Funyuns And Skittles

Imagine someone that eats only once a week.  They are starving throughout the whole week and the only day they can eat, they eat a bag of Funyuns and a handful of Skittles.  It may be enjoyable to eat and taste good going down, but there is almost zero nutritional value and it isn't going to keep you full for very long.  This is the sort of empty-calorie fulfillment that is offered in many churches today.  Churches that are more about "program" than they are about worship.  And contrary to popular belief, "worship" is not singing along with the church band for the obligatory 3 or 4 songs before the next activity on the usual one-hour Sunday program.  Songs can be a form of praise, but only if done with the right heart, motives and intentions.

I recently read a quote that said, "A church can have all the programs in the world, but if the people aren't changing, all you have is religion....a show on Sunday."  All you have are Funyuns and Skittles.  Which means, no matter how well intended or implemented, all the church programs in the world will never fulfill the deep longing of the human soul for spiritual intimacy with their Creator through personal worship.  Yet, that is what so many people in the church clamor for nowadays.  They want a church that has a lot of good programs, good entertainment, and all sorts of fun and interesting activities for families and children.  Christians are spiritually starving and they are trying to fill themselves with the spiritual equivalent of Funyuns and Skittles.  That is, if they even bother to go to church at all.

In Milton's poem "Lycidas", he says, "The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed."  To this, A.W. Tozer said, "It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the kingdom, to see God's children starving while actually seated at the Father's table....To great sections of the Church the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the 'program.'  This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of public service which now passes for worship among us....For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in [daily] personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth."

The Apostle Paul said we should hunger for spiritual meat, but most people in the church are too distracted by the world and thus, content with their spiritual milk.  Spiritual milk doesn't force us to contemplate how we are living our lives, neither does it compel us to examine our faith, this is because spiritual milk is easy to digest, no chewing involved, just a little sip here and a little sip there.  It's as easy on our conscience as it is on our digestion, because in either case, not much effort is expended or involved.  Spiritual milk is a better fit for our busy, bustling lives because we can close it up in a container and carry it around with us as we go about our business.  Some of us don't even bother to put it in a nice glass, 'cuz we're way too busy for that, just pour it in a to-go cup with a lid and a straw and we're good for the week.  You can survive on spiritual milk, but you can't spiritually mature on it. 

The Apostle Paul told the Corinthians that he couldn't even speak to them about the deeper spiritual things because they were still babies, only able to sip milk, unable to bear solid spiritual food because they were still too worldly.  Spiritual meat is harder to digest and you have to chew on it a while before you can swallow it.  If you take too big of a bite at one time, you could even choke.  Spiritual meat is not a convenient, pre-packaged grab-and-go meal.  Spiritual meat requires an  investment of your time, your effort and your attention.  The American version of Christianity requires just a once-a-week investment of your time and virtually no investment of your effort and attention because we are too busy with our own lives to bother with God's kingdom.  We are too busy stuffing our face with Funyuns and Skittles.

"Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly--mere infants in Christ.  I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready.  You are still worldly." (1 Cor 3:1-3)

"About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.  In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again, and you have become those having need of milk and not strong meat!  For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.  But strong meat is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil." (Heb 5:11-14)

"Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity," (Heb 6:1)

Concept Christianity

All my life I imagined heaven as a blissful place, where there would be no hardship, no tears and no pain.  A place where I could live out the rest of eternity in complete personal satisfaction, doing only things that were interesting and fun and made me happy.  All my own happy things, in all my personal happiness.  Then I ruined that blissful image I had made up in my own mind when I read the Bible.  Because it was then that I learned that the heaven described in the Bible is not the heaven I had always anticipated. 

I've said this before and I will say it again, when you read the Bible in Its entirety, you are forced to reconcile all the misconceptions about God and Jesus that permeate the church today because people aren't reading their Bibles.  You don't have to read the Bible to be saved in Jesus Christ, but it should be considered required reading for all Christians that desire to love and follow God with all their heart, their soul, their mind and their strength (Luke 10:27) and to properly interact and function within the Body of Christ (2 Tim 3:16,17).  If the Holy Spirit is truly in you, and you read the Bible in genuine submission to It, then the very act of reading it will serve to refine you as a believer. 

One of the first things you learn about heaven when you read what God has to tell us about it, is that we will be praising and worshiping Him for all eternity.  We tend to make heaven all about us, but in all actuality, heaven is all about God.  I remember the first time I read, "..they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.  Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve Him day and night in His temple." (Rev 7:14,15).  When I read this I was like, "Whaaa...?  Day and night?  Serving God?  Seriously?  For.. All.. Eter..nity....?"  For real?

I gotta be totally honest, at the time I read that, I was kinda bummed.  That didn't sound fun and interesting to me at all because in my version of heaven, I was the one being served.  In my version of heaven, I did whatever I wanted, day and night, for all eternity.  I liked the part that said, "Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst....and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." (Rev 7:16,17).  I liked the part that said, "Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city." (Rev 22:14).  But I wasn't so crazy about, "The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve Him." (Rev 22:3).  I wanted to be in this glorious city, but I wanted to be in it on my own terms, doing my own thing.  But there it was in black and white:  If I was going to be in heaven, I wouldn't be there to do my own thing, I would be there to serve and worship God.  For all eternity.

Facing this truth forced me to ask myself many things, one of which being, "Am I following God because of religion, or am I following Him for a relationship?"  Was I really even following God at all?  Or was He more of an idea to me, than an actual person Who I was supposed to be interacting with on a daily basis?  I also had to consider the fact that if praising and serving God for all eternity sounded boring and tedious and no fun at all, then it made my lack of a genuine, personal relationship with Him glaringly obvious.  Another thing I was forced to ask myself was, "Is the love I thought I had for God, actually just my love for all the other things that are supposed to come along with Him-- not only here on earth, but also in heaven?"  I had to ask myself, "If I am not living a life that eagerly praises and worships God here, then why would I think I would want to do it in heaven?" 

Truly, God desires to give us good things, but first and foremost God's deepest desire for us is to pursue and have an intimate relationship with Him.  This is the very reason for which we were made.  The whole purpose of the creation of human beings was because God desired to have children He could have an eternal relationship with.  Children that would love and obey Him by their own free will, because they choose to love and obey Him.  And because we were designed and created for this singular and sole purpose, nothing else could ever be heaven for us, nothing else could ever truly fill us with eternal joy and bliss, except to love Him, to praise Him, and to serve Him.

Scripture says that heaven is inconceivably wonderful, we are told that "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him." (1 Cor 2:9).  However, if  the thought of praising God and serving Him for all eternity while we are there doesn't fill us with joyful anticipation, then it should serve as a litmus test for where we're at in our walk of faith.  For me, it was the wake-up call I needed to once-and-for-all get serious about my own faith-- to be a Christian in practice, rather than just a Christian in concept. 

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.  And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, 'Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.' " (Rev 21:1-4).

Christ In You

I'm sorry that my blog seems so bleak at times.  I really am, but I cannot, and will never, peddle the word of God for profit like so many of those in ministry today.  I will never be one of those popular ministers that claims "victory over you in the name of Jesus!" or tells you how financially prosperous God surely wants you to be.  There are too many in the church today that clamor for such messages that soothe their ears, while the world falls into anarchy and destruction all around them.

Messages of God's abundant grace and spiritual inspiration to even the most lukewarm believer can be found today through no great effort, but messages about God's fearsome wrath toward sin are far and few between.  The reason we find ourselves in today's wanton and licentious culture is because the church, as a whole, has utterly lost its reverential fear and awe of the holy God it claims to serve.  We have sex outside of marriage, we have multiple divorces, we gossip and slander, we lust after money, we lust after our own image, we lust after comfort, we lust after entertainment, we praise God on Sunday and fall into indifference, distraction and self-pursuit the rest of the week.  And when I say "we" I'm not talking about the world, I'm talking about the church.  And then we cry out to God about men being able to use women's restrooms, like we don't have any idea how we reached this point of insanity. 

Things are going to get worse, I wish I didn't have to say that, but I do because that truth is like a fire in my bones.  Judgment is coming to this nation and our phones, Facebook, favorite music interests, favorite TV shows, makeup, fashionable clothes, favorite movies and movie stars, and all the numerous other frivolous and wasteful ways we spend our time, energy and attention, are not going to save us and neither will they matter when the gavel hits the bench.  Neither will our religious methodology or degrees or endless programs or denominational busy-work.  

When Jesus was asked, "Teacher, which commandment is the greatest in the Law?"  He responded, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment." (Matt 22:36-38).  When we love God with all our heart, soul and mind, there is no room for anything else.  However, such correctly-directed love enables us to correctly distribute it to everything else in our life.  Now is the time to fall on our face before the holy and awesome God we claim to worship, to humble ourselves and repent of all the things that we have allowed to take His rightful place in our lives.  Now is the time to stop following Christ with a divided heart-- one half devoted to personal pursuits, the other half reaching out towards God.  Now is the time to empty our hands and minds which are full of the things of the world.  We are drowning in idolatry, blind to our own spiritual nakedness-- that is my message and I'm sorry no one wants to hear it, but it must be said.  We are in the time of the wise and foolish virgins and I plead with everyone to fill your lamps. 

Right now, the burden upon my spirit is to speak repentance and to encourage all those who claim Christ to come out of the world (Rev 18:3-5).  The only words of hope I can give are to those that desire to turn away from their sin and put their faith in Jesus Christ.  And those words of hope are the glorious spiritual riches of "Christ in you, the hope of glory." (Col 1:27).  I proclaim Christ, and I admonish, counsel, teach and warn everyone in all wisdom, to present every person complete in Christ, "For this purpose I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me." (Col 1:28,29).  Let us all live lives worthy of our calling and stop living lives that take the precious blood of Christ for granted.

"Christ is enough.  To have Him and nothing else is to be rich beyond conceiving." A.W. Tozer

"...that is the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.  We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ.  For this purpose I also labor, striving according to His power which mightily works within me." (Col 1:26-29)

"To the angel of the Church in Laodicea write:  'These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation.
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot.  I wish you were either one or the other!  So because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor old-- I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
You say, "I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing."
But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.  I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.
Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline.  So be earnest and repent.  Here I am!  I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with Me.'" (Rev 3:14-20)

"'For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries.  The kings of the earth have committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.'  Then I heard another voice from heaven say:  'Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.'" (Rev 18:3-5)

Not For The Faint Of Heart

I never want to convince someone that they need Christ.  If I lead someone to Christ, I want it to be because I presented the Gospel to them and the Holy Spirit convinced them that they needed salvation.  That is the only way a person can come to true repentance, "For no one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws them to Me, and at the last day I will raise them up." (John 6:44).  No matter how convincing my words may be, they will never pierce someone's soul.  Convincing someone of my beliefs will not serve as the daily spiritual food that they need.  Only Christ can be the spiritual food we need, because only Christ can take up residence in a person's heart and make the changes in their understanding and perceptions that are necessary to transform a person, "Then Jesus declared, 'I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in Me will never be thirsty." (John 6:35).  Christ must take precedence over all things, including the way we present the Gospel.

When you read the Gospels, you become aware that Jesus never persuaded anyone to believe in Him.  Jesus didn't woo, entice or lure people to follow Him.  He presented the truth, sometimes in all its naked glory and sometimes He made it relatable in the form of a parable, but either way, He simply presented truth and allowed the person to become fully convinced in their own mind.  One thing that becomes starkly apparent when you read the Gospels is that Jesus never chased anyone, but on the contrary, many times He made it seem difficult, at times even impossible, to be His disciple and follow Him:

-"On hearing this, Jesus told him, 'You still lack one thing: Sell everything you own and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.'" (Luke 18:22)

-"Then He said to them all: 'Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow Me.'" (Luke 9:23)

-"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)

-"In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be My disciples." (Luke 14:33)

-"Indeed, it is easier for a camel to pass through an eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Luke 18:25)

-"You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you will be put to death. And you will be hated by everyone because of My name." (Luke 21:16,17)

-"Then will they hand you over to be persecuted and killed, and you will be hated by all nations on account of My name." (Matt 24:9)

You see, Jesus wasn't looking for half-hearted, lukewarm commitment. Scripture says, "The eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him." (2 Chron 16:9).  Jesus was looking for those who were hungry for righteousness and thirsty for truth. Jesus sought those whose hearts would be fully committed to Him, who were willing to leave everything, just to be in His presence and learn from Him.  He made it clear that following Him wasn't just a one-day-a-week commitment.  He made it clear that those who wanted to follow Him must be willing to forsake this world and everything in it.  Jesus didn't cheapen the message of salvation by making it seem appealing to those who didn't want to come out of the world. 

The Gospel of salvation has eternal implications, saving those who receive it from eternal spiritual death.  The Gospel is serious business and Jesus took it very seriously.  This is something the church today, as a whole, seems to have lost.  Many churches today try to appeal to the culture by mimicking it.  They think they need to attract the world by using the things of the world.  They attempt to use a bait-and-switch tactic by dumbing-down the Gospel and try to present It in a way that seems non-threatening, when the whole premise of the Gospel message is indeed threatening-- death to self, admitting you are a sinner, carrying your cross, coming out of the world, perpetual repentance and turning away from sinful desires.  We shy away from telling the culture we are trying to reach that they must forsake sin and that they must repent.  Without forsaking sin and without genuine, daily repentance, there can be no transformation by the Holy Spirit.

The Gospel is not for the faint of heart.  It is not for those who want Jesus to meet them halfway.  Truly, a person can choose salvation no matter what depths of depravity and sinfulness they may be at in their life, but they cannot stay there. The moment the Holy Spirit takes up residence in the soul of a human being, they are propelled forward, out of the slimy pit and the mud and the mire, God graciously setting their feet upon the rock of salvation, Christ Jesus.  Yes, the Gospel is a threatening message to sinners, but it is a message of hope and redemption to those who choose salvation through it. 

"I waited patiently for the LORD; He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the LORD and put their trust in Him." (Psalm 40:1-3)

Lift your head weary sinner, the river's just ahead
Down the path of forgiveness, salvation's waiting there
You built a mighty fortress 10,000 burdens high
Love is here to lift you up, here to lift you high

If you're lost and wandering
Come stumbling in like a prodigal child
See the walls start crumbling
Let the gates of glory open wide

All who've strayed and walked away, unspeakable things you've done
Fix your eyes on the mountain, let the past be dead and gone
Come all saints and sinners, you can't outrun God
Whatever you've done can't overcome the power of the blood

The Shield Of Obedience

What you sow in disobedience, you will reap in spiritual warfare.  When we live lives of disobedience to God and His word, we make ourselves more vulnerable to the schemes of the enemy.  We expose areas of our lives that he would not have been given access to, under normal circumstances.  God says, "Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in obedience to all I command you, that it may go well with you." (Jer 7:23).  Which means when we walk in disobedience, it will not go well with us because we step out from underneath the spiritual covering God gives to those who are obedient and make ourselves vulnerable to the enemy.  Scripture says, "For it is You who blesses the righteous man, O Lord, You surround him with favor as with a shield." (Psalm 5:12).  To step out in disobedience, is to step out from behind God's protective shield.

Often times, it our own choices that bring us into the trenches of spiritual warfare.  Often times, it is our own choices of disobedience that pull us further away from God and make our ears deaf to His voice.  Then, when the bottom starts to fall out in our circumstances and chaos and sorrow ensues in our lives, we cry out, "Why is this happening to me?  God, why did you let this happen?"  Unbeknownst to us, it is our own disobedient choices that have allowed an entire host of demonic activity to enter into our circumstances and wreak havoc in our lives.  God told Cain, "if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it." (Gen 4:7).  They crouch in the dark corners of rebellion, stubbornness and disobedience, waiting for us to give them a foothold into our lives.

What you sow in obedience, you will reap in peace and truth.  The more you pray and study God's word, the more obedient you will become.  And the more obedient you are to the Holy Spirit, the more understanding you will have of God's word.  The more clearly you will hear God's voice and the more sensitive you will become to the leading of the Holy Spirit.  Scripture says, "Yet if you devote your heart to Him and stretch out your hands to Him, if you put away the sin that is in your hand and allow no evil to dwell in your tent, then, free of fault, you will lift up your face; you will stand firm and without fear. (Job 11:14,15).  For the most part, those who consistently hold on to their peace in the midst of fiery trials, are those who have established an intimate relationship with God through prayer and consistent study of His word. 

Spiritual warfare is real and it is happening all around us, all the time, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places." (Eph 6:12).  Our enemy uses people and circumstances in an unceasing effort to get us off-track of our spiritual maturity and development, and to generally make our lives more complicated and disorderly.  And when we walk in disobedience, we foster an environment that allows the enemy to invade our lives.

"Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold." (Eph 4:26,27)

"Be sober-minded and alert. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." (1 Peter 5:8)

"Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey--whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?" (Rom 6:16)

"The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; He delivers them from all their troubles." (Psalm 34:17)

"The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth.  He fulfills the desires of those who fear Him; He hears their cry and saves them.  The LORD watches over all who love Him, but all the wicked he will destroy." (Psalm 145:18-20)

Little Bad Girl

Through my teens and twenties, I embraced rebellion.  In my ignorance, I imagined people perceived my strength as a person, through the degree of my rebellion.  In my mind, the testament to my strength was the courage I had to stand against the status quo, to stand opposed to any hand that tried to steer my will.  Rebellion says, "No one is master over me, I am my own master."  Ultimately, rebellion says, "I submit to no one because I am my own god." 

The devil is the personification of rebellion and pride.  That is why scripture says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.  Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (James 4:6,7).  There is no humility in rebellion.  Rebellion is the opposite of submission and surrender, both of which are required to be a true disciple of Christ.  Scripture says, "Rebellion is as sinful as witchcraft, and stubbornness as bad as worshiping idols." (1 Sam 15:23).  God compares the sin of rebellion with the sin of witchcraft because its core principle is to manipulate and control people and circumstances to your own desired end.  Rebellion says I am my own god and witchcraft says I am god, either way is blasphemy.

Television, music and peers tell us to mix in some "bad girl" with our femininity, to embrace that rough edge and to make YOLO (you only live once) our battle-cry.  But we don't only live once, we live for eternity.  And how we live this life here on earth, determines how we will live in eternity.  I grew up in a culture that told me, "Blessed are those who are wealthy, happy, proud, arrogant, self-indulgent, pretty, sexy, promiscuous, talented and demanding."  But God's standards of how we are to think and live our lives are usually the total opposite of what media and culture tell us are desirable.  God says blessed are the poor in spirit, sorrowful, humble, merciful, pure, peaceable, persecuted and those who hunger for righteousness (Matt 5:1-12).

It took me a long time and a lot of hard work to submit to the leading of the Holy Spirit to let go of the value I placed in an attitude of rebellion.  Truly, it is the Holy Spirit that changes a person, but that person must cooperate in submission and obedience, and that my friends, is tenacious work.  Work that is carried out with the help of God's grace, but work that requires persistence nonetheless.  It was so hard for me to acknowledge that the "bad girl" image I had tried so hard to live up to had become an idol in my life.  It was so hard for me to let go of my own reasoning and to truly and completely allow Christ to clothe me with Him (Gal 3:27), rather than me continuing to clothe myself with the world and the desires of the world.  No where in my testimony will I ever tell you that picking up my cross and dying to myself was easy for me.  I will always be up-front in telling people that following Christ is simple, but it is not easy.  Jesus Himself said we must "count the cost" (Luke 14:27-33).

As a woman, scripture says that I am to be respectable and modest (1 Tim 2:9) and that my beauty should not come from how I dress or how I do my makeup or hair, but from "the inner disposition of your heart, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in God’s sight." (1 Peter 3:4).  Neither should my value come from my education or my career or my talents, but rather from who I am in Christ which is to be walked out in a pure, chaste and reverent demeanor (1 Pet 3:2).  Today, I no longer turn away from and resist submission, but rather I embrace it.  Because it is through genuine and consistent  daily surrender that I find my true strength in the woman that God created me to be-- the woman I was created to be according to His standards, rather than the world's.

                                                                                                                               
"For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ." (Gal 3:27)

"Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised." (Prov 31:30)

"Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matt 5:5-10)

The Consequences Of Compromise

For a long time, I elevated the finite and flawed wisdom of men over the eternal and perfect revelation of God.  I did this for many reasons, not the least of which being the intimidation of those who might think I was stupid because I believed the Biblical account of creation rather than the evolutionary theory I was taught in school.  I'm not gonna lie, it bothered me...a lot... for a long time.  Looking back, I think the reason it bothered me so much is because my spirit wanted to believe God, but my mind wanted to reconcile what God told me about creation with what mankind says about creation.  Surely the two could form some sort of marriage and coexist on some points?  Surely the truth lay somewhere in-between? 

I don't have a degree in cellular and genetic biology and many of the people who want to argue in favor of evolution are a lot smarter than I am.  But once I got to a point in my spiritual maturity in which I was able to fully surrender my faith into to God's revelation to us of the Biblical account of creation, it was then and only then that He revealed to me that I didn't have to fully understand all the scientific lingo to be able to stand up for His word.  I only had to have complete faith in His word....I only needed to have intimate knowledge of, and total trust in, the real thing. 

Federal agents don’t learn to spot counterfeit money by studying the counterfeits. They study genuine bills until they master the look of the real thing.  All they need to know is what the real dollar looks like, and that is what they use in comparison to everything else.  I didn't need to have a full knowledge and understanding of mankind's speculation as to how evolution "scientifically" carried itself out, all I needed to know was that the notion of evolution corrupts the Biblical account of creation, the understanding of which, is the very foundation for the salvation of mankind and the restoration of all things.  Once you step out onto that slippery slope, the fall into contradicting God's word runs deep.

God's word says that it was the sin of Adam which introduced death and corruption into His perfect creation.  Evolution says that death over millions of years through the process of natural selection brought us life, completely bypassing any state of perfection within creation as having ever existed.  However, death cannot be part of the punishment for sin if it existed millions of years before people supposedly evolved.  Death, disease and suffering are the mechanisms for the evolutionary process, which they say existed for millions of years before any type of human supposedly evolved from animals and eventually sinned.  The two viewpoints cannot be reconciled.  Either Adam and Eve existed in a perfect creation and it was their sin that brought death, destruction and corruption, or it was death, destruction and corruption that eventually brought about the existence of all life, including Adam and Eve.

God's word says that all flesh is unique, each one created after it's "own kind", humans being the apex of all creation, distinctly separate from animals because we have been created in God's own image.  Evolution says we are simply a higher-order of animal, which completely devalues human life and, ultimately, relegates God's image to that of a bacteria that eventually became a monkey that eventually became a man.  When you devalue human life, then it is easier to see a fertilized human embryo simply as a "clump of developing cells", rather than the precious soul of an individual and unique person it actually is.  When you devalue human life, you argue over at what point in development that human being actually becomes a person.

Most devastatingly, evolution completely robs us of the hope of salvation and the restoration of all things through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Evolution says that there is no state of perfection in which to restore creation to.  The sin and fall of Adam is the purpose for the death and resurrection of Christ our Lord, and the notion of evolution renders Christ's death pointless.  If there was never a point in which humanity fell from grace, introducing sin and death into existence, then there is no reason for Christ to save us.  The concept of evolution not only undermines the entirety of the Gospel message, but it also serves as a perpetual temptation to question God's word (Gen 3:1).

Who am I to put limitations on God and His ability to take care of and scripturally reveal Himself to His own creation?  Who am I to question and compare such a scriptural revelation against the words of men?  The Bible is God's revelation to us, yet it was so hard for me to trust God at His word.  I was so hesitant to step off that ledge into total faith that if God created all of existence, then surely He was able to maintain the overall integrity and trustworthiness of the Biblical texts that are His revelation of truth to mankind.  If we don't have the Bible, then we have nothing.  We have no absolute standard of right and wrong, no revelation of our Creator, no instructions as to how to know Him, we are lost in darkness, supposition, opinion, speculation.  We are lost in evolutionary theory. 

At this point in my life I can freely say that I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, and all my attempts to incorporate man's theory of evolution into the Biblical account of creation were but vain efforts of shame.  The uncomfortable and inconvenient truth is, that evolution and the Biblical account of creation cannot coexist.  There is only one truth, and we must take God at His word or open ourselves up to the consequences of compromise.  R.A. Torrey said, "The truly wise man is he who always believes the Bible against the opinion of any man." 

"For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes...For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, 'The righteous shall live by faith.'" (Rom 1:16,17)

"And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him." (Heb 11:6)

"All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, and another flesh of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another of fish." (1 Cor 15:39)

"God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good... And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day... God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'  So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.
God saw all that He had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day." (Gen 1:21-31)