Category: performance based | Page 13

The joy in being needed

Just thinking today how important it is to be needed. The older I get, the more I understand how it is more blessed to give than to receive. My spouse is disabled; many of his disabled buddies give up because they are a burden and no longer feel needed. Biff is always available to run an errand, chauffeur a child, take me to lunch, whatever is needed – we can’t imagine surviving without his being at our beck and call. He does everything cheerfully; he knows the joy of being needed. I work too many hours but drop everything when one of my kids or grandkids have a need; being needed by them is one of life’s greatest joys.

I have to believe God also finds joy in being needed by His children. Asking God for help is not something to be ashamed of or done in fear. Just as we wait anxiously for an opportunity to answer our children’s needs, so God must be pleased when we come to Him in faith believing, not as if we have earned anything but just secure in our knowledge that He loves us and will be there for us, providing our needs.

********
Shop at our Amazon store! As an Amazon Influencer, this website earns from qualifying purchases.

Earliest Spiritual Abuse

Everything has a beginning. My beginning happened in a small town where my dad was pastoring, (or rather attempting to pastor) a church that had never really existed, but in the mind of those who wished to start it. There were no constituents, and it is my understanding that my parents lived on what my dad could make working in a grocery store. It was there I was born, and where I lived for nine days, before they packed up everything and left to evangelize.

According to my baby book, written in my mother’s handwriting, I received my first spanking at the hands of my father when I was only a little over two months old. She followed this revelation with a little smiley face that she wrote, before explaining that they later found out that I wasn’t getting enough milk and that’s why I was screaming so much. It seemed not to bother her or my father particularly that they had “spanked” a tiny infant for being hungry. They just knew that they did not want to raise a child who would “throw fits”, and they were starting early to make sure I behaved as the child of a minister should.

I was the oldest child, and perhaps these mistakes could be chalked up to inexperienced ignorance, but it nonetheless sheds light on the mindset of two young people starting out a family, when both of them had been raised in Oneness Pentecostalism their entire lives. They both had been raised to expect perfection of themselves and others, because after all, God expected perfection, didn’t he?

My parents still brag about how well they trained me to act in church. I am that shining example that they hold up in front of every other young parent who crosses their paths. They had me trained on how to act in church from the age of nine months old, so they know it can be done!

I have no recollection of that time, of course, but I am told that I would sit on the front seat all alone at nine months old. I am told that I was expected to sit there looking forward, and not get up or turn around. On those occasions where I did get up and turn around, my parents said that one of them would leave the platform and take me out for a spanking. My mother played the piano and sang, while my dad led the services and preached. It was my job to sit down and be quiet. Apparently I learned the lesson they were trying to teach me fairly well, because they used that experience to teach other parents how to train their kids to act in church.

Years later, when I allowed my two year old to bring a quiet toy to church and to play between the pews quietly, I received major lectures and severe criticism, because “We know children can be trained to sit on the pew quietly. We trained you when you were only nine months old.”

Dad never allowed for a church nursery at any church he pastored, because he felt like babies need to be trained from infant-hood how to behave in church. If a parent was struggling to accomplish this, he would go back to that example of me at nine months old.

********
Shop at our Amazon store! As an Amazon Influencer, this website earns from qualifying purchases.

Works of faith

Faith without works is dead according to scripture so what are these works? Are they the clothing you put on (or don’t put on)? Are they the jewelry you do or do not wear? Are they your hair style?

Are they loving as Christ loved?
Are they praying without ceasing?
Are they sharing the Gospel of Christ’s redemption?
Are they having a spirit of forgiveness?
Are they believing in God’s love and plan for your life?

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen and without faith it is impossible to please Him.

The first list can certainly be performed without the need for faith in anything more substantial than our own human desires.

The second list requires faith in God, that He is and that he is a rewarder of them who diligently seek Him.

********
Shop at our Amazon store! As an Amazon Influencer, this website earns from qualifying purchases.

Denying The Power

I was always taught that other churches were dead, dull, boring, and denying the ‘power’ because they didn’t jump, shout, dance, speak in tongues, etc.

So what really is the ‘power’? Is it the emotional hype as it is taught in Pentecostal churches??? So are we denying the ‘power’ if we don’t go for all the slain in the spirit stuff? Do we only have a form of godliness but deny the power in all the mainstream churches?

When studying the Bible, does it really seem that God would put the ‘power’ in a physical, emotional, sign??? I find that very difficult to read into His nature that prizes a still small voice and rejects ‘signs’.

So what could the power that some are denying be??? Perhaps the power that is being denied is the power of the Christ and the power of His redeeming love and grace. Perhaps we are denying the ‘power’ if we are trying to earn salvation by our own works. Perhaps the power we are denying is the power of the cross as the finished work that through faith has the power to redeem us. Perhaps the hype, show, and focus on performance is denying the power . . . . . . .

********
Shop at our Amazon store! As an Amazon Influencer, this website earns from qualifying purchases.

Better Safe Than Sorry? Let Galatians Help! Pt. 2

Please see Part One.

Note how Paul explains in Galatians that the law is no longer needed and why this is true.

In chapter three, Paul shares how God went straight to Abraham with the promise (and believers are children of Abraham through faith). He goes on to say the law was given to Moses, who then was the mediator between God and the people. He contrasts this with God going directly to Abraham concerning the promise. The law was to remain only until the Messiah came. It did not make void the promise to Abraham, nor did it conflict with it.

We cannot be made righteous by keeping the law and we cannot receive God’s promise by obeying the law. The only way to receive the promise is to believe in Jesus Christ.

Get this next part- verse 23 (NLT): “Until faith in Christ was shown to us as the way of becoming right with God, we were guarded by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak, until we could put our faith in the coming Savior.”

So, if the law was only to act as a guardian until Jesus came, why would we now need any other set of laws to ‘protect’ us or act as a fence to keep us safe?

Paul expounds in the next few verses: “Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian and teacher to lead us until Christ came. So now, through faith in Christ, we are made right with God. But now that faith in Christ has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian. So you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”

See it? Through faith. Through faith. Through faith. It is all through faith.

Remember where the Bible says that God will write his laws in our hearts? This ties in. That is why there is no need of a written set of laws. No church needs to add laws to act as a fence. There is no need of a fence. Gods ways are now written directly upon our hearts.

Think about it. Written laws do not change the person. The law did not make the people right with God by obeying it. It didn’t change them inside. No list of rules is going to change us, either. But when God places His ways in our hearts, they become part of us. We are no longer just following a set of laws or rules. We do the things we do because God’s Spirit is living inside us and directing us. He has become a part of us, leading and guiding us.

So when we decide to revert to trusting in and following a list of rules to make us right before God, are we not actually rejecting what God has already done for us and given us? Are we not saying to His Spirit that His ways being written on our hearts is not enough? Are we not saying that we are better off taking charge ourselves and we will make sure we are right before Him through our works? Isn’t this why Paul feared in chapter four that his work with the Galatians could be in vain?

A performance oriented church will say it’s not about rules, but they do teach rules. And they teach fear, whether they realize it or not. I have probably said it hundreds of times that fear permeates the teachings. There is always something more, something else, some other way we come up short. And that will always happen when we are pulled into performance based living.

This thing about works- when God’s Spirit comes into our hearts, we will want to do the things of God. So when we read in the Bible where we are told to be water baptized, for example, we will want to be baptized. Not because it is a law; not because we think we’ll be lost if we don’t. We do it because it has been placed in our heart. It is God’s will. He writes those things in our hearts. We do works because we love the Lord. We show our faith through our works (actions). Yet we are not saved through those things and we do not keep ourselves in right standing with God by doing them.

On the cross Jesus said it was finished. Either it is finished or it is not. Either He paid the full price for our sins or we still owe something. Either we have His righteousness by faith or we try and earn it by our works (which cannot be done- thus the continual frustration!).

“So now, through faith in Christ, we are made right with God.”

I highly encourage everyone who has been in an unhealthy church to read and meditate upon the book of Galatians. It will help you to break free from the performance trap and the thinking that it is better to be safe than sorry. Aren’t you tired of all the striving and worrying and periodically feeling unsure of your salvation?

********
Shop at our Amazon store! As an Amazon Influencer, this website earns from qualifying purchases.