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Spiritual Eating Disorders, Pt 1

10/16/2016

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​Our media and our culture here in the United States has tried to fill our minds with pictures of what the ideal person should look like. The person that is attractive and beautiful is one who is "skinny" and not overweight. This has led to a lot of problems. People (especially women) who feel like they are not meeting the ideal picture that our culture gives them of how they should look, start to feel too self-conscious, and this leads them to starving themselves and developing eating disorders so they can get back to the ideal weight. These eating disorders are dangerous. Let's look at two of them for a moment.
 
Anorexia (The Physical Disorder)

Anorexia is a serious, potentially deadly medical disorder characterized by self-starvation, eventually leading to significant energy and nutrient deficiencies, cardiovascular problems, bone problems, and muscle and organ wasting. About 10-20% of people (most women) that suffer from this disorder will die because of the complications it brings.
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Spiritual Anorexia

We may understand how dangerous this disorder is to our physical bodies, but unfortunately, it would surprise me if many Christians have anorexia's spiritual counterpart. Let me explain:
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What is our food spiritually? It is God's word. It is described in the scriptures as something that we need to hunger for, and it is described as meat and milk. It is as sweet as honey. How often do we look at the scriptures as something that we must feed upon if we want to be healthy spiritually? That is why I am convinced that there is a spiritual counterpart to this eating disorders, and many Christians have suffered from it, including myself. The enemy has been incredibly successful in spreading it. 

Everyone can get Spiritual Anorexia. This spiritual disorder has led to countless families falling apart; and countless Christians falling away from the Lord. So what is it?
 
Spiritual anorexia is an aversion to reading the Scriptures.
 
We have all seen tragic pictures of starving children in third world countries. Many of them don't have the strength to even stand up. Anorexic Christians are the same spiritually as those children are physically. Why? They both lack nutritious food!
 
The words of Jesus in Matthew 4:4 make the point about the scriptures that "Man does not live on bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."
 
Deuteronomy 32:46-47 says: "Set your hearts on all the words which I testify among you today, which you shall command your children to be careful to observe—all the words of this law. For it is not a futile thing for you, because it is your life"
 
Do we really believe this to be true? Moses here is talking about the Law. If this is the case for the Law of Moses, how much MORE is it the case for the New Testament scriptures? How often do we feed on the scriptures?
 
One of Satan's greatest tactics that he uses to keep us ineffective is to keep us out of the scriptures. It wouldn't surprise me if this is his primary goal in approaching Christians. He is relentless in giving us reasons and temptations not to read God's word. He wants us spiritually anorexic.
 
We often say things about the scriptures. We say we hunger for the word of God, that we love it, we treasure it, we respect it. It is a guide for our feet and a light to our path. That is all fine and good, but how much do we actually feed on it. How often do we read it and study it?
 
Satan doesn't care about how much we say we hunger fo, revere, and love God's word. As long as we are not feeding on it, he has already won.
 
We would never think of skipping a meal or two each day, but why do we so easily make the decision to skip a meal, or multiple meals spiritually? We skip meals, then we wonder why we are falling into temptation and feel weak, lazy, depressed, and luke-warm spiritually.
 
We need daily reminders of who God is and what He is capable of. We need daily reminders of what is right and wrong so we can face our battles equipped. We need to strengthen our convictions and evaluate ourselves and where we stand in the faith by feeding on God's word.
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How NOT TO Study the Subject of Baptism

9/20/2016

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I have studied the issue of baptism with many people over the years. There is one thing that ends up happening most of the time that makes it impossible for people to accept the view that I hold on baptism, and as I am discussing this issue with many people, I see this error many times. The error is this: Even though we may be discussing the subject of water baptism, the majority of the time, the person I am debating instead wants to change the subject from baptism to the subjects of faith and grace.

You may be asking why this is a problem? Here is the main reason: we are trying to find God's will about baptism, not faith and grace. What so often happens in these discussions is that the person I am talking to finds it impossible to accept what the passages say about baptism (or even retranslate the passages) because they are looking at all of the passages through the lens of their "faith alone" beliefs. This is a dangerous way to study scripture! (This approach is also logically fallacious. The ‘red herring fallacy’ is committed in this instance.)

Whenever you want to learn what the Bible teaches on the subject of the Lord's Supper, do we look at all of the verses on other subjects? Whenever you want to learn what the Bible teaches on the subject of repentance, should we look at the verses dealing with confessing Christ? No, instead, if we want to know what God's word teaches on a certain subject, we study what the Bible says on that specific subject! If we want to know what repentance is, we need to first discuss all of the passages that talk about repentance. If we want to discuss or debate the subject of faith, we need to examine all of the passages that talk about faith. And if we want to discuss the topic of baptism, we need to deal with the specific passage that mention or allude to water baptism.

Only after we do this, then we should try to harmonize what the Bible teaches about faith and grace and baptism. We should not allow the passages on one subject to lead us to retranslate the passages on another subject to mean the opposite of what they currently say in all of our translations unless we have first studied those passages and made sure that there is no possible way to harmonize them. We do this with any other supposed contradiction in scripture, why not do it on this subject also? Why assume that if scripture says baptism is the point our sins are remitted that this contradicts the idea of being saved by grace through faith?

At times, when we study the Bible, we are way too quick to assume that the Bible cannot mean what it says on some subjects. In my opinion, this is commonly the case regarding the subject of water baptism. When the passages are taken at face value, they do exalt God's work in baptism way above what the majority evangelical Christians believe about the issue. 
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A Study of Bible Authority, Pt 1

9/9/2016

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Our Goal As Disciples of Christ

What is our goal as Christians? Why is it that we do what we do? How we answer this question is important. We need to have the right reason as to why we choose to do what we do in service and worship to God. I believe the Apostle Paul sums up pretty well what that reason should be in 2 Corinthians 5:9:
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“Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.”

In everything we do, is this our desire? This needs to be the motivation we have in approaching the will of God and the Authority of Christ. Each one of us as Christians must make it our goal and aim to be pleasing to Him in EVERYTHING we do. This must be where we begin any discussion about Bible authority because we need to remember what our goal is. In our worship, in the organization of the local church,  in evangelism, and in every aspect of our lives, our goal must be to please the Lord. The question that always must be asked is, "Does this please Him? Does this action please our King?" 

Then once we ask this question, we must find the answer. And in order to do so, there are many places we do not primarily go to get it:
  • Our feelings or intuition. No matter where we believe these feelings are coming from, they are not the ultimate source of authority. Saying “I feel God would like it if we do this” when God does not speak on the matter or says something else on the matter is dangerous. Our feelings are not King. 
  • What we have always done as a church. Traditions are not our King. They must be submitted to what He says also. Just because we have done something a certain way for so wrong does not make it right.
  • What our families have always believed. Our parents, grandparents, and other families members are not our King either. Pleasing them in our beliefs and practices must not be our primary concern. When we become Christians, we make the decision to take Jesus’ words above even what those closest to us say. Jesus says, “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26) Our allegiance to Him as King needs to far surpass our allegiance to anyone else.
  • What preachers and elders say. Even those who we look up to and respect in the church are not the King of our lives. If they say, "do this" and it contradicts scripture, we cannot do it! 
These things are not how we find out what is pleasing to our King Jesus. 

Paul told the Colossians in 1:9-10 that he prayed that they would “be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding" and that they "may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God…”
If we want to be fully pleasing to God, we need to be filled with the knowledge of His will. But where do we get this knowledge? The only way in which we can “be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding…and increasing in the knowledge of God…” is to, as Paul says in Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom…” Only the word of Christ given through His Apostles and Prophets can equip us with the knowledge we need to be pleasing to God. We cannot know whether anything is pleasing or displeasing to God unless He reveals it to us in His word. 
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