Wisdom?

I thought I might repost the blogs I have on facebook before writing new here. What follows is the first of a series I have posted there. Feel free to comment on them.

I decided that I might write a couple of notes regarding things the Lord has been educating me about prior to leaving for Africa. Given that I do not know where the Lord might take me while there or what He might do with me, I felt it prudent to write now rather than to put it off to never be done. I here disclaim that the things I write may indeed be without wisdom and blatantly obvious to the most casual observer.

Christians can be perfect.

It's true. We are perfect in Christ. We can walk without sin. I state this, because the Western Church... America... seems to believe that it is impossible to be perfect. Given this belief that they are incapable of walking perfectly before God, they choose to give up on it occurring and willfully partake in sin. It is a defeatist belief that results in... defeat.

Given the boldness of my statement, you might feel inclined to ask, are you perfect Jeremy Baker?

Of course not. Were I to attempt to answer such a question in the affirmative I would thereby demonstrate pride and be in errancy simply by answering. Appearances of pride notwithstanding, I also believe that I have sinful attitudes and thoughts at times which I am still working with God to bring into submission as I have successfully brought my body into submission to Christ.

Now you might wonder, if we can be perfect, why do we need God? My statement was that we are perfect in Christ. A Christian trying to be perfect on his own will not succeed. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. I have endured this within my own experiences. When tempted, if I tried to resist the power of temptation on my own willpower and strength, I have failed. Continuously. Yet, when tempted, if I stopped what I was doing and turned my entire focus to God and Christ in prayer, the strength has been given to me to overcome, flee from, resist, or evade temptation and what sin might follow had I not turned to God for freedom.

We cannot, on our own, be perfect; nor can we walk perfectly unerringly until we have first accepted salvation and repented from our sins... turned from who we once were and become new creatures in Christ.

Do not be fooled. Being perfect is not a passive result. We are constantly at odds with Satan and his attempt to devour us. Just as an alcoholic takes one day at a time to continue living without partaking of alcohol, so Christians must walk daily with their guard in place ready to draw upon Christ's strength in order to avoid partaking in sin for that day.

I liked the way a fellow life group member restated my premise. He believes that maturing in Christ is coming to the realization of the promises that God has given to us and accepting them to be true. The Bible states that we are perfect in Christ. Paul admonishes that we should not willingly break the law but should abide by it. I believe it was a book written by Dallas Willard that compares the state of Christians to the state of slaves at the time the Emancipation Proclamation was made law. Many of the slaves were not aware of the fact of their freedom. There were slave owners that prevented them from knowing of their freedom and that convinced them they were still slaves. The concept was that if they were still doing all of the same actions that slaves continued to perform, then they must still be a slave. If you look like a slave and act like a slave, then you must still be a slave. Satan uses the same tactic to convince us that we are not free from sin. It only takes mild observation of the state of the Church here in America to realize the devastation this has wrought.

One of the biggest critiques made regarding Christianity here in America today is that it is not relevant... that Christ and his teachings are irrelevant. Certainly when we as Christians fail to live by the very things that we attempt to profess, we ourselves are giving credit to the validity of such an argument. If we continue to walk in sin, then clearly our beliefs are not working for us and are therefore irrelevant.

When our church leaders sin, we cover it up. More often than not, this is the case. Why would we hide our sin as Christians? There is no condemnation in Christ. We have been washed free of our sins. Guilt is a poor motivator, as one of my pastors once said during his sermon. God sees everything, does he not? Therefore, we are hiding nothing from God which means the only purpose for hiding our sin is to hide it from men. If we as church leaders are hiding our sins from men, then clearly our focus is on men and not God. Sin is anathema to Christians. If we are actively sinning, then we are not confessing it before God and we are unable to serve God. Sin breaks down the communication between us and God and we must repent of it to continue walking with him and serving him.

Now, hiding sin serves Satan's purposes. We can't hide it from God or Satan. Satan is all too happy to reveal when a Christian sins and hides it. He reveals it to the Christians and to the public. Then all the work of the man who had been dwelling in sin has been tainted by that sin. The world witnesses it and mocks the man's belief. The Christians witness it and some believe that it is ok to do the same thing. After all, the church leader is an example... a model to those he serves. To some degree, the followers will be negatively effected.

The proper method to handling this sin is to bring it out before the congregation and the body of believers when it has been committed and realized. Confession. Then repentance before God and the church would restore the leader. Naturally there must be discipline to follow, otherwise we appear to the world to be condoning the sin of the man. The fact that men fail is not enough to shake the faith of believers or to turn away those with the potential to believe. It is the men that believe they can hide it, and continue acting as if they have never done wrong, and then continue, after exposed, in denial and unrepentantly that cause both other Christians and the world to stumble.

I look at the lethargy of our church and sometimes I wish that Christians were persecuted here in America. I do not wish for harm to come to people, far from it. I wish that we would instead turn from our lethargy, get up, and act. Yet, the Bible has demonstrated time and time again that it is during the times when we are put through the fire that we become refined. Persecution refines the church. It has been historically shown that when the church and believers have been persecuted, the church has continued to grow, unimpeded (I would claim that the church actually grows explosively when persecuted). Faith is stronger in those places where believers are persecuted for their faith.

Don't believe me? When was the last time you heard of the sick being healed? When did you last hear of the blind seeing, the lame walking, the deaf hearing, or the dead being resurrected? I have personally sought for God's hand to be evident through miracles to know if He is still working today. There is no reason that He would not be working... after all God is alive. What I found was that the places where it is recorded and known that miracles happen today are very scarce in America... and yet highly prevalent in places where persecution is greatest. There is a place in Africa where the church has regular resurrections. Regular. Resurrections. Yes... people being raised from the dead. Surely there are some of you who doubt, after having read this statement, that it is so. Go to Pemba, Mozambique. Find Heidi Baker. Witness it. Then tell me of your doubt. After all, the very reason for such miracles is to demonstrate to the unbelieving (and even to believers) that God is real and that He loves us.

My desire is that the church in America would wake up and practice relevancy. We can show love to America. If we show love to America... if we show Christ to them and we walk before God then His kingdom will be expanded and the sense of hopelessness that seems to be pervasive throughout this entire country (and even in many Christians) will fade away. Certainly the end times will come, and the prophecies of revelations will come to pass. Only God knows when that time will be, and only the Father is aware of when that time is. We were not ordered to give up in defeat and wait for Christ to return in complacency or lethargy. We were ordered to continue watching, to keep at it, to struggle against Satan and to continue serving until he returned. I have met countless people that have wanted to change things but not known how to go about bringing about that change. We need a movement do we not? Well, movements begin with individuals. It starts with you. Get up, go outside, and serve. You can make a difference. Show love to others. Through love, show Christ to others. Put away judgement and condemnation for your neighbors and instead show them unfathomable love. Do this, and they will want to know what you believe, because who could see the love of God expressed in an individual and not want to be a part of it?

If one person somewhere has read this and found it beneficial, then my words have not been wasted.

God bless.