When in doubt, DIG!
(OK, this is a bit longer than normal but I pray that you’ll be blessed by this vital teaching laid on my heart this morning.)
Even highly motivated pastors can fall into the trap of a sour-grapes attitude when congregations don’t believe their biblically sound teaching is true to God’s will.
Instead of carrying on with humble, loving ministry during this season of congregational dispute, some pastors sometimes became withdrawn or choose to go on the offensive, as in being offensive to anybody who doesn’t agree with them.
“They don’t agree with me, even though I’m teaching the Word accurately? What’s the use for me to share this stuff about Jesus? If my own church won’t embrace the truth as I teach it, then why should I share it with anybody else?” some pastors/preachers/ministers might think.
Pastors are human and encountering such frustrations is to be expected.
Embracing the Enemy’s whispered suggestions to gripe is another matter, though.
Regardless of the resistance to the Truth that we might find in our closest circles, particularly at church, we are to ALWAYS look for simple, humble ways to share the love of Christ and His gospel with people we encounter, even the strangers that we might never see again.
I share this idea today because of the inspiration I gleaned last night from Acts 15:3. In our home Bible study on that chapter, we examined how the Apostle Paul and fellow preacher Barnabas had been involved with an intense theological debate within the Christian church at Antioch of Syria.
The topic was whether male converts to Christianity also had to be circumcised in keeping with the Jewish/Mosaic law. A number of converted Jews said, “Yes!” Paul and Barnabas said “No!”
You and I know, of course, that requiring circumcision as an additional condition of salvation is terribly false teaching that presumes that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was insufficient for the saving of man’s soul.
Surprisingly, the church leaders in Antioch didn’t put their foot down here.
They punted.
They said that they wanted the church leaders in Jerusalem to make the decision about what to tell the Christians.
Paul and Barnabas had to have known that this was a cop-out. They went along with the plan anyway, knowing that a final ruling from the Jerusalem leaders might put an end to the internal squabbling among Christians regarding the circumcision issue.
Here’s where the inspiration for me came this morning.
“The church sent them (Paul and Barnabas) on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the brothers very glad.”
The theological confusion afflicting their home church because of weak leadership had to have been SO disconcerting to Paul and Barnabas.
And to have to travel for weeks by foot to get official answers from Christianity’s mother church in Jerusalem might have seemed like a lot of hassle.
Remember, Paul and Barnabas had just returned from a long, exhausting missionary journey.
Rather than moan and groan about a trip that would end up with the answers Paul had already stated, the two preachers redeemed the time.
In fact, they allowed the joy, joy, joy, joy down in their hearts to celebrate the magnetic power and victories of the gospel.
Wherever and whenever they encounted believers enroute to Jerusalem, they shared how God had saved Gentile souls through the preaching and teaching of the Word.
Of course, every believer with a soft heart and a willing mind had to have praised the Lord.
I suppose that some Phoenician and Samarian Gentiles who heard the words of Paul and Barnabas might have responded to the gospel message. If this happened on the spot or as a later result of more excited Christians in those towns, then Romans 8:28 was clearly confirmed.
All things did work together for the good of those who loved the Lord and were called according to His purposes.
The Jerusalem trip that Satan intended as a frustrating distraction actually turned out to be an opportunity for vital ministry.
All because Paul and Barnabas looked for every opportunity to glorify God and to share testimony on the hope and blessings found in choosing Christ as Savior.
The application to your life?
Sometimes people will try to manipulate scripture in order to keep certain types of “undesirable” people out of the church.
We know that rotten attitudes and rotten theology is behind the scheme but we haven’t succeeded in changing their minds.
It’s easy to grow quite frustrated in such circumstances, particularly when the church leaders we counted on to defend the unbigoted truths of the gospel are instead caving into peer pressure from those who know which buttons to push.
We might have to wait for an opportunity to have other Christian leaders to get involved in order to mediate the theological conflict.
While we wait on the Lord to speak to the confused hearts, we cannot allow our frustration to steal our joy and our songs of testimony.
We are to keep sharing news of how God has been using us individually and changing lives, regardless of the garbage we face in our church lives.
Some of you are in churches where conflict is present. Some of you are in the midst of congregational firestorms because of flawed theology or because of the desire to drive certain people away.
Keep praying for God’s Word to have free reign in the hearts of church leaders.
Keep praying, too, for His Spirit to have free reign in your unhindered heart so that you’ll vibrantly share how you’ve seen God change lives in the past and how He continues offering to change lives in the present.
The Devil will hate it.
But God will love it.
And that’s what we want, right?
As always, I love you
Martin
