Religous but lost, to saved by God's Grace at 71

A powerful video on YouTube about the Grace of God. See Religous but lost, to saved by God's Grace at 71

Confessing Christ, false profession, and the numbers game

On one of the blogs I read the subject came up about a local emergent church that places great emphasis on the number of confessions in Christ. This church uses the numbers game as proof that God approves of their church and evidence they are following Jesus. While we praise God for these confessions, some concerns were raised about possible false professions due to the liberal nature of this church. This church uses some very questionable antics by the pastor and staff which prompted me to be concerned about people buying into the church's relevant "culture" vs. responding to God's call to repentance. It's not wise for any church to be overly concerned with numbers. It's even more dangerous to use confession numbers as a poll to see if God is working in a church or not. This type of action can lead to problems like pride and arrogance. This error can grow into believing that if church "A" has more confessions than church "B" then God must be blessing "A" more than "B". In other words, church "A" is excellent and pleasing to God. Church "B" is smaller; therefore church "B" must be doing something wrong in the eyes of God.

I do not advocate confronting people who profess Jesus Christ just because we have some disagreements with their church. As ambassadors for Jesus, it's our job to fortify their faith by simply sharing Jesus in truth and love. What do I mean? Did I not just type that we should not confront or heckle them? Yes, I did. What I mean is we are to share with them our faith, God's grace, and how we love Jesus because He first loved us. We share our repentance from sin, we define repentance in our walk as Christians, and how Jesus saved us by Grace. We should clearly define salvation in a manner that is both sound in the Scriptures and uplifting to Jesus by allowing the Holy Spirit to do His job in His time.

In the Bible we see this disturbing and frightening account by Jesus:

Matthew 7:21-23 (NASB)
^7:21 "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.
²² "Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?'
²³ "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness .'

This is where the numbers game breaks down and has problems. If a church bases salvation on simply saying "Jesus," repeating a prayer, and doing the works of the church then this frightening event described by Jesus Christ becomes very real. These people did wonderful works in Jesus' name only to have Jesus say that He never knew them! In our human mind we are thinking, "This just does not seem right! How could they know about Jesus but not be saved? They did great things in the name of Jesus! They worshiped Jesus and did miracles in His name! These people knew Jesus, but Jesus did not know them? Why?" The answer is they never repented and accepted Jesus. It's very clear in this passage that not everyone who says, "Jesus" is saved.

When we base serving/worshiping Jesus upon the numbers game, we are only hurting the church in the long run. The result of some confessions may be simply buying into a church culture, a youth program, a children's program, peer pressure, entertainment, relevance, excellent music & worship, following a parent's example, volunteering in the church, etc... anything other than the drawing of the Holy Spirit to repentance and salvation. It's in this type of environment where the church culture might be drawing people to repeat the name Jesus vs. the Holy Spirit drawing people to Him. Can people truly be saved in this type of environment I described? Absolutely yes.

So what should we do? How can we know if everyone who professes Jesus is saved? The short answer is we will never know. We should continue to preach the Gospel and clearly define salvation as the Lord's. We should make a great effort to define sin as sin, and explain the word "repent." We should explain repentance from sin and how we once walked in sin. We explain that God laid a foundation for our new life. This foundation is in Him and not in the love of the world. We should always preach the whole council of God regardless the number of lost people coming to our church.

If I had a church of 15 people and if 10 of those people confessed Jesus Christ as Lord, I praise God and take their word for it! If my church never grew another soul beyond all 15 of my people professing Jesus, I would continue to preach the Gospel, salvation, repentance, and knowing that you are saved by grace. I would not consider this doubting their confessions, but rather fortifying their faith and walk with Jesus. I consider it helping them when they are in need, haunted by their past, tempted by their flesh, tempted by the world, and encouraging repentance when they sin. It's a building block of assurance and teaching them about the Holy Spirit who lives within us. It's not an attack or down play on their confession.

I have an 11 year old son who confessed Jesus. I praise God for his confessing Jesus Christ as his Lord . I take my own advice and try to encourage him in his faith by explaining repentance and salvation to him. I do not want to make him doubt his confession. I want to strengthen him in Grace. I want him to read his Bible, pray, and strive to follow Jesus. I want him to be confident in his faith and know how and why he is saved. I do not want to only focus on telling him about salvation because I want him to mature as a Christian, having confidence in Christ. I know he will experience hardships and may even doubt his salvation, but I want to plant the Word in his heart so that when doubts come the Grace of God takes control, giving him peace. This is not hindering him but leading him in walking with Jesus by example.

I'm not asking for an inquisition or any other type of legalistic manner of watching people's actions to determine salvation. For those of you who want to do that, may I suggest you read about Lot in Genesis 19:6-8 in the OT, and then look in 2 Peter 2:6-8. God said Lot was "righteous," meaning he was a saved man! When we see our brother/sisters in sin we should not question their confession. We should do the following:

1. Pray for them in private.
2. Encourage them in public.
3. Rebuke them in love and compassion.
4. Refrain from gossipping about them to others.
5. Lead them by example.
6. Always point them back to God's grace by sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Churches that do not preach repentance from sin after salvation are doing new Christians a disservice because the lack of teaching leads to carnality. Carnal Christians are weak Christians who are held captive by the lust of the world. This is where I believe many (not all) false professions are born and why we see in Matthew 7 Jesus saying,"I never knew you." A child of God has convictions about sin because the Holy Spirit lives within him. I fear the old saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" may hold true because we try to do God's job instead of simply doing what God told us to do. We try to add "culture" to God's Word when God's Word is enough.

I'm not just picking on this emergent church. I know this problem is in every type of church. Regardless of the type of church there maybe some false professions. I fully understand that legalism is just as deadly a venom as what I have discussed in this blog about the numbers game. Following strict man-made rules such as dress codes, men not wearing earrings, only using the KJV, repeating creeds, not drinking wine, not working on Sunday, etc... can and do lead to false professions as well. In the future I will discuss legalism and how it's harmful to the church. I'm just writing about how I personally deal with these issues and expressing my concerns with the numbers game as a means to measure God's approval.

He Is by Aaron and Jeoffery

This is another song that I love to listen to when I'm pondering the Grace of God. I have been pondering and thanking Jesus all day for saving me.

He Is on YouTube

It's days like this when I simply can not thank Him enough for His salvation and His blessings!

Just in case you are wondering I do love traditional gospel songs like "How Great Thou Art" and "The Old Rugged Cross".

Romans 15:9 (New International Version)

⁹so that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy, as it is written:
"Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles;
I will sing hymns to your name."

He Is is a wonderful song about who Jesus is in the Bible:

Lyrics:

In Genesis, He's the breath of life
In Exodus, the Passover Lamb
In Leviticus, He's our High Priest
Numbers, The fire by night
Deuteronomy, He's Moses' voice
In Joshua, He is salvation's choice
Judges, law giver
In Ruth, the kinsmen-redeemer
First and second Samuel, our trusted prophet
In Kings and Chronicles, He's sovereign

Ezra, true and faithful scribe
Nehemiah, He's the rebuilder of broken walls and lives
In Esther, He's Mordecai's courage
In Job, the timeless redeemer
In Psalms, He is our morning song

In Proverbs, wisdom's cry
Ecclesiastes, the time and season
In the Song of Solomon, He is the lover's dream

He is, He is, HE IS!

In Isaiah, He's Prince of Peace
Jeremiah, the weeping prophet
In Lamentations, the cry for Israel
Ezekiel, He's the call from sin
In Daniel, the stranger in the fire

In Hosea, He is forever faithful
In Joel, He's the Spirits power
In Amos, the arms that carry us
In Obadiah, He's the Lord our Savior
In Jonah, He's the great missionary

In Micah, the promise of peace
In Nahum, He is our strength and our shield
In Habakkuk and Zephaniah, He's pleading for revival
In Haggai, He restores a lost heritage
In Zechariah, our fountain

In Malachi, He is the son of righteousness rising with healing in His wings

He is, He is, HE IS!

In Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, He is God, Man, Messiah
In the book of Acts, He is fire from heaven
In Romans, He's the grace of God
In Corinthians, the power of love
In Galatians, He is freedom from the curse of sin

Ephesians, our glorious treasure
Philippians, the servants heart
In Colossians, He's the Godhead Trinity
Thessalonians, our coming King
In Timothy, Titus, Philemon He's our mediator and our faithful Pastor

In Hebrews, the everlasting covenant
In James, the one who heals the sick.
In First and Second Peter, he is our Shepherd
In John and in Jude, He is the lover coming for His bride
In the Revelation, He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords

He is, He is, HE IS!

The prince of peace
The Son of man
The Lamb of God
The great I AM

He's the alpha and omega
Our God and our Savior
He is Jesus Christ the Lord
and when time is no more
He is, HE IS!

My Jesus by Todd Agnew

Up until a few days ago I had no idea who Todd Agnew was until I heard one of his songs on the radio.

I really like the message of this song about Jesus. This YouTube video did a very good job with putting some pictures with this song. I feel this song addresses some issues our church today should face. Instead of worrying about excellence, nice seats, carpet, coffee, high tech shows, etc... we should ponder what our Lord Jesus did while He was walking the Earth. I think many times we all forget about helping the poor.

My Jesus by Todd Agnew YouTube video
Album: Reflection Of Something
Year: 2005


Lyrics to My Jesus :
Which Jesus do you follow,
Which Jesus do you serve
If Ephesians says to imitate Christ,
Why do you look so much like the world

Cause My Jesus bled and died
He spent His time with thieves and liars,
He loved the poor and accosted the arrogant
So which one do you want to be

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
or do we pray to blessed with with the wealth of this land
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness
Or do we ache for another taste of this world of shifting sands

My Jesus bled and died for my sins
He spent His time with thieves and sluts and liars,
He loved the poor and accosted the rich,
So which one do you want to be

Who is this that You follow,
This picture of the American dream,
If Jesus was here would you walk right by on the other side,
Or fall down and worship at His holy feet
holy
Pretty blue eyes and curly brown hair and a clear complexion,
Is how you see Him as He dies for Your sins,
But the Word says He was battered and scarred
Or did you miss that part,
Sometimes I doubt we'd recognize Him

My Jesus bled and died He spent His time with thieves and the least of
these,
He loved the poor and accosted the comfortable,
So which one do you want to be,
Cause
My Jesus would never be accepted in my church
The blood and dirt on His feet might stain the carpet,
But He reaches for the hurting and despises the proud
And,
I think He'd prefer Beale St. to the stained glass crowd
And I know that He can hear me if I cry out loud

I want to be like my Jesus
I want to be like my Jesus
I want to be like my Jesus
I want to be like my Jesus

Not a posterchild for American prosperity,
but like my Jesus
You see I'm tired of living for success and popularity
I want to be like my Jesus
but I'm not sure what that means to be like
You Jesus
Cause You said to live like You,
love like You but then
You died for me
Can I be like You Jesus?
I wanna be like you Jesus
I wanna be Like my Jesus

(Thanks to Matthew for these lyrics)
[ My Jesus Lyrics on http://www.lyricsmania.com/ ]

In the hedge and on the highway

Luke 14:23 (NASB)
^14:23 "And the master said to the slave, 'Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled.

Years ago I when I was agnostic, I did not understand who Jesus was outside of what I had read, perceived, and been told. I never considered the Christian faith my choice religion because of various reasons. I had built up a hedge around myself using my knowledge of religions and personal thoughts about God. I may have appeared, in my actions, to a Christian observing me as a good person; because I strove to be a moral man, one in the middle of the highway of life. Deep inside I just wanted to be left alone. I was happy with my views on God and religion in general. I never really wanted anything but peace, while deep inside I was afraid like a small child lost in the dark. So as a wall of protection, I built up my hedge.

Why did I bring up my past? Because it still weights on my heart and mind when I read about the Grace of God in the Bible(Luke 19:10, 1 Timothy 1:15). It weights on me not as an anchor to my past and the world, but a reminder of the Grace of God and His salvation(2 Samuel 22:36). My heart sings with joy and love for Jesus when I remember my past, because He delivered me from my sin(Hebrews 8:12). He delivered me from death into life, He redeemed me even though I did not deserve redemption. I see this as encouragement to spread the Gospel(1 Tim. 2:3-4) trying to compel people to come to Jesus Christ.

What is see in Luke 14:23 is a commandment to go to all people, regardless of their state, with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the south, where I live, the roads are generally clear and we can see which way traffic is going. We have signs and signals to help guide us as we travel. In the hedge it's another matter all together down here, we have critters!. In the hedge we cannot easily see where we are going or what we are going into. We may run into spiders, thorns, holes, snakes, and in some parts of SC gators! It takes more caution to venture into the hedge than to venture in the open highway. Both the highway and the hedge can be equally dangerous and frustration to maneuver in, but that does not mean one is of greater importance than the other. To go into the hedge requires a little more patience because the things in the hedge are hiding for a reason. What I see in Luke 14:23 is a picture of humanity. All of us are lost without Jesus(Romans 5:12, 1 John 1:8 and Romans 3:11) and in this passage the master: Jesus tells the slave: those of us saved by His calling, to go out and compel these people to come to where they hear about Jesus. The Bible says in:

Romans 10:17 (NASB) ^10:17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

We are to go out and pray that God draws these people in the highway and hedges to Him. We are to go out and witness our testimony in our deeds and words. We are to pray that God saves those whom we compel to come to God's house. What I see is a difference in preparation based on location when we go out. I see that we are to be mindful to our audience and environment when spreading to Gospel. I'm not saying to compromise our faith based on the environment, I'm saying that we need to be mindful of what the Holy Spirit is leading us to do and say. The commandment is the same from Jesus no matter if we are going to the highway or hedge. That commandment is to go out and spread the good news of Jesus Christ crucified (1 Corinthians 2:1-5 ) for our sins, and for repentance from sin (Mark 1:15, Mark 6:12, Luke 13:1-5, Acts 2:38, Acts 17:30).

When I think about my past as a critter in the hedge, I thank God for reaching down and saving me. I look at myself as not a perfect man, but rather a new creature saved by the Grace of my Lord Jesus Christ(Galatians 6:14). It is my heart's desire, and my prayer, to be used by God to help reach those who are like I was many years ago. To help take the Gospel to those who are hurt, afraid, cold, lonely, and hiding in the hedge because of fear and doubt. I'm not saying that I only want to spread the Gospel to one group of people, nor am I saying that one group is worse than the other(Mark 16:15). Sin is sin, and it is sin that separates us from God no matter what that sin may be(Romans 3:21-26). With God there are no white lies, small sins, and great sins. Sin is sin, and sin is death.(Romans 6:23). All I'm trying to illustrate is people are different and they may see things different that we do. The common denominator that will pull all of us to the same level is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In Christ the foot of the cross is level(Romans 10:12 and. Matthew 5:45) and God is no respecter of man(Acts 10:34). We are to give them the Gospel(Romans 1:16, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, John 3:16, Romans 10:8-13) and allow God to do His job(Ephesians 1:3-14, Ephesians 2:8-9). As a man in the hedge, my heart is to reach the hedge, but as taught by God I will try to reach all people for Jesus. We all have areas that God has called us into, and mine happens to be in the hedge and the highway(1 John 5:11-12).

Luke 14:16-24 (NASB)
^14:16 But He said to him, "A man was giving a big dinner, and he invited many;
¹⁷ and at the dinner hour he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, 'Come; for everything is ready now.'
¹⁸ "But they all alike began to make excuses. The first one said to him, 'I have bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it; please consider me excused.'
¹⁹ "Another one said, 'I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please consider me excused.'
²⁰ "Another one said, 'I have married a wife, and for that reason I cannot come.'
²¹ "And the slave came back and reported this to his master. Then the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, 'Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame.'
²² "And the slave said, 'Master, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.'
²³ "And the master said to the slave, 'Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled.
²⁴ 'For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner.' "

This powerful teaching from Jesus tells us:

1. Go out to all people

2. Do not be discouraged

3. Keep spreading the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ

4. Allow God to draw people to Himself. We cannot save anyone.

5. Just do what God tells us to do and He will handle the rest.

6. Be obedient to Jesus.

We must prepare our walk with Christ so that we can fully follow His will for our lives.

Ephesians 6:10-17 (NASB)

¹⁰ Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.
¹¹ Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
¹² For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
¹³ Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.
¹⁴ Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
¹⁵ and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
¹⁶ in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
¹⁷ And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

I know this is a lot to take in, but we must strive to walk in Jesus and follow Him.

Colossians 2:6-7 (NASB)
^2:6 Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,
⁷ having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.

In the highway and hedges, there are so many people that need to hear about Jesus. It is my prayer that we always pray, prepare, and set out to reach all people for Jesus. It's my prayer that we would use our gifts given to us by God in order to glorify the name of Jesus Christ. My calling may not be your calling, but we are all in one body in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let us all work in order to preach, teach, and witness in truth and love.

Philippians 2:3-11 (NASB)
^2:3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves;
⁴ do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.
⁵ Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,
⁶ who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
⁷ but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
⁸ Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
⁹ For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name,
¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.