Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Wait: God Does Rescue

hole in the groundThough the Christian heart struggles to find its rest in the Lord, God always rescues His Children.

As men and women of faith sink into the mire of illness, financial pressure, and injustice, they often grow tired of waiting. Seeking to make things right, they grab for the technology tools sitting on their self-help shelf.

Technology contains no inherent evil. Zoom calls, Facebook Live videos, and older technologies like radio have proved to be close allies of the church as she bounced into Coronavirus restrictions. Yet, Christians can turn these allies into enemies of faith when they abandon prayer in favor of human action. Instead of asking the Lord to provide for their finances, Christians start trading stocks on Robinhood. Rather than cry to the Lord for health, Christian spend their days researching everything from chemotherapy to dandelions. And when parenting seems impossible, Christians attempt to find solutions through Facebook polls in place of prayer. The temptation to replace prayer ever beckons the Christian soul.

God does work through natural means, restoring the sick with medicine, blessing the unemployed with new jobs after they create a LinkedIn profile, and delivering parents who embrace leadership concepts. Christians should take proactive steps. But natural means should not be the hope of the believer. The power to pull the broken soul from the pit resides not in stock accounts, doctors, or Facebook users but in the God, who reigns over the accountants, the doctors, and the Facebook users (Ps 127:1). Unless God watches, the watchman watches in vain. In Psalm 40:1-3, King David calls us to place our hope in God. He writes,

I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.

David stood on the brink of destruction as he sank in the quicksand of life without access to a branch or rope. All seemed hopeless for David. Yet he did not lose hope and reach out for the hand of prideful men who employed self-centered lies to advance their own cause at the expense of the hurting (Ps 40:4). He did not place his hope in technology or in any other person under earth. He cried to the Lord and waited for God. Though the world mocked David as he sank closer and closer to destruction, help did come. God pulled David from the pit and set him upon the rock of truth. Blessings returned to David’s life and songs of praise filled David’s lungs.

Christians who feel stuck in the mud of depression, discouragement, and pain should follow David’s example and wait upon the Lord. They should put down their phones and then call out to the Lord for salvation. They should pray. Then, they must do the hard work of waiting. Faith consists of both asking, waiting, and asking again, believing that God’s past actions of salvation ensure his future work. David notes, God will never restrain his mercy (Ps 40:11). He will hear and he will act. He will sustain us by his steadfast love. Those who wait upon the Lord never experience disappointment.

If bitterness fills your mouth, cry out to God for salvation. If depression has stained your lips, cry out to God for salvation. If your mouth aches from the injustices of this world, cry out to God for salvation. Though hours, days, and years may pass, God will save you from the pit. You will praise the Lord again. God will put a new song in your mouth. “Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust (Ps 40:5).”

How goes the waiting?

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Why God’s Deliverance is not Limited by Our Injustice

justice

Though the notion of forgiveness gushes out of the Scriptures like water from an open fire hydrant, Christians will at times push their hands over the spout with choking the flow of grace down to a secular trickle.

For example, many Christians welcome the new convert who choose Christ instead of a life on the streets. But they offer little sympathy to the gang member suffering unjustly in prison. After all, he should have made better choices. The church embraces the repentant woman who choses Jesus and instead of alcohol. But they care little for the woman who cries for help after spending a lifetime of Sunday mornings hungover in bed. Christendom cares for the young man who chooses abstinence instead of moving in his with his girlfriend. But it scowls at the man seeking help after his body has been shredded by sexually transmitted diseases and a lifetime of unstable relationships. Christians reach out to those who manage a degree of respectability but often close their eyes to cries of those who have mocked, trashed, and soiled the commands of God.

The thinking proceeds as follows: Had he not been with the wrong crowd, he never would have been imprisoned in the first place. Had she only listened to her parents; she would not be in the predicament she is in. Had he only obeyed the Bible; this all could have been avoided. Forgiveness reaches it limit. As the Christian mind considers these things, the hand of deliverance remains clinched inside the pocket of self-righteousness.

Though humans withhold grace, God does not.  Psalm 107:11-3 reports,

Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and in irons, for they had rebelled against the words of God, and spurned the counsel of the Most High. So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor; they fell down, with none to help. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.

God rescues those who destroy their lives through their sin. He cares about the unjust who suffer injustices. Those who find themselves struggling at low end jobs because they cheated in college or committed crimes in their teenage years find forgiveness when they call to God for help.

They are not alone. A few verse later in Psalm 107:17-20, the Psalmist writes,

Some were fools through their sinful ways, and because of their iniquities suffered affliction; they loathed any kind of food, and they drew near to the gates of death. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He sent out his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction. He saves those who hated his commandments when they call to him

Some men and women suffer sickness and all kinds of harm because they went along with society, embracing sinful sexual norms, drinking practices, and eating habits. They pushed the body to extremes and then suffered a host of serious medical problems. Though they ran to sin instead of truth, God still offers them mercy, sending his Word of life to all who ask for help. He heals those who disobeyed his Word. God’s mercy knows no qualifications or limits. All who call to him find salvation.

Salvation comes not because of our righteousness, but because Christ gives us his righteousness. He lived the perfect life that we could not, died on the cross, and then rose from the dead so that he could give his righteousness to all who ask. Salvation depends not upon our past but upon Christ’s past.

If God offers salvation unconditionally, his followers must extend deliverance unconditionally. Christians cannot turn a bind eye to the injustices of the criminal justice system, because it contains a lot of ‘bad people.’ Christians cannot wash their hands of alcoholics, drug addicts, and those trapped in sexual sin because these men and women foolishly destroyed their bodies. God saves them without reserve when they call to Him. When sinners plead with us for help, the Christians should rush to their aid, seeking to deliver sinners from the miseries of the spiritual and physical world. The love of God’s people should not depend upon the hurting person’s past or demographic realities. Christians should extend a gracious hand of deliverance to all who are in need regardless of the man or women’s past or race. Our God extends mercy freely. We must as well. We need to leave the fire hydrants open.

How are we doing?

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

The Secret Sin That Will Kill Your Church

Most Christians do not pull open the heavy oak door of the old church building on main street expecting to find twisting slides adorned with colorful Disney characters, hung over fraternity boys lounging on frayed occasional chairs, or high end apartment decorated with stainless steal appliances. Yet these scenes and countless others now fill the space once reserved for vibrant congregations. Introspection demands that Christians of every denominational tribe should ask, “Will we be next?” We will be the last generation that fills this space?

To answer this question, Christians must wrestle with another foundational question: Why do churches die? Why does God turn sacred spaces into places of secular profit?

The quick, Sunday school answer is “sin” Micah 1:5 declares that God sends the nation of Israel into exile because they have turned away from God.

All this is because of Jacob’s transgression, because of the sins of the people of Israel.

What Sin Kills Churches?

But what sin? What sin cause God to say, “Enough” as he rushes down from heaven to crush the rebellion of his people? It is the sin of idolatry.

Micah makes this clear in second ways. First, he talks about the how Jerusalem and Samaria have committed the same sin. Their mountains serve the same gods. This would have been a troubling association for the people of Judah. From its inception, Israel had practices idolatry. Jeroboam created a new religion based on the worship of golden cows to keep his subjects from returning to Jerusalem to observe the Passover feast at the temple. 2 Kings 2:28 reports, “So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” To be an Israelite at that time was to be an idolatry, a worshiper of false Gods. Though Judah has the temple, her people like the people of Israel us their high places to worship false gods. There is no distinction between the two nations. “Her wound is incurable; it has come to Judah (Micah 1:9).”

Secondly, Micah point-blank says in verse 7, “All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces.” They were idolaters.

Knowing God’s hatred of idolatry, the men such as Martin Luther and John Calvin removed many statues and stain glass windows from their churches. They understood that representations of Jesus, Mary, and the saints did not further worship because the minimized God. Calvin noted,

For surely there is nothing less fitting than to wish to reduce God, who is immeasurable and incomprehensible, to a five-foot measure.

https://www.amazon.com/Calvin-Institutes-Christian-Religion-Set/dp/0664220282/ref=sr_1_4?crid=1UUL3T52IM3P3&dchild=1&keywords=institutes+of+christian+religion+john+calvin&qid=1594138180&sprefix=institues+of+CHristian+re%2Caps%2C142&sr=8-4

When men and women assume God resides in a crucifix, a portrait, or a statues they do disservice to the Christian faith. God is grander, holier, and far more glorious than anything humanity can image. When the create images of the one true God, they do not represent God but rather the person’s limited concept of God. To worship an religious icon is to be worship an idol.

Though protestants must be aware of idols and seek to avoid them, most will not be undone by idols that sit atop of buildings. They will be destroyed by the idols that reside in the basement of their hearts. In Ezekiel 14:3, the prophet proclaimed,

There men have taken idols into their hearts, and set a stumbling block of iniquity before their faces.

Most churches do not come to an end because they hang a picture of Jesus in the pastor’s office. They come to an end because their members allow idols dominate their hearts which control the desires and actions.

The Dangers of Heart Idols

Brad Bigney helpful defines an idol as, “anything or anyone that captures our hearts, affections, and mind more than God.” Luther concurs writing, “Anything on which your heart relies and depends, I say that is really your God.” In short, we can worship a host of things ranging from sex to children to money, to vacations to suits at church to rap music. Anything we love so much that we get upset if we don’t have it and sin to attain it Is an idol.

How do we know if we are driven by idols instead of love?

We mistreat our families, our fellow Christians, and our neighbors. When people stop loving God, they stop loving people. Micah 3:3 describes the covetous people of Judah as follows:

You who hate the good and love the evil, who tear the skin from off my people and their flesh from off their bones, who eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones in pieces and chop them up like meat in a pot, like flesh in a cauldron.

When we slander people on Facebook to get our way at church, give the silent treatment to our kids to force them to do what we want, and consume our neighbor’s purity as we watch pornography videos, we reveal the presence of idols in our hearts. The church exists to deal with these and thousands of other idols through the preaching of the Word, counseling, and church discipline. But when the church stops battling these idols and allows them to fill its pews, it will die. God will tear down the congregation, allowing daycares to flourish where pulpits once stood.

Undoubtedly, most dying churches mistreat their members and their community as the gasp for survival. But ultimately, they do not die because they failed to hold Fall Festivals, embrace Facebook, or play the right music. They died because they stopped worshiping God, exchanging the God of heaven from the slimy gods of this world.

The Results of Idolatry

Such an exchange is always a bad exchange because the gods of this world possess no loyalty to you. Micah notes that the idols represent the futility of human life. He proclaims,

All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces, all her wages shall be burned with fire, and all her idols I will lay waste, for from the fee of a prostitute she gathered them and to the fee of a prostitute they shall return.

To secure the gold needed to make idols, the ancient cult temples facilitated prostitution. The Jews worship sex and tithed to that cause. Their coins were melted down into idols. But their idols failed to protect, sustain, and guide them. When the Jews were taken into captivity, the idols were transformed back into coins. The coins were then handed to soldiers who took them back to their own temples exchanging them for sexual services. The same circle of life encompasses the idols of our hearts. The ties and suits, the furniture, the books, the shoes, and the cars that we fought, bleed, and sacrificed for will one day desert us. Our kids will host a garage sale selling all our prized possessions for a fraction of their actually cost so that they get a few dollars and finally get that pair of shoes, the second dream home, or that vacation that they have always wanted. Idols do not save. They destroy.

Now we return to our question, “Will my church die?”

Do you have idols in your heart?