Good Soil Complete

Sex, Shame, and Should I?

     So there has been this story going around Christian circles. You might have seen it; it's about a young woman who waited till marriage to have sex, and for some reason, she regretted it. A lot of good Christian writers have written out heartfelt and well thought out responses. One of the themes of these responses is that Christians need to talk about sex more. And yes, we do need to talk about sex more often, but we also need to make sure we're saying the right things. We need to be more in depth. We need to make sure that we're accurate and honest with what we're saying.

     There is this woman. She got married recently and regrets saving herself for marriage. It seems that the main reason for this is that she has some beliefs about sex that are unbiblical, unchristian, and harmful. It's not her fault that she has these false ideas. These lies about sex came from somewhere. Did someone teach her these heresies? Maybe. I think it is more likely that they developed from a vacuum. There was a vacuum of sound theological teaching on sex, and in the absence of light all sorts of lies dance in the darkness.

     So lets talk about sex. Abstinence seems to be as good of place as any to begin.

     First off, there a are thousand reasons to wait until marriage. Seriously, the benefits are countless. It protects you from so much, teaches you so much, plus it builds your character. However, for many teenagers, in the hormonal wonderland of adolescence, this really doesn't matter. The only reason that can really stand against the desire for sex is the desire to please God. It is the only reason strong enough, that we want to be Christian and to live a holy lifestyle. Christians have to love God more then sex, and during the single years the only way to that is refrain from sex. In this way, self-control is worship.

     Secondly, abstinence is incredibly, unbelievably difficult, but not impossible. I know this from experience. I lost my virginity to my wife, on my wedding night, at the age of 27. A lot of married folk don't remember, but it was only a year ago for me. Guys, girls, it is not going to be easy. It doesn't get easy, ever. If you think it's hard in the teens years, just wait until your twenties. Then just wait till you meet someone that makes you feel the way I feel about Kayte. If your committing to wait, you need to know what your getting into. You are going to need self-control and commitment. The person you're falling for is going to need it too.

     Finally, and please pay careful attention to this; once you get married, abstinence stops. Yes, every day up until that day you must strive, you must fight to be in control of your body. It's a spiritual act of worship to God. Once you finish that race, once you put on those rings and the minister blesses you, that season ends. A new season begins, one where you get to make love your spouse, and yes, that is worship to God as well. It'll be awesome. It'll be whole.  There is absolutely no shame or sin in it. 

The Prosperity Gospel – Does God Want Me to be Rich?

The Prosperity Gospel – Does God Want Me to be Rich?

The Short Answer

     Yes. God wants you to be rich in His Spirit. He wants to make you rich in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. He wants to give you so much of those things that you literally won't be able to keep them to yourself. It's going to pour out of you, all over your life. He wants to bless you with a mature heart and a strong character.

     Here is the thing though, this wealth he wants to give you is in money. It's in spirit. It's also not free. It's going to cost you. And I mean more than your Sunday mornings. I mean more than tithe. I mean everything. The price is everything.

     God wants you to manage what you do have well. The word in “Christianese” is Stewardship. It means He wants you to cut waste and make the best use of what you have.

The Long Answer

     No, of course God doesn't want to make you rich.

     I don't even know where to begin. Maybe take a look at the lives of the twelve Disciples. Only one of them died a natural death. The rest... Well, it was pretty brutal. Or maybe just look at John 13:66. The verse begins: “In this life you will have trouble...”

     God does want to bless you. The word bless does not mean “give you a bunch of money.” It means the He wants to do something great and creative in your life. It means He wants to make you into something else. Think Malachi 3:3. “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness,” (Someday I'll go into why “Levites” in the context means you and me.)

Do you know to refine silver? I don't. Here's a video about how. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM-YsiFnJ1I

     This is how God wants to bless you. Doesn't seem like a lot of fun for the silver.

Here is another example of God's blessing. The whole story is in Act 16:16-38, but here is core of it:

“The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.”

     Did you catch that? 

     Stripped and beaten and thrown in jail, but still singing praise. That is the type of blessing God gives His disciples. He wants to give you a joy that is better than a bank account. He wants to give you a peace that is stronger than circumstances in your life.

     Things will be bad at times. Things will be hard at times. You'll be poor. You'll be broken. You'll be loved by your Heavenly Father. If you let Him, you'll be blessed. You'll be refined like silver. You'll find that love, joy, and peace stuff.

     Do you need more about how life is hard, and being a Christian is supposed to be hard? Probably not. Look at your life, your experiences, your friend's and family's lives, and you'll see that I'm right. If you do need more, look up 2 Corinthians 11:24-29. Romans 5:3-5. 1 John 3:13. That's just off the top of my head. There is a lot more, but you get the picture.

The Theology Behind the Issue

     Well, it looks to me like there are two things going on with this Theology. Number one, it looks like some "pastors" are making a lot of money out of it. I'm not their judge, but I really worry for those people. I don't where their heart is, but they teach this anti-gospel and steal the money that should be going to real ministry. When somebody writes a check to one of these hucksters, that's money that isn't going to the mission field, it isn't going to the local Church, and it isn't doing any good. That's not their only crime; this thing there teaching is not the true, real Gospel. Every time someone listens to someone tell them this nonsense, that is an opportunity to hear the gospel wasted. 

     Then there are people who are genuinely confused by verses like 2 Corinthians 8:9 — “Though He was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.” If you take this verse out of context, it might seem like God wants to make it rain dollar bills. However, in context, this is talking about Jesus' death on the cross. Jesus didn't die so you could buy a Mercedes, He died to save your soul.

Never thought this would be my first blog post, but... Is Sunday School Biblical?

The Short Answer
    Of course Sunday School is Biblical. Well, specialized teaching is, and specialized teaching is all that Sunday School is.

    In Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, and Ephesians 4, we are given lists of the spiritual gifts God gave mankind. Every time, teaching is listed as one of the spiritual gifts. If God is giving people the special gift of being able to teach, doesn’t that mean He wants them to teach? Isn’t that all Sunday School is?
In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul tells us that he became like various groups of people in order to reach them. That means he provided specialized teaching in a way that those groups could understand.

    Sunday School, Youth Group, Children’s ministry; they are not meant to replace the Christian Parent’s job of teaching their Children. I understand that sometimes that is how it is treated, and when that happens, it doesn't work. Imagine if you used a hammer to try to fix a computer. You’d break the computer, but it isn’t the hammer’s fault. These things are important tools, don’t throw them out! Just please, learn how to use them.

The Long Answer
     In order to really understand this issue, I have been trying to figure out why this question is being asked in the first place. I mean, it's obvious to anyone who has actually read the New Testament that there is no section called "How to Church." We're given different pieces and guidelines, but it's up to us to piece them together. There are different organizational models, but none of them are from the Bible; they are things the we use to fulfill the mission of the Bible.
     At first, I looked at the theology driving the anti-specialized ministry movement. However, I have found people who are of different theological backgrounds. I think the real reason people are moving away from Sunday School, Children's Church, and Youth Ministry is that it's being done poorly.
     The real reason, the real heart of the complaint against "Little-Church" is that the way that are being done stinks. Yes, the way it is done in many Churches stinks. It's treated as a Jesusy baby-sitting service. The workers are burnt out volunteers that rarely get to enjoy their own class or to listen to the Sermon; they are excluded from being educated and being able to worship, only to then turn around and try to teach what worship means. The curricula is often flawed, sometimes sacrificing either understand-ability or accuracy, but more often it just lacks vision. And that is absolutely a problem.
     Don't believe me? Maybe your lucky enough to go to a Church that has a great program, or even a just good program, and it sounds nothing like what I'm talking about. But a lot of people might read that last paragraph and have never realized that it could be done another way.
     I heard a Pastor say "Sunday School began as a fishing net, then became a safety net, and now it is a hammock." That Pastor is right. This is something that is suppose to be reaching the lost, instead, it's Childcare. This is a problem; we cannot allow people to "lay in hammocks" when the should be fishing and fighting for lost souls. Destroying the hammock might wake up the people who are asleep, but it will also make it impossible to fish. Getting rid of Sunday School might motivate parents to be more intentional about teaching their Children, but then we lose what has proven to be one of our most effective evangelism tools.
     Let me tell you this from my own testimony; I would not be a Christian today without Youth Ministry. I thank God that my Church was not content with a baby sitting service. I thank God that they didn't cancel ministry because it was to hard to actually have Youth do ministry.

The Theology Behind the Issue
     What Theology is behind this issue? What beliefs drive the people who care about it?  While I can't give you a  exhaustive answer, I'll share more or less the conversations I've had prior to writing this post.
     My first conversation about this topic took me surprise. I hadn't even heard of this opinion before. I was shocked. I told her that I run the Youth Ministry at my Church and went on to explain to me why what I was doing was so wrong. She came from a strict Calvinist theology and shared ideas that seem to be at the center of the "Family-Integrated Movement." She said it was her job to teach her children the Bible, and apparently believed that if anyone else talked about the Bible with her kids, then she could not teach them the Bible. I asked her about what happens to people who come from broken families. Her response made me sick to my stomach. Basically, Sunday School is a evangelism tool, and Calvinists don't need to evangelize.
     I later picked up the book "Family Driven Faith" by Voddie Bauchuam. (I'll give a full critique of this book someday.) I was specifically looking for an answer to the above question, and apparently in this model the Dads from other families are suppose to take kids from broken families into their families. Which I suppose is a good thing if it works, but it still does nothing to reach the broken people in the first place.
     So I read on and tried to figure out the Family-Integrated model of Evangelism. Apparently, all Evangelism is to be done by fathers. The same fathers that Bauchuam doesn't trust to teach their children the Bible unless no one else teaches them the Bible, somehow bear all the brunt of task of reaching the lost.
     I also came across Anti-Children's Church sentiment from both highly liturgical Lutherans and a passionate Charismatic. It's funny that such different theologies had the same concern. In their belief system, the actual worship service plays a center role in the life a Christians. The ancient Latin chants, or the vibrant exuberant song, are to important for the Children to miss! Not to mention, the workers miss this too.