CONTENTIOUS CHRISTIANITY Often when I enter a Christian chat room DQGVHHKRZWKHFRQYHUVDWLRQLVJRLQJFDQWKHOS - PDF document

1 CONTENTIOUS CHRISTIANITY Often when I enter a Christian chat room, and see how the conversation is going, I can’t help but wonder what has gone wrong with Christianity when we see that many people talking to each other in the way they do. T wo things in particular stand out to me. There is always one or two people who pro fess with great gusto that they are the final word on Christian doctrine. They are convinced they have all truth, but if anyone disagrees with what they say, they openly insult them, demean them, and call them names, all with shocking arrogance . I’d like t o direct this open letter to them, then will invite them to read it. It will be on my website. I won’t beat around the bush, but will speak to you as open and direct as you are accustomed to . One of Satan’s greatest strategies in his attempt to defeat Chr istianity is to distort it. He knows us well and it doesn’t take a great deal of effort on His part. He just winds up our old sin nature and turns us loose, we do the rest. Have you ever watched an alleged Christian chat room? You can see upwards of a doze n different denominations with each attempting to discredit the others. They spend hours upholding their own denomination but casting aspersions on everyone else, and the sad part is that not a single one of those denominations can be found in scripture. T hey missed the entire point. If you are suc cessful and prove someone wrong while in the process you called them names and cut them down, humiliating them in every way possible what did you gain? They would flee from any God you represent as fast as they could. You are doing the exact opposite of what the bible taught, yet you are trying to convince them that your denomination has the right “truth”. Did you miss the fact that Jesus is both love and truth ? Stop and think what an utter waste of time it is t o try and prove someone wrong? If they finally believed you, they still wouldn’t know what to do that’s right. You forgot to tell them that. For instance, they joined that denomination because they thought they would find there a loving God, who could fi ll their hearts with His peace, His joy, His love and understanding. A God who cares about them, who gave His life to set them free, and fill them with Himself. That’s what they were looking for, they just didn’t know how to find it. Now if you have this message of life they were looking for in the first place, but you talk to them the way you do, why would they want to hear what you have to say? In their mind, what you “are” speaks so loudly they can’t hear what you say. . If they see that what you profes s didn’t change you, they will shut you off . If you are saved, you were called to help fulfill the Great Commission. Is that what you think you are doing? Did the bible say to go into all the world and call them names till they repent ? Never. We are to s pread the good news that the one almighty God, unknowable since Adam, has come into the world in human form to redeem us by His death for us, so He could save us by His life in us. If He does that, He also transforms your heart and gives you spiritual eyes , to see others like He sees them. We don’t see what is wrong with people and mock them for it. We see what they could be if they gave their lives to Christ and were filled with His love and compassion. If you were changed inside when Jesus came alive in y ou, If you really started seeing others like God sees them, you would be far more concerned about getting them into God’s family and eternity than just cutting them down. 2 Don’t you know that every true Christian who has come alive and seen the saving lif e of Christ change them from the fleshly person they were to a loving compassionate person He is making of them, can see very clearly what you are and what you are not ? . All of your years of studying doctrines are worthless until your life represents what the doctrinal truths describe. You have it backwards, you think all the deep spiritual knowledge is what makes you a Christian. You are wrong. It does the same thing that law did for the Jews . Like Paul says , It just shows you how crooked you are but doesn ’t provide the means to change you . Your doctrine doesn’t enable you to live a Christ life. Your Dependence on the Spirit inside you, enables you to live the doctrines you study, but it will be thru love and not a nasty disposition. Scripture says it plai nly in Jn 5 39. “You search the scriptures wherein you think you will find eternal life, but you won’t come to me that you might have that life”. All you will do is attempt by fleshly means to produce what you can’t produce. It’s backwards. It takes a liv ing Spirit of God, residing inside you, with your faith in Him, and your surrender to Him, that changes you into the image of Jesus . A s He does, then He himself produces thru you what He is . That is how the Doctrines you preach are able to be lived out. Th ey are the “result” of a Christ life, not the means to it. , To learn scripture, then try to live the scripture does nothing more than show you that you can’t do it. That is as it should be. When you discover you can’t, then you can move on to the next s tep that He can. It has to be Christ alive inside you changing you into what He is, with you letting Him run the show, and as you watch His Spirit change you, and you start seeing that He is the one living His own life thru you, you start seeing that Its H e, not you who lives the Christian life. It is He who is the cause of His own effect, the dynamic of His own demands, because He is the vine, and the vine produces the life which has to produce the fruit. You are the branch, the conduit thru which the vine sends His life to touch the lives of others. This is where true humility comes from in a believer. As soon as we realize that we received a free gift of life and merely had to abide in the vine, we start to get the message. We can’t give life, only transp ort it from the vine to the fruit. We can’t change people spiritually, we can only point them to He who does the changing. When others get the impression that you think that you are so far above others that you need to call them names and insult them fo r not agreeing with you, you are simply showing them that you don’t have the ability to see with Spiritual eyes, or you would never have the audacity to talk to others like that. If the Spirit is in you and functioning, you will be living God’s agape love. If the Spirit is not living thru you, the love won’t be there, and what is left at best is a carnal Christian who hasn’t had his pride and arrogance tempered by Christ’s love, and the result is a Pharisee who hammers people with scripture but can’t live w hat he teaches. Did you maybe Miss God’s description in the bible of how important we are? Let me refresh your memory. He says that we have NO righteousness of our own, that all our righteousness is as filthy rags. One version calls it dung. Now with that description from God telling us how we are without Him, why have you decided to put yourself above others so far that you can look dow n on them and insult them? Scripture says very plainly that t he only thing about you and I that is worth saving is what Christ is in us and what He is able to do thru us , and even that was a gift. We didn’t earn it or deserve it. It was grace. This above description actually dawns on us, much like it did Isaiah and Jeremiah when they saw themselves for what they were when faced with the righteousness of God. We start to see that the only reason we are left here on this earth instead of the etern al life we were designed for is to learn these lessons. To see what we are not, and then see what we can be in Him. Part 3 of salvation is our learning to reckon ourselves dead with Jesus on the cross and leave our human works there, moving into His life, lo ck stock and barrel. Now if you really want to impress someone , leave your ego at home and take Jesus in there and show Him to them. Let Him love those other chatters with His love. Not taking offense when insulted but learn how to smile and return a kind word in the face in insults and slurs. Be the mirror that they see Jesus thru. Love with His love. Take yourself off the throne and put Him on. Take all your lectures about doctrinal truths and shelve them till you can live it. T hen share with them what wi ll set them free as you live out what you’re sharing . Watch lives respond to that kind of message. When you do, life happens. God, by His Spirit will start arranging for you to meet up with people with hungry hearts, and His Spirit alive inside you will arrange the discussion so that totally naturally, the conversation will swing around to where God’s Spirit can use you to share with that hungry heart the loving God that you know and love, and the hungry heart will hear the Good news that they have been s earching for, their human Spirit will be made alive by Jesus Spirit and thru you, Jesus will have awakened another soul and headed them towards heaven. Christ’s Spirit living in you produces love. Unconditional love. Unconditional love is a love that doe sn’t quit or give up. It’s seeing others with God’s eyes, and not responding to their negative attitude towards us, but loving them anyway. We don’t have that kind of love. Only God does. God’s love isn’t arguing in support of your doctrinal views and call ing others names who don’t agree. That’s pride and vanity and arrogance. Why should they set aside their beliefs and accept yours? You can’t change people, God changes people. If they saw coming from you what they would see from Jesus, then the Spirit woul d change their mind. In chat rooms, people think that their right doctrinal view will be the deciding factor in what people believe but it’s not. Your attitude is. If your heart isn’t changed then it’s just a bunch of words that you can’t live. Recently I heard a professing unbeliever say to another chat member, “ Even if you are right, if your God produces what you are, then I would never want your God ” . Do you see what happened there? He wasn’t expressing what God truly is, He was on an ego trip and He w as his own hero . You don’t appear to be able to discuss an opposing viewpoint while maintaining respect and kindness, gentleness towards the other person . What prompts you to desire to throw in a few cutting belittling remarks when someone disagrees with y ou? If you can’t live what you teach, it’s best not to wear your Jesus tee - shirt implying that you are His representative, or Christian. Better to be quiet and hope they don’t discover what you don’t have inside. Your doctrinal correctness will never get you into heaven. Your heart will. And what comes from your heart will tell the world who is controlling it. Why did the crowds follow Jesus by the thousands and listen to what He had to say? Because what He had to say matched what He did, and what He did was what He was. He loved others because He WAS love , He met their needs. This was the whole idea behind the Christian faith being lived by the indwelling Spirit of God from within the man. It empowers us to love a s He loved because it IS Him loving thru us. When this love comes from a changed heart, then people will see the difference in us, not because we are so good, but because He loves thru us for the same reason, that’s what we ARE. The only ones He was harsh with were the Pharisees because they had taken God’s law and distorted it far beyond what it was intended to be. It’s interesting what He called them . It was 4 “whitewashed tombstones”. The appearance of white on the outside but inside they are full of dead men’s bones” . Matter of fact many of us act more like a Pharisee than we do like Jesus. Don’t be the Pharisee. How you treat people is far more important than your “correct doctrine”. It’s amazing how quickly humility will transmit itself, even in writi ng, even over the internet. If you have a deep concern for someone who is in a bad denomination, the absolutely worst thing you can do is to try and discredit their church in hopes of turning them against it. It will only make them more defensive and mad a t you. People are not driven to Jesus, they are drawn to Him. Jesus had the formula. Make sure they hear the good news about how God set them free. That’s all you need. The God shaped vacuum inside them that made them seek a spiritual relationship in the first place can make what you shared sound more attractive to them and they will see the wrong in their church by seeing what’s right in knowing Jesus. It has to be the Spirit that changes their mind, and you will then be their friend, since it was you who shared the words of life with them.