need to be as the Word says & do as Jesus has shown us, wake up & work for The Lord, not for our own things, lives, whatever, but run the race to win, Win souls for God, before its too late!
Thanks for your insight! I have committed to make a day to day growing with Jesus! We know if we love God & His Word & seek his truth, with all our heart, mind & soul, He will bless us with His Word of Truth. I have been searching The Word for only His Truth & to see other believers who also hold to His Word of Truth & am now so blessed to find your websites.
Like when US people go to a court of law, ; in Truth & nothing but the truth, so help you, God !!! words might be a little different, but you get it 😉 Blessings to all, kc
Over the years, I have noticed various trends of books on how to become a better church based on someone’s church model. You’ve probably all seen them. Are you part of the “purpose-driven” church, the reaching-the-unchurched church, the church of small groups, the church that builds community, etc? I’m not saying that these are bad things. The sharing of ideas is good. However, is it possible that many good evangelical pastors/leaders have relied upon human ideas rather than the leading of the Holy Spirit? By the way, I’m not trying to knock down anyone.
I used to buy into the idea that churches needed to be “relevant” to the culture. But I have since re-thought this. If relevant means communicating the Gospel message to people in a way they can understand and not burdening them with legalism and overly used christian jargon, then relevance to people of this culture is good. On the other hand, if relevance means that we throw out substance and worry about offending the culture, then relevance is bad.
Holly N,
You are right on in your comments!
Great show~ Divinely-inspired message!
I can only speak for the local church in which I fellowship, and participate, which is essentially Christ centered, honors scripture as its reference for life applications and truth, and too serves in the way of seeking a godly peace for the community in which we are located (by giving service impartially to our town as a witness of Jesus’ care, which is a great challenge because of its self declared religious diversity, and being a University town which keeps a kind of pagan youth culture everpresent.
E.g. we do paint many public schools interiors, and do other freely given community service in summers, as well as serve in other safety net public community service areas year round, while being clear on our commitment to and need of Christ himself as to our identity as a serving people of a church organization).
The Gospel preached, and the discipleship taught by our proclamation, are inclusive of the teaching and obedience elements that are found in the New Testament. We meet together in two congregations, twice each Lord’s Day, and break into house fellowships as well. Jesus and the Apostle’s teaching of the Bible is the only model we embrace. Most of our missionaries are also Campus Crusaders, which seem to be a very dedicated and hard working group of Bible believing messengers. They are gentle and patient people, and often amaze me because of their insights, experience, and godly knowledge. We have missionary families in dozens of countries originating from our local church.
The proclamation of Him, not we ourselves, or our feelings is the focus. Certainly there are other local ministries which are more PR conscious than distinctive in witness in their interactions and proclamations. My local church, with roots in a Swedish Evangelical denomination, is a very unifying fellowship, which gently serves one another too, and honors the Word and prayer together, and teaches of Him and the principles He and the Apostles taught for life application as well. Elders teach, and all serve, in addition to having teaching, youth, high school, college, worship, technology, and community life Pastors. The attitude is right, and seeks Christ’s Way, for sure. The core leadership views all of us as an extended family, with separate stories, and uniqueness as well. When one hurts we all do, when one is in need it is quickly resourced to helps from our fellowship members.
If I look at the larger picture, including the extreme relativism rampant in our culture at large, and what it is supporting in the name of equality and political correctness I see something else altogether; this would be an extreme need of the Spirit to turn hearts toward God in sincere inquiry, in order that any Gospel messengers from any Bible sourced ministry could hold community wide evangelical events and have them anticipated positively for good. The USA has shifted to say that good is evil and evil good regarding insistence and conviction messages presenting in its days. This is a great concern.
There seems to be little of this kind of gtesh receptive sobriety at large in our culture in our community, for hearing and heeding that God is– in hearts prepared to find God–to be revealed through Jesus, and as He sent His Message of an inclusive and powerful Gospel out of Jerusalem two thousand years ago. Individuals and individual families contacted 1:1 in our daily lives are the source of new members and resulting commitments.
I find the fellowship I have to involve hearts set on His service, prayer and intercession, warmth in love and kindness, and always seeking of His will.
second paragraph from the bottom, first sentence middle should read not “gtesh,” but fresh
And I want to add in defense of Warren’s Purpose Driven Life advocacies–which are scripturally based–that I have heard many Charismatics confess that until they hear that message their perception of church was largely self serving, as to blessing, prosperity preoccupations, etc. Warren, when read, clarified serving Him for many believers so disposed. This is not to say all those of Penecostal persuasion are so disposed, but that the sevant mentality of that book has had a positive affect on the Body in the USA. This is not to say that Warren is the living end of needed American Church preoccupation correction, but that that text was timely needed in the body when it presented.
Excellent exchange (at 26:09 on the podcast)…
Dr. Brown: “All right, we’re givin’ it one more try: John, are you there?”
Caller: “Yes I am.”
(Thoughtful pause)
Dr. Brown: “O.K. Well, Joey, I dunno if that’s the Devil…”
For what it’s worth, he didn’t sound like the Devil to me, but then it’s a while since I heard him speak… 😉
The dichotomy you mention about a painless quick conversion vs. the discipleship requirements of Christ seems accentuated indeed in our nation. On the one hand had we have confession with the lips onto salvation (e.g. of Peter in Mt. 16), on the other we have the requirements of living his will.
Likely it is not the beginning point that is the problem of good fruits of citizens who are believers in our nation, but the maturation process along the Way. The meat of the word is not yet eaten by baby Christians, with the goal of Christ being formed in us, because, in many instances of church, it is the blind leading the blind as to discovery of what pleases the Father, and how we enter into it. Jesus stated that the local church should follow Mt. 18 as to the pursuit of reconciliation processes and ministry at all levels of church involvements. However, are the sheep still wanting to be fleeced, in order to continue to be deceived about how one follows Christ, and what represents a life hidden in Christ, or is it that the leadership is also so deceived as to what Christ wants of us?
I have written in the past that ministers as well as layfolk need to understand how our loyalties and vanity works once we are associated with a particular genre of Christian experience, postmodern or classic or points in between.
As for the drift on what is the Gospel today, one such contributor to its reinterpretation and basis for connection is R.H. Schuler. He took up Norman V. P.’s positive thinking, and positive esteem emphases into a Psychological administration consciousness of the affirmations of a Gospel and achieved a vast audience for many years. His son, Robert H., no longer at the Pulpit with him, was trained at Fuller to a more traditional Biblical Gospel and was dismissed from Robert H.’s pulpit in time. As for what Robert H. preaches and where it comes from see http://www.ondoctrine.com/1schul01.htm Christ is still in the redemption formula, along with other positive messages so allied. Was this wrong?
Robert H. is candid there in his understanding of how preaching sinners in the hands of a [future] angry God may not reach people with the changes they need to live in the culture in which we find ourselves. He believes that sin is a condition prior to being an act, as does scripture. It is brokering Christ at the point of condition and action where his message of Christ differs from the standard sinners needing repentance and a holy devotion to He who sits on the heavenly Throne message. And that difference is everything as to how his own ministry succeeded over time, and how conviction and negative confession of what it convicts of is in the mix.
Our culture, as this radio program discerns, is saturated with scattered foci, and, as a result with scattered attention and divided loyalties. If “sin lies at the door, and we must master it” (given to the one surviving the Cain and Able rift) then to what degree do we have to lay our own vision and associations and alliances on the altar Paul wrote of as living sacrifices to be of God? Or do we find other affirmations to substitute for the notion of yielding self to God and be both relevant and happily so disposed?
The newer Gospel packaging in the media got your attention era then is acutely audience aware, being sensitive to not losing its audience while it delivers the goods of religious alliances for the audience’s bonding (in the case of Schuler, from a glass house, so throwing stones from it might prove unwise). Sadly, as Jesus soberly noted of local gatherings in Mt. 18, we are individuals in need of ongoing reconciliation–there is no way to be of Him and escape this truth.
He advised a direct approach to one another based on risking a 1:1 approach to the issues of truth working among us to get to the grace we can extend and receive as part of the manner of approach to relationships. We essentially are not those for strokes and stokes as are most others in the marketplace.
Jesus had something to say about our race in the time of his visitation, where, we were “calling out to one another,” set in the marketplace for affirmation, meaning, and for guidance, rather than are seen bowing to the Lord of life, careful living, and love. To hear Him, i.e. the teacher of life, we have to deal with sin at the door, and the affections that scatter and divide our own hearts as to achieving a ready state of holiness being for the Lord of Agape’ Love’s considered use of life application. Get to where the lost sheep have gone and we get to those not just scattered by the ever changing voices of the marketplace.
It is not of the Age and its ongoing marketplace driven values to associate with a message of truth and grace, hammered to a Roman execution device, but of grace alone, with felt feelings, and other voices taken into account; this boils down to today self empowerment or an identified group empowerment as solution, which makes such an approach to communication clamoring its own approach while disregarding the need to bring our hearts to a message of lack in and of ourselves.
The Lord begins there as to his receivers’ state of being in the Sermon on the Mount, as to hearing the Message and Promise of the real Gospel based on the real anointed One. There remain so many voices and choices in the world/marketplace today that getting to those of the words of life, with our quiet lamps burning in ready expectancy to Hear Him seems at best afar off, distant, and distancing of an awareness of the sin that is ever action and attention engaging.
It is presently thereby indicated that business which empowers busyness is the stuff of existence.
It is the still quiet voice of Christ wooing and burning in Us which is the hope of glory, and as to a considered gathering within away from the marketplace. Will we now listen to Him, and find what it is our souls are needful of? Or will we settle for the old loyalties and vanity? Maranantha.
A few corrections, Robert H’s son is Robert A. (not having the same middle initial). He was bred for taking over the Crystal Cathedral and Hour of Power from a young age. He departed over the emphases of affirmations through psychological existential approaches to the condition of sin human problem by adhering to a Protestant Seminary view of sin being about both our actions and our condition as true in a negative sense. The solution he offered was Jesus, the solution his father offered was Jesus plus embracing views and means for building positive self esteem when addressing the basic human condition. As I asked, was this wrong?
In posting 12 Able is Abel, a typo. As for other corrections it may be that the final sentence of paragraph 3 should read, and how conviction and negative confession of what it convicts of is NOT in the mix. Or, it may be that that sentence should read as it is, without not. Whether it is better to be justified one way or the other is only part of the ponderings raised.
We do seem to live in a time where many churches attendance is down over the past two decades especially. Employment opportunities for Pastor positions in the USA have also alike declined to about half of the availabilities of earlier time periods of lesser population.
Ruth wrote elsewhere of the 1950s creating conditions for the renewal/revival movements beginning in the 1960s. Those social conditions do not exist now for an alike mass cultural response, which granted a vacuum to be filled by many conversions of many young folks once adrift in what youth culture had to offer at the time.
What I think about now is what are the social political conditions presently that have young people not even considering the classical Gospel as a real way to find life more meaningfully? Whhere so, how will the Gospel be embraced by young people not motivated to learn its claims and promises?
Yes we need more narrow path teaching and rebuke
At least i do, as it is very easy to get complacent in day to day life, and prayers and study can get to be a routine rather than a joyful learning experience seeking wisdom. sorry for the two post my mistake
I wish i could have found this 15 years ago…
What a blessing!!! AMEN
I do feel that we need to be as the Word says & do as Jesus has shown us, wake up & work for The Lord, not for our own things, lives, whatever, but run the race to win, Win souls for God, before its too late!
Thanks for your insight!
I have committed to make a day to day growing with Jesus!
We know if we love God & His Word & seek his truth, with all our heart, mind & soul, He will bless us with His Word of Truth. I have been searching The Word for only His Truth & to see other believers who also hold to His Word of Truth & am now so blessed to find your websites.
Like when US people go to a court of law,
; in Truth & nothing but the truth, so help you, God !!!
words might be a little different, but you get it 😉
Blessings to all,
kc
Over the years, I have noticed various trends of books on how to become a better church based on someone’s church model. You’ve probably all seen them. Are you part of the “purpose-driven” church, the reaching-the-unchurched church, the church of small groups, the church that builds community, etc? I’m not saying that these are bad things. The sharing of ideas is good. However, is it possible that many good evangelical pastors/leaders have relied upon human ideas rather than the leading of the Holy Spirit? By the way, I’m not trying to knock down anyone.
I used to buy into the idea that churches needed to be “relevant” to the culture. But I have since re-thought this. If relevant means communicating the Gospel message to people in a way they can understand and not burdening them with legalism and overly used christian jargon, then relevance to people of this culture is good. On the other hand, if relevance means that we throw out substance and worry about offending the culture, then relevance is bad.
Holly N,
You are right on in your comments!
Great show~ Divinely-inspired message!
I can only speak for the local church in which I fellowship, and participate, which is essentially Christ centered, honors scripture as its reference for life applications and truth, and too serves in the way of seeking a godly peace for the community in which we are located (by giving service impartially to our town as a witness of Jesus’ care, which is a great challenge because of its self declared religious diversity, and being a University town which keeps a kind of pagan youth culture everpresent.
E.g. we do paint many public schools interiors, and do other freely given community service in summers, as well as serve in other safety net public community service areas year round, while being clear on our commitment to and need of Christ himself as to our identity as a serving people of a church organization).
The Gospel preached, and the discipleship taught by our proclamation, are inclusive of the teaching and obedience elements that are found in the New Testament. We meet together in two congregations, twice each Lord’s Day, and break into house fellowships as well. Jesus and the Apostle’s teaching of the Bible is the only model we embrace. Most of our missionaries are also Campus Crusaders, which seem to be a very dedicated and hard working group of Bible believing messengers. They are gentle and patient people, and often amaze me because of their insights, experience, and godly knowledge.
We have missionary families in dozens of countries originating from our local church.
The proclamation of Him, not we ourselves, or our feelings is the focus. Certainly there are other local ministries which are more PR conscious than distinctive in witness in their interactions and proclamations. My local church, with roots in a Swedish Evangelical denomination, is a very unifying fellowship, which gently serves one another too, and honors the Word and prayer together, and teaches of Him and the principles He and the Apostles taught for life application as well. Elders teach, and all serve, in addition to having teaching, youth, high school, college, worship, technology, and community life Pastors. The attitude is right, and seeks Christ’s Way, for sure. The core leadership views all of us as an extended family, with separate stories, and uniqueness as well. When one hurts we all do, when one is in need it is quickly resourced to helps from our fellowship members.
If I look at the larger picture, including the extreme relativism rampant in our culture at large, and what it is supporting in the name of equality and political correctness I see something else altogether; this would be an extreme need of the Spirit to turn hearts toward God in sincere inquiry, in order that any Gospel messengers from any Bible sourced ministry could hold community wide evangelical events and have them anticipated positively for good. The USA has shifted to say that good is evil and evil good regarding insistence and conviction messages presenting in its days. This is a great concern.
There seems to be little of this kind of gtesh receptive sobriety at large in our culture in our community, for hearing and heeding that God is– in hearts prepared to find God–to be revealed through Jesus, and as He sent His Message of an inclusive and powerful Gospel out of Jerusalem two thousand years ago. Individuals and individual families contacted 1:1 in our daily lives are the source of new members and resulting commitments.
I find the fellowship I have to involve hearts set on His service, prayer and intercession, warmth in love and kindness, and always seeking of His will.
second paragraph from the bottom, first sentence middle should read not “gtesh,” but fresh
And I want to add in defense of Warren’s Purpose Driven Life advocacies–which are scripturally based–that I have heard many Charismatics confess that until they hear that message their perception of church was largely self serving, as to blessing, prosperity preoccupations, etc. Warren, when read, clarified serving Him for many believers so disposed. This is not to say all those of Penecostal persuasion are so disposed, but that the sevant mentality of that book has had a positive affect on the Body in the USA. This is not to say that Warren is the living end of needed American Church preoccupation correction, but that that text was timely needed in the body when it presented.
Excellent exchange (at 26:09 on the podcast)…
Dr. Brown: “All right, we’re givin’ it one more try: John, are you there?”
Caller: “Yes I am.”
(Thoughtful pause)
Dr. Brown: “O.K. Well, Joey, I dunno if that’s the Devil…”
For what it’s worth, he didn’t sound like the Devil to me, but then it’s a while since I heard him speak… 😉
The dichotomy you mention about a painless quick conversion vs. the discipleship requirements of Christ seems accentuated indeed in our nation. On the one hand had we have confession with the lips onto salvation (e.g. of Peter in Mt. 16), on the other we have the requirements of living his will.
Likely it is not the beginning point that is the problem of good fruits of citizens who are believers in our nation, but the maturation process along the Way. The meat of the word is not yet eaten by baby Christians, with the goal of Christ being formed in us, because, in many instances of church, it is the blind leading the blind as to discovery of what pleases the Father, and how we enter into it. Jesus stated that the local church should follow Mt. 18 as to the pursuit of reconciliation processes and ministry at all levels of church involvements. However, are the sheep still wanting to be fleeced, in order to continue to be deceived about how one follows Christ, and what represents a life hidden in Christ, or is it that the leadership is also so deceived as to what Christ wants of us?
I have written in the past that ministers as well as layfolk need to understand how our loyalties and vanity works once we are associated with a particular genre of Christian experience, postmodern or classic or points in between.
As for the drift on what is the Gospel today, one such contributor to its reinterpretation and basis for connection is R.H. Schuler. He took up Norman V. P.’s positive thinking, and positive esteem emphases into a Psychological administration consciousness of the affirmations of a Gospel and achieved a vast audience for many years. His son, Robert H., no longer at the Pulpit with him, was trained at Fuller to a more traditional Biblical Gospel and was dismissed from Robert H.’s pulpit in time. As for what Robert H. preaches and where it comes from see
http://www.ondoctrine.com/1schul01.htm Christ is still in the redemption formula, along with other positive messages so allied. Was this wrong?
Robert H. is candid there in his understanding of how preaching sinners in the hands of a [future] angry God may not reach people with the changes they need to live in the culture in which we find ourselves. He believes that sin is a condition prior to being an act, as does scripture. It is brokering Christ at the point of condition and action where his message of Christ differs from the standard sinners needing repentance and a holy devotion to He who sits on the heavenly Throne message. And that difference is everything as to how his own ministry succeeded over time, and how conviction and negative confession of what it convicts of is in the mix.
Our culture, as this radio program discerns, is saturated with scattered foci, and, as a result with scattered attention and divided loyalties. If “sin lies at the door, and we must master it” (given to the one surviving the Cain and Able rift) then to what degree do we have to lay our own vision and associations and alliances on the altar Paul wrote of as living sacrifices to be of God? Or do we find other affirmations to substitute for the notion of yielding self to God and be both relevant and happily so disposed?
The newer Gospel packaging in the media got your attention era then is acutely audience aware, being sensitive to not losing its audience while it delivers the goods of religious alliances for the audience’s bonding (in the case of Schuler, from a glass house, so throwing stones from it might prove unwise). Sadly, as Jesus soberly noted of local gatherings in Mt. 18, we are individuals in need of ongoing reconciliation–there is no way to be of Him and escape this truth.
He advised a direct approach to one another based on risking a 1:1 approach to the issues of truth working among us to get to the grace we can extend and receive as part of the manner of approach to relationships. We essentially are not those for strokes and stokes as are most others in the marketplace.
Jesus had something to say about our race in the time of his visitation, where, we were “calling out to one another,” set in the marketplace for affirmation, meaning, and for guidance, rather than are seen bowing to the Lord of life, careful living, and love. To hear Him, i.e. the teacher of life, we have to deal with sin at the door, and the affections that scatter and divide our own hearts as to achieving a ready state of holiness being for the Lord of Agape’ Love’s considered use of life application. Get to where the lost sheep have gone and we get to those not just scattered by the ever changing voices of the marketplace.
It is not of the Age and its ongoing marketplace driven values to associate with a message of truth and grace, hammered to a Roman execution device, but of grace alone, with felt feelings, and other voices taken into account; this boils down to today self empowerment or an identified group empowerment as solution, which makes such an approach to communication clamoring its own approach while disregarding the need to bring our hearts to a message of lack in and of ourselves.
The Lord begins there as to his receivers’ state of being in the Sermon on the Mount, as to hearing the Message and Promise of the real Gospel based on the real anointed One. There remain so many voices and choices in the world/marketplace today that getting to those of the words of life, with our quiet lamps burning in ready expectancy to Hear Him seems at best afar off, distant, and distancing of an awareness of the sin that is ever action and attention engaging.
It is presently thereby indicated that business which empowers busyness is the stuff of existence.
It is the still quiet voice of Christ wooing and burning in Us which is the hope of glory, and as to a considered gathering within away from the marketplace. Will we now listen to Him, and find what it is our souls are needful of? Or will we settle for the old loyalties and vanity? Maranantha.
A few corrections, Robert H’s son is Robert A. (not having the same middle initial). He was bred for taking over the Crystal Cathedral and Hour of Power from a young age. He departed over the emphases of affirmations through psychological existential approaches to the condition of sin human problem by adhering to a Protestant Seminary view of sin being about both our actions and our condition as true in a negative sense. The solution he offered was Jesus, the solution his father offered was Jesus plus embracing views and means for building positive self esteem when addressing the basic human condition. As I asked, was this wrong?
In posting 12 Able is Abel, a typo. As for other corrections it may be that the final sentence of paragraph 3 should read, and how conviction and negative confession of what it convicts of is NOT in the mix. Or, it may be that that sentence should read as it is, without not. Whether it is better to be justified one way or the other is only part of the ponderings raised.
We do seem to live in a time where many churches attendance is down over the past two decades especially. Employment opportunities for Pastor positions in the USA have also alike declined to about half of the availabilities of earlier time periods of lesser population.
Ruth wrote elsewhere of the 1950s creating conditions for the renewal/revival movements beginning in the 1960s. Those social conditions do not exist now for an alike mass cultural response, which granted a vacuum to be filled by many conversions of many young folks once adrift in what youth culture had to offer at the time.
What I think about now is what are the social political conditions presently that have young people not even considering the classical Gospel as a real way to find life more meaningfully? Whhere so, how will the Gospel be embraced by young people not motivated to learn its claims and promises?