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Throughout history, God’s people have groaned and sighed waiting for the return of Jesus to rescue them from the perversity and wickedness of the age in which they live. The word Maranatha provides us the hope that He will return, rescue us from this chaotic world, and then takes us with Him to Heaven, to be the sons and daughters of God.
Barry Denzil Haney, MD
Scripture
Feed the flock of God, which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; Neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock.
1 Peter 5:2-3
Reflection
Although most would agree, our world is in a moral crisis, the crisis is also largely one of leadership. When looking at the political landscape in this country, seen through a continuous 24/7 news cycle mantra, no one appears to have the integrity, character, or personality to take on the leadership role our world so desperately needs to unify people behind a set of common goals and strategies. Instead, the political feeding cycle frenzy is exacerbating the crisis of leadership, polarizing people, putting the nation and world into gridlock, where nothing is getting done.
This same leadership crisis is affecting our churches. Today culture appears to have a greater impact on the world around us than church does. The church appears to be losing its voice. For the church to make a difference, the church needs to create programs for leadership development that are forward thinking. The church must train leaders to be missional, principled, and visionary to face the pressures from the secular world.
We need leaders to rise to face the chaos all around us. All you need to do is turn on the news, something I don’t recommend, and see erupting chaos in the streets of our cities and around the world. But this chaos is not confined to our big cities, it is happening in our own back yards, our neighborhoods. Uncontrolled drug addiction, addictions of all kinds, child sex slave trafficking, child abuse, spouse abuse, domestic violence, all of these are happening daily on the streets of Georgetown.
Folks, people are hurting and crying out for help, looking for hope, but unfortunately for many looking for hope in the wrong places.
Not only is this seemingly, uncontrolled chaos threatening the stability of our nation, but there is tremendous pressure from the secular world to compromise the inerrant Word of God. We often seem to be out of step with the world… now, the world appears to be focused on how to define the word gender.
We understand there are lost people throughout the world, including our own neighborhoods, and even our families.
The Gospel is veiled to billions throughout the world. The Great Deceiver has blinded the minds of unbelievers.
The pandemic has created an urgency for the unsaved who want hope and we have it in our testaments and our Jesus. Remember, Jesus is the subject!
Men of God, men of faith it is a privilege to handle the Word of God. We should never take for granted the honor and privilege of handling God’s Word. Let us be leaders and go out into the world and proclaim the good news of the Gospel. Through the work of Jesus, we can spend an eternity with our creator God in Heaven!
Illustration
Harry Truman once commented on the importance of polls to leadership, with the following insight: “I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he’d taken a poll in Egypt? What would Jesus Christ have preached if he’d taken a poll in Israel? Where would the Reformation have gone if Martin Luther had taken a poll? It isn’t the polls or public opinion of the moment that counts. It is right and wrong and leadership—men with fortitude, honesty, and a belief in the right—that makes epochs in the history of the world.(Green)
Prayer
Our Heavenly Father,
Thank you for a leader’s faith!
Help us to be stable and steadfast
no matter what adversity we might face,
remembering you will always come through!
Thank you for Your unchanging nature!
Thank you for the hope You provide us
that never changes. Thank you for Your
gift of salvation, Your bountiful grace!
In the precious name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior,
Let us be clear, we are in a spiritual battle! Satan is a deceiver, liar, murderer, accuser, tempter, destroyer, evil one. His purpose is to drag us to Hell with him. He was defeated by the work of Jesus and is condemned to spend an eternity in Hell and wants to take each of us with him. As the Bible tells us, he is wily, methodical and uses elaborate, complex snares and devices to accomplish this task. But with the full armor of God, we can withstand these attacks by Satan. We can instead choose to spread the good news of the gospel to everyone we meet and be the light and salt to the world of God’s hope to the lost. We need to stop negotiating and partnering with the world!
Barry Denzil Haney, MD
Scripture
Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;
2 Corinthians 4:1-9
Reflection
Alexander Graham Bell said this:
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us. Defeat is nothing but education; it is the first step towards something better.”
Many in today’s world view a closed door as a missed opportunity, and in doing so miss the other options that exist. They instead quit, accepting the failure or set-back. They fail to see the thing missed out on may not have been what was right for them at that time.
The Bible talks about closed doors. God sometimes closes doors in our life to redirect us. One of the hardest things for a Christian to accept is things happen in God’s time not ours.
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; (Ecclesiastes 3:1)
God sometimes closes doors to protect us from a decision we have made he knows will harm us. God may close a door because He is telling us no, directing us to move on. When He closes a door, he may be reminding us we have taken our eyes off Him, telling us He is in control not us.
God knows we are sometimes “stiff-necked”. When we are stiff-necked, extremism is often one of our recurring faults. Extremism often leads to failure which saddens God.
One of the greatest verses in the Bible gives us the hope we have in Jesus:
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
But because we are stiff-necked, we tend to believe in one of the following: extreme grace or extreme faith. Those in the extreme grace camp become passive that ends up in lasciviousness. They believe there is no need for them to do anything, they do not need to go to church, they do not need to pray, they can do anything they want to do because they are saved by grace. Those in the extreme faith camp believe they need to control and make God do something. They believe they can do this by their works, a form of legalism, by their faith they will make God do something.
Extremism leads to error and ultimately failure. As Christian we need to discover the fine balance between grace and faith. Grace is what God has already done for us before we ever existed, faith is our response to what God has already done. The glory of God is the manifestation of His grace that depends entirely on faith. Do you believe? Your response needs to be, “I do believe”. You then need to surround yourselves with things that show this, the full armor of God.
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel, For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. (Ephesians 6:10-20)
Church, prayer, scripture reading, relationship with Christian friends, all are part of the armor of God to help us overcome whatever addiction is separating us from a relationship with God. When trying to defeat Satan’s snare, it often is an uphill battle but one that can be overcome with the help of the Holy Spirit. All we need to do is ask and the door will be open!
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Matthew 7:7-8
True Christianity isn’t about me living for Jesus which generates pride, it’s about letting Jesus live through me.We need to live from Jesus not for Jesus. Extremism closes the door to the fruits of the Spirit, the living waters flowing through us. The secular world, driven by Satan’s lies and deceptions, is responsible for extremism in today’s church. They are attempting to divide the Church. Let us not allow Satan to divide us and prevent us from sharing the good news of the Gospel to the unsaved!
Rebecca Pippert wrote, “As our cultural landscape becomes increasingly secular, secularism does not have the power to erase our human longings for meaning and worth. If anything, it increases them…. So even if people can’t quite articulate what they feel they are missing, the longing and wistfulness are there. But they will not know where to look unless Christians both live and tell the good news of what God has done for all in Christ.”
We need to be the salt and light of the world. We need to be involved politically and spiritually in our communities. We must engage the secular world and stand for religious freedom. We must be bold in proclaiming the Good News of the Gospel, bold like the atheists, agnostics, and Marxists on our college campuses today who are attempting to spread the lies and deceptions of Satan to our youth, in a brazen attempt by Satan to drag our children to hell with him!
Illustration
The story has been told of a mental hospital that many years ago devised an unusual test to determine when their patients were ready to go back into the world. They brought a candidate for release to a room where a water faucet was left on so that the sink overflowed and was pouring water all over the floor. Then they handed the patient a mop and told him to mop up the water. If the patient had enough sense to turn off the faucet before mopping up the water, he was ready to be released. But if, as in the case of many, the patient started mopping while the water was still flowing, they kept the patient for more treatment.
As Christians, all of us face the world in which we live and are confronted with the need to do battle with the evil that dominates it. But, like the patients in the mental hospital, until we realize where the source of that evil is, we will make no real contribution. To see less evil in the world means that we must conquer the evil that is pouring forth from our own heart. That is conversion. Then, to deal with the evil around us, we need a “mop and bucket,” the spiritual armor that God has provided for us.(Green)
Prayer
Our Heavenly Father,
Thank you opening the door, the open door to Heaven!
Faith is the opening you give us to Heaven, through
Your Son Jesus! Thank you for this gift of salvation, to
protect us from extremism of grace and faith!
Because Satan is alive and well, we will put on the
full armor of God to protect us from Satan’s lies!
Help us to be the salt and light of the world.
Help us to remain involved in our communities.
Help us remain engaged with the secular world and
stand for religious freedom. Help us to remain bold
and proclaim the Good News of the Gospel, to the
entire world about the hope we have in Jesus.
In the precious name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior,
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