Monetization - Loving Money

This morning I was reading 2 Timothy Chapter 3. Paul writes about a time when we will be "lovers of self, lovers of money...lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God."

 

What do you think about this?

 

What do you see around you?

 

What is the professing church modeling? How is the professing church living?

 

Have we monetized life? Have we monetized the professing church?

 

I suppose it’s easy for some of us to look at “name it and claim” types and say, “Well, they have certainly monetized the church,” but I don’t think this is that simple. What, after all, is the final arbiter of our decisions as congregations, denominations, parachurch ministries, and educational institutions? Is it really God’s Word, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ?

 

Years ago there was a man, Eric, in my small group who was a church trustee. During the preparation of the budget for the coming year Eric, (who had been studying Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God, along with others in his church), made the suggestion to his church that they prepare the budget not as they had done in the past, by anticipating tithes and offerings, but rather by seeking God’s direction for ministry and believing God to provide for that which He was directing. In other words, Eric suggested that his congregation base their decisions not on money but on the leading and provision of the Holy Spirit. This was all the more striking to me at the time because Eric was the treasurer of a large international corporation – in other words, he was at the top of the international  corporate financial ladder.

 

A few years ago Vickie and I were attending a church that we enjoyed, and we especially enjoyed the folks in our Sunday school class – it was good fellowship. Then a multi-million dollar building program reared its head. The congregation heard about the program during each service, via emails, and via YouTube videos. The fundraising was to culminate on Easter Sunday. It was distressing to us that anything should share the spotlight with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. It was also distressing that at no time, and I mean at no time, was there ever any mention of the leading of the Holy Spirit, of prayer, or of the Word of God (such as the Great Commission) in the fundraising. Not in any printed matter, not in any video, not in any email, and not in any church service.

 

The fundraising was sucking up all the air in the room. Where was Christ and the Cross? Where was the leading of the Holy Spirit?

 

Since I had a pretty good relationship with one of the associate pastors, I asked him to have lunch with me. During lunch I asked him whether there had been any discussion of prayer, the leading of the Holy Spirit, or of Biblical vision, with the congregation (in case Vickie and I had missed something). After a few thoughtful moments he said, “No there hasn’t. The fact is that we hired consultants to help us grow and we are following their recommendations.”

 

Dear friends, to monetize is to descend into the pragmatic, and to descend into the pragmatic is pretty much to monetize. We descend from being a supernatural people into being men and women of the earth; we trade our garments of the Spirit for the rags of the carnal.

 

When we measure our lives, whether they are our individual lives, our congregations, our nation, by money – when virtually everything is measured by its monetary value, its utilitarian function – then we have become loves of money.

 

Take a slow and sober look at 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9, what does this teach us about financial resources within the Body of Christ? Why isn’t this preached? Why aren’t we living this out? It’s because it would require a tectonic shift in our thinking about money and about how to value life – our own lives and the lives of others.

 

Our American individualism gives us, we think, a free pass in the way we value money. It gives us, we think, a free pass not to think of ourselves as the People of God but rather primarily as individuals who put ourselves first – hardly congruent with Christ’s call to lose our lives for His sake and the Gospel’s – a Gospel, by the way, which emphasizes laying down our lives for others, a laying down of  life which entails meeting the needs of not only those around us, but of those far away from us (we see this in 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9).

 

At least the “name it and claim it” preachers don’t hide their agendas – let’s give them credit for that. They might not be respectable for some of us, but at least they are respectably transparent, even if they are deceived and deceiving. Pity that they have not been taught the religious nuances of being able to love money and still look respectable and proper.

 

The tentacles of what I’m writing about remain in me, and only the Holy Spirit knows the extent to which they have poisoned my own soul. I long for freedom from loving money, from having money as my arbiter. I will not deny I have experienced the power and seduction of money and the pragmatic.

 

What about you?

 

Francis Schaffer wrote that the greatest threat to the church at the end of the 20^th century would be “personal peace and affluence.”

 

Do you think Schaffer was right?

 

Just Some Thoughts on Some Psalms

 

Have you ever had a morning when this is all you wanted?

 

“O God, do not remain quiet; do not be silent and, O God do not be still” (Psa. 83:1).

 

Have you ever had times when you just wanted to feel His touch? To sense Him? To hear Him? To see Him? Is doesn’t seem too much to ask, does it? Just a soft sensation that He is with you, just a faint whisper, just a flicker of eternal light in the distance – are there times when this would be reassuringly enough?  

 

Pretty simple isn’t it? A basic desire. “O God, do not remain quiet; do not be silent and, O God do not be still.” It isn’t like we’re asking for the Red Sea to be parted, or to walk on water, or to have great-aunt Nellie come back from the dead after fifty years. We just want some communication. We just want to know there is Someone who takes the initiative and makes a call to us every now and then.

 

Well, anyway, this seems like a good prayer to me.

 

Then there is Psalm 88. Do you read Psalm 88? We really should read this Psalm, after all it is part of the Psalter and the Psalter is part of the Canon, and a rather significant part at that. I’m not sure that we’d miss Obadiah or Nahum if a thief absconded with them, but I’m pretty sure we’d miss the Psalter…or at least I hope we would. Why with Obadiah and Nahum most of us would say, “Nahum? Obadiah? I didn’t even know this furniture was in the house; how can I miss them?”

 

Job could have prayed Psalm 88. “…my soul has had enough troubles, and my life has drawn near to Sheol…Forsaken among the dead…I have become like a man without strength…You have put me in the lowest pit…O LORD why do You reject my soul? Why do You hide Your face from me?” This will put a smile on our faces, this is great, this will draw folks to church! You gotta love Psalm 88!

 

There is no resolution in Psalm 88. Have you ever ended a day, a week, a month, or maybe even a year with no resolution? I have more than one thing in my life that I’m not likely to see resolution on before I leave this earth. Since I am one of those people who drive for closure, often whether closure is smart or not, not having resolution is like having a toothache, or like a sock that keeps inching its way down into your shoe – it can be painful or just irritating, but you know it’s there whether you think about it or not.

 

Psalm 118 calls me home to Jesus, the Stone which the builders rejected. Many of us have sung, “This is the day which the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psa. 118:24). However, we typically sing this verse in ignorance of its context, for its context is, “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner stone. This is the LORD’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day which the LORD has made…” In other words, the context is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ – the rejection and crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the Day the LORD has made.

 

When I read verse 20, “This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous will enter through it,” I think of the Cross of Jesus Christ. What other gate is there that we must enter, other than the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ?

 

Psalm 88 finds its resolution in Psalm 118. Life finds its resolution in the Cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was victorious through suffering and death, and our Psalm 88 experiences will lead us to Easter morning as we live in Christ and the koinonia of His sufferings.

 

When I cry out to God to speak, to not be quiet, to “just do something!," I can look to Psalm 118 and see that the Father has indeed spoken, that He has indeed done something…He has sent His Only Begotten Son, and He has given Jesus Christ to me and He has given me to Jesus Christ.

Overcoming – Four Principles in Revelation 12 (Part 13)

  

“And they overcame him because the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even unto death.” Revelation 12:11.

 

To conclude our consideration of the above verse, we’ve considered four principles of overcoming the enemy in Revelation Chapter 12; the blood of the Lamb, the word of our testimony, not loving our lives even unto death, and living with Christ in the heavens rather than as earth dwellers.

 

Jesus Christ calls us to participate in His resurrection, in His very own victory. Jesus says, “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Speaking of the spirit of antichrist, the Apostle John writes, “You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

 

Note than when we are in Christ that we “are from God.” We have not always been from God, but in Christ we are now from God. It is because we are from God that Jesus Christ is not ashamed to call us “brethren” (Hebrews 2:11). O dear friends, please do not be shackled and imprisoned in a false identity, for our true and eternal identity is in Jesus Christ and it is only in Him that we overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil. Please do not define yourself by your experience, no matter where on the spectrum your experience might be; Jesus Christ must be our only source of definition and His Word must rule our hearts and minds and fill our souls.

 

God is glorified when we bear fruit (John 15:8), not when we insist that we are worthless trees. God is glorified when we behold Jesus Christ and focus on Him, not when we make ourselves the storyline, the center of attention – whether this be self-exaltation or self-abnegation, or anywhere in between.

 

The Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ is our way of life, and in this Way we know and experience Jesus Christ as our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, and glory in the Lord and in the Lord alone (1 Cor. 1:30 – 31).

 

For the man or woman who has taken up the Cross and is following Jesus (Mark 8:34ff), the book of Revelation is a message of hope, faith, love, comfort, and overcoming. It is a book that describes what it is to be a son or daughter of the Living God – to be among those who are faithful to the Lamb no matter what may come to pass. It is a letter that teaches us what it means to be victorious in Christ in the face of unspeakable evil; to be faithful to Christ in a world gone crazy.

 

Let me quote from the first meditation in this series:

 

“…the book of Revelation is a discipleship manual, not a crystal ball. John is not a kind of first-century Nostradamus. It is sad to see how this powerfully hope-giving book is turned into predictor-of-the-next-horrible-thing-that-will-happen-in-the-world. The British journalist G.K. Chesterton once quipped that “though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.”” Discipleship on the Edge, Darrell W. Johnson, Regent College Publishing, 2004, page 380.

 

Regarding the two-fold purpose of Revelation Johnson writes, “It seeks to set the present moment in all its brokenness, violence, uncertainty in light of the unseen realities of the future…But more importantly it seeks to set the present moment in light of the unseen realities of the present. The fundamental conviction of apocalyptic is “things are not as they seem.” There is more to reality that we can know with our unaided senses and intellect and emotions. The great purpose – the pastoral purpose – of Revelation is to open up that more and see Jesus in the midst of it all.” Johnson, page 381.

 

Christ calls us to live in the words of Isaiah the prophet (Isaiah 60:1 – 2), “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; but the LORD will rise upon you and His glory will appear upon you.” Christ is our light, Christ is our glory, Christ rises upon us and within us.

 

O dear friends, we live in a land of deep darkness, darkness that masquerades as light to many, even to professing Christians (2 Cor. 11:13 – 15; Isaiah 5:20). Your Father has not called you to escape, but to be a source of light and life to those around you (Isaiah 32:1 – 2; Matthew 28:18 – 20). Live for what is real and eternal, not for what is passing away, no matter how attractive it might be (2 Cor. 4:16 – 18; 5:7; Matt. 6:19 – 24; John 6:27).

 

Everyday people are making decisions, decisions whether to accept the mark of the beast, or whether to follow the Lamb (Rev. chapters 13 and 14). We can live with the beast on the earth as earth dwellers, or we can live with the Lamb on Mount Zion. We can live as those who are overcome by the world around us, or we can live as those who are overcoming by the blood of the Lamb, the Word of our Testimony, and by not loving ourselves but laying down our lives for Jesus Christ and a lost and dying world.

 

What is our decision today? What is my decision?

 

What is your decision?