Recently I came across this video of John MacArthur and Kirk Cameron discussing how salvation is impossible in every sense outside of the sovereign grace and love of Jesus Christ.  It is a powerful story.  I think you’ll find it worthwhile and uplifting.  And if you don’t know Christ, it could even change your life!

According to an annual report released Wednesday by LifeWay, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC),  the number of people baptized in Southern Baptist churches fell for the third straight year in 2007 to the denomination’s lowest level since 1987.  Membership dipped slightly as well.  The dropping number of followers in the SBC — the nation’s largest Protestant denomination — reflects a trend seen in other mainline Protestant churches. 

While various reasons for this are suggested, I cannot help but wonder if at least part of the blame for this trend shouldn’t rest on the churches themselves.  American churches in general seem to have exchanged the true gospel for a watered-down version that portrays God as a sort of weak, pathetic character who “is something like a Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: he is always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process.” So say sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, who conducted an extensive survey of the attitudes and beliefs of Christian teenagers in America.

I have observed this proclaimed from the pulpit in recent years.  I will never forget the statement one pastor made from the pulpit a few years ago of a God who pitifully “pleads” for help from His followers, unable to step beyond “an imaginary line that He Himself has drawn.”  For effect, this part of the message was interspersed with tearful whimpers and outstretched arms to illustrate God as He pleaded with the prophet Isaiah for help.  I couldn’t help but recoil at such an inaccurate portrayal of the omnipotent, transcendent Lord of the universe.  But this is not an isolated incident.  Even the president of a very large Protestant denomination has recently written that God is “struggling along with disobedient men, doing the best He can to convert them, but not able to accomplish His purpose.”  Such a god would seem to call forth, NOT our worship, but our pity.  No wonder the typical American no longer fears God, and sees the church as irrelevant.  Instead of a thrice-holy Lord, sitting upon His throne high and lifted up (cf. Isaiah 6:1), God the Father is portrayed as a weakling, and Jesus as our “buddy” whose only purpose is to help us live a moral life.  Away with this nonsense!  The God of Scripture is instead a “transcendant God, untamable and wholly unlike us.”

In the study already mentioned above, Smith and Denton,  sociologists with the National Study of Youth and Religion, offer the following, rather grim diagnosis:

It is not so much that U.S. Christianity is being secularized.  Rather more subtly, Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith.  (Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 171)

According to Timothy George, founding Dean of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama, “We live in a transcendence-starved culture, and a transcendence-starved evangelicalism.  We’ve so dumbed down the gospel and dumbed down worship in a good effort to reach as many people as we can that there’s almost a backlash.  It comes from this great hunger for a genuinely God-centered, transendence-focused understanding of who God is and what God wants us to do and what God has given us in Jesus Christ.”  

My prayer is that Christians everywhere would pick up their Bibles and study… That they would stop entertaining such low views of God and such high views of themselves… That they would be renewed in their passion for sharing Christ with a lost world with the full knowledge that the Lord’s hand is not so shortened that it cannot save (Isaiah 59:1).  “Is the Lord’s power limited?” (Numbers 11:23).  Absolutely not!  We can share Christ with the confidence that He will save a people for His name.  We just need to act in obedience to His command, for Jesus said, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.  Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” 

It’s high time for American Christians to wake up and quit playing around with eternal matters.  We must proclaim the gospel accurately and faithfully.  We must recover our theology, including our doctrine of God and our doctrine of salvation, from the Bible.  “Pop” Christianity and its myriad of false, unbiblical teachings must be tossed in the trash where they belong.  God help us… Lord, send revival to your church!

Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers, began every season with a team meeting. Scanning both the veteran and rookie players surrounding him, he would hold a football high above his head so that each player could see it. With all eyes fixed on him, he simply said: “Gentlemen, this is a football.”

Such was Coach Lombardi’s way of reminding all of his players that success begins (and ends) with the basics–the “fundamentals” of the game. While that may seem perhaps a little oversimplified, it succinctly illustrates the need for each player to master the core fundamentals before moving on to more complex aspects of the game.

This concept applies equally well, if not more so, to the Christian life:  If we ever begin to neglect the basics of prayer, Bible study, fellowship with other believers, etc., it’s only a matter of time before we end up “stepping into stupid” (as I heard one preacher put it).  Fact is, I’ve observed this principle time and time again in my own life and in the lives of others.  When a Christian man or woman begins neglecting these “fundamentals” of the Christian life, they’re headed for a downfall in life–defeat is not far away.  This is why we can never, in a sense, “master” the fundamental disciplines of private prayer, Bible study, fellowship, etc. in the Christian life.  We will never reach a point where we can say, “Whew!  I finally got THOSE out of the way… Now I can move on to the more important stuff!”  No!  The spiritual disciplines ARE the important stuff.  If you don’t have those, you can’t keep anything else.  But don’t get me wrong: we don’t practice those disciplines as an end in themselves, or to win favor with God.  We practice them as a means of getting to know God better, and to grow in the Christian life in a way that’s pleasing to God.  THAT’S why we practice the disciplines–because we love Christ and want to know Him better.  So we can say with the apostle Paul, “I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ…” (Philippians 3:8, NASB).  What about you?  Are you practicing the basics… the “fundamentals” of the Christian life??  “Gentlemen, this is a Bible…”

“Our theology has to be so real that we will, by faith, believe that God is good, even in the midst of adversity.” – Kathy Ferguson

In the process of preparing lessons on the topic of “Tough Questions” in life, I’ve been reflecting a lot on what C.S. Lewis called “the problem of pain.” When faced with overwhelming evil and suffering in this fallen world, our natural inclination is to ask God, “Why?” In the midst of our pain, doubts may threaten our faith by causing us to question the goodness or love of God. How we handle such doubts and questions is critically important if we are to weather the storms of life. Our theology must be biblical and solid. In his book, How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil, evangelical scholar D.A. Carson reminds us:

Christian beliefs are not to be stacked into the warehouse of the mind; they are to be handled and applied to the challenges of life and discipleship. Otherwise they are incapable of bringing comfort and stability, godliness and courage, humility and joy, holiness and faith.

One person whose strong faith in God and solid biblical theology sustained her through a particularly difficult storm of life is my friend and co-worker, Kathy Ferguson. Kathy lost her husband, pastor Rick Ferguson, in a tragic auto accident. This is her powerful story…