idolatry

Our Primary Gift Can Taint The Way We View What Is Going On In The World

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“For Dietrich Bonhoeffer it was not enough to follow Christ by preaching, teaching, and writing.  No, he was in deadly earnest when he called for Christian action and self-sacrifice. This explains why Bonhoeffer always acted spontaneously. Why he considered self-righteousness and complacency great sins against the Holy Spirit, and regarded laziness as the starting line on the road to hell.”  G. Leibholz

One major stream of gifting in the Body of Christ (The prophetic/ intercessors) sees the absolute chaos of our nation as a result of what God is doing in this hour: disciplining the Church for her prayerlessness, compromise, and disengagement from the world and culture in the guise of keeping to the exclusiveness of preaching the Gospel.

The other major stream of gifting (The pastoral/ teaching) sees the passion in Christians to engage the culture through being salt and light in the political and governmental gates of influence as Christian nationalism and political idolatry. How do we reconcile this?

It seems possible that the prophetic may be better equipped to see providentially what God is doing in the messiness – God allowed the craziness of the political nightmare in America and especially the election of 2016 to show us how far gone our nation was. Following on we lived four years of non-stop railing, judgment, and accusation against President Donald Trump who was viewed as a providential firewall against globalism and the accelerated destruction of America – but the evangelicals did not see it that way because most of its pastoral leaders do not embrace the prophetic.

The pastoral/ teaching leaders seem better equipped to discern the real dangers of overly relying on government and the institutions of Babylon to save our country without using the saving influence of the Gospel. Unfortunately, they also lend themselves to disengagement. Yes they can warn about political idolatry and help reinforce the centrality of the Gospel as the ultimate hope for our nation but their practical silence on major social issues are unhelpful and only repeat the previous mistakes of disengagement from the gates of influence. They inadvertently promote a spiritualized apathy toward influencing the political process while focusing on preaching the Gospel.

I think the most bizarre thing is that the body of Christ is able to see the exact same moment in history so completely different. And, as a result, we kind of all end up with our differences because of the gift that God has given us. And that’s why we need the harmony between the prophetic and pastoral gifts more than ever. The truly integrated ministry is able to champion all the gifts; validate all the gifts and cause people to walk together in a cohesive vision. Without an integrated five-fold ministry we all become an echo-chamber within our particular gifting. The prophetic leadership becomes very bold the pastoral mercy leadership becomes very concerned about the arm of the flesh and tends to silo themselves into a compartmentalized vision of the Church. It seems unavoidable that these responses take place because we’re all looking at the same thing through our own lens.

It’s like the three blind guys who run into the elephant in the middle of the jungle and they all grab the part of the elephant they can touch and describe it. Consequently, they believe they’ve run into a tree, or they’ve run into a small rope, or into a large hose.

Basically this is what has happened in the last eight years. If a person is not prophetic and they don’t see the providence of God in everything that is happening they believe that this is all hysteria created by Christian nationalists who want to save their country through a political messiah. On the other hand, when you realize what is happening prophetically (through the lens of God’s shaking and providence) we understand that God took the most basic responsibility of Christians which is engaging our country and culture and showed us that we had walked away from it in the guise of spirituality. This happened because we were primarily led by pastors who were solely focused on the Gospel and promoted the idea that this would take care of everything else. (A misapplication of “seek first the Kingdom of God and all these others things will be added.”) What we didn’t realize was that by not getting messy and participating at the political gates of influence we lost most of our nation to wokeness and all the craziness because we left our country to be guarded by godless leaders.

Now I acknowledge that if the Christian patriots who love their nation are not guided with the help of an integrated ministry that they can become dependent on the “arm of the flesh” and they might try to save America through carnal means alone. Furthermore, they can be tempted to raise or lower their faith level, or emotional level, or spiritual expectation based upon who’s in the White House. Clearly, that is unbiblical and unhealthy but that doesn’t mean we walk away from that gate of influence because it’s not the ultimate answer to America.

Yes, the most strategic strategy to save America is receiving the ascendancy of the kingdom of God through radical intercession that ushers in real revival and also through an awakened Church that is consecrated and boldly shares the Gospel while standing at the gates of influence. In contrast, reformation for a dying nation will definitely not come about from staying away from the messiness and not engaging the world where God has called forth the different Kingdom anointings.

Obviously, without the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit any of us could become obsessed with trying to fix all the problems politically and not receiving the power of the eternal Kingdom to transform people. It’s very interesting that we can validate each other’s gifts and yet our own gifting puts a lens on our spiritual understanding of the times and hinders us from seeing the whole picture.

Finally, we’re not going to roll over and pretend that we are not in a battle. But what is really crazy to me is this – I don’t know anyone seriously, and in a godly way, engaging the political mountain that doesn’t have to fight a fight daily – almost holding their nose to endure the stench of that broken system as they stand for truth. And for sure they need to be so prayed up and backed up by intercessors to keep a right heart about it all. How in the world can you call that political idolatry?

The Improvisation of Our Sexuality is Idolatry

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“For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.” – 2 Peter 2:18-19 (NIV)

“Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your forefathers.” – Proverbs 22:28

When Christian leaders redefine a clear scriptural commandment which prohibits sinful behavior into something that is no longer sin—a darkness that is greater than before the compromise took place begins to pervade that community. To not love our neighbor—no matter what his or her sexual orientation—is truly a great darkness. But, to remove the ancient boundary stones and legitimize that which God declares as idolatry, is an even greater darkness.

In an effort to build bridges into the lives of the hurting, many Christian leaders are removing the ancient boundary stones of truth and are redefining Scripture. They like to tell us that most Christians are Pharisees and don’t love the lost the way they should. This may be a true statement. But, when God clearly says something is an offence against His righteous standard for godly living and that He will judge the wicked who persist in sin, it does not give us permission to remove these truths from Scripture because our culture is offended.

In Colossians 3 Paul says: “So kill (deaden, deprive of power) the evil desire lurking in your members [those animal impulses and all that is earthly in you that is employed in sin]: sexual vice, impurity, sensual appetites, unholy desires, and all greed and covetousness, for that is idolatry (the deifying of self and other created things instead of God)” (Colossians 3:5, AMP).

Although, this verse is not an all-inclusive list of actions and sins which describe idolatry, the Amplified version gives powerful insight into human manipulation and selfishness. We see how easy it is to elevate our sensual passions and greed above God’s standard of holiness—to stake out a place of self-imposed morality where we worship our money, sexuality and pleasures above God. This is what God calls “idolatry.” Sometimes it is difficult to take a spiritual term like idolatry and find a clear, practical definition that helps us understand the full implications of its meaning. But let us try to dig a little deeper.

We know that the Bible declares God as the Originator and Owner of all creation. Therefore, He has the right to be honored and worshipped as such. Some argue that God is egotistical in that He demands our worship. However, the Scripture is clear that God is loving, and His requiring our devotion and worship above anything else is actually what is best for us. Yes, it comes to us as a command; but it also comes to us as loving guidance as well. This love is like a father commanding his son or daughter to listen closely to him when they cross a street. He is not demanding something from his children in an egotistical restrictive way; he is requiring their obedience to protect and bless them. God requires our worship because He knows our weakness is to forget about His reality and replace Him by elevating things on this earth over Him.

As we look deeper into this word idolatry, first Samuel is very helpful. “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Samuel 15:23, KJV). Samuel—Israel’s High Priest—is rebuking King Saul for his selfish actions (he made up his own agenda and offered unholy sacrifices to keep his men from deserting him on the battlefield). This passage offers a powerful insight into the definition of idolatry. Here we see that rebellion and stubbornness are directly linked to it.

Idolatry is not just worshipping an ancestral god at a God-despising altar. It is cobbling together a personally improvised standard of rebellious living that ignores God’s clear will. King Saul had a repeating problem with not waiting on the Lord’s timing or following completely through with God’s commands. Two chapters earlier in 1 Samuel thirteen he is facing the Philistines and gets spooked because Samuel is so long in coming and cobbles together the Holy covenant sacrifice of animals on a spiritual altar with his governmental kingship to get the voice of God to speak. He did all this so that he would have the confidence to go into battle with his demoralized and diminishing army. Yet, he was not a priest and was not authorized by God to sacrifice. His role was to lead; the priest’s role was to hear. He was mixing and matching God’s will for his selfish agenda. He was improvising the perfect will of God into something unholy because of his impatience with God’s servant, Samuel.

This account reflects our current Christian generation. We improvise the Word of God to fit our generation because we are impatient with God to truly convert the sinner. We make the standard something the sinner is comfortable with hoping he or she will accept the Gospel. But we forget that the Gospel is an “equal opportunity offender.” The Gospel offends everyone—including the Christian Pharisees, the social standard manipulators and the improvising theologians.

It is the last of these that grieves the heart of God the most. There are those who “stake out” an unbiblical position concerning sexuality and look for Scriptural nuances to support their position. These most dangerous improvisers lead many astray while promising freedom.

Therefore, anyone who chooses to improvise sexuality by changing the will of God from covenant marriage between a man and a woman is manipulating God’s will and is committing idolatry. This includes heterosexuals who live together, those who have multiple partners, those who are bisexual, those who are homosexual and those who are transsexual. Every sexual expression that is lived outside of covenant marriage between a man and woman is an improvised lifestyle and falls into the category of idolatry.

Here is an even scarier truth. Just because you are married in a Biblical, covenant marriage doesn’t mean you won’t still manipulate your partner and turn your sexual pursuit of pleasure into idolatry. Paul says that we are not to treat our Christian partners the way the unsaved do their partners. “That each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-6, NIV).

Finally, when we look at Romans 1, it is easy to forget that Paul is linking the issue of idolatry with the improvisation of sexuality. Those improvising theologians who are defending homosexuality forget that Paul is talking about worshipping the “created” over God (he is not just singling out homosexuals). Sexuality is merely where the greatest battle has always existed in regards to false worship. Man wants to improvise regarding his sexuality on all kinds of levels—and God is clearly saying this is idolatry.

Paul says: “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised.” (Romans 1:24-25, NIV). We don’t have to go any further. There is a dangerous game afoot; it is improvising the holy standard of God’s Word to fit our generation’s selfish agenda. Don’t let anyone fool you. Guard your hearts against this idolatry.