Love makes us do crazy things. I have often joked that love is ,at times .deaf, dumb, blind and stupid . In the west we have some highly  romanticized ideas of true love. Given the near obsession in our culture with finding true love and experiencing the full benefits of it,how it it that we have so little love of the truth ?

Don’t Tell Me

We are told we should be willing to and never regret paying the high price true love will often extract from us. The rarity and beauty of it is well worth the price . So when it comes to love of the truth how is it we seem to miss the point? Proverbs 23:23 instructs us to “Buy the truth and sell it not; also wisdom,and instruction, and understanding. ” .In the realm of romantic love  fantasy often outweighs reality and  truth is replaced or subverted by fear of how reality may make me feel.So Love is more important to me even if it is at the expense of truth.

Tell Me Lies – Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

In the world of romance novels and fairy tales this approach, though out of touch with reality , is neither dangerous or harmful. In the world of relationships it is ruinous and deceptive. Still more disturbing is that in the arena of Spiritual LIFE it is eternally deadly . Truth cannot be separated from True Love without THE mote dire consequences .Of all people the Christian should be most committed to it- the quest for it and the grasp of its embodiment in Jesus- THE TRUTH. Yet today .as never before. the church and the saint seems ignorant of and often unwilling to face the truth. We are emoting our way into a  loveless  marriage with a Saviour who can never divorce truth and true love. Nothing short of a divine awakening can save us . The church is experiencing an actual Climate Change  of epic proportions . The degree of fervent , selfless, love -born of the cross is chilling rapidly and being replaced by an egocentric self seeking and self fulfillment . We bring our feelings to the alter of worship and not out hearts , minds, souls, and strength in totality .The pied pipers of church growth seem more than happy to accommodate us in our delusion and offer a product little different from Dreamworks of Paramount . So what of a lover who loves me as I am and yet has the power to change me into all HE has created and called me to be and is empowered by His nature and redemptive work to complete what HE began in me? Will I abandon all for the sake of such a love and live in the light of such  searching and often searing truth that can transform the inward and outward life and set me truly free to love in Spirit and in Truth? Or will I never know true love in more than theory because I chose it not on it’s own terms- on His terms?  John 14: 15-18

Today’s cultural morass in the West is a wearisome trek for the average person. Change comes so quickly that if you have any affection for historical markers that indicate where you are or when the next turn is coming up in the trip to your grandparents home then be careful. Rapid developments may have altered the roadside since you last came this way.Politics are changing . What it means to be American is changing .What it means in our culture to be Christian is CHANGING.

The normal walk in the park has become for many of us  more like  a walk in the DARK.This is especially true the older we are and  more accustomed to valuing things which do  NOT change or which do need to change simply for the sake of Change . Soon we will not even know which restroom to walk into.Someone with the power and audacity to make it happen decided that this was a needed change. Soon young people will never know what existed before on many of these cultural landscapes and no navigation points will remain.

So I ask myself what to  do in order to keep my bearings.The most obvious help in  a dark room is to turn on the light. Psalm 45 :1 says “My heart is inditing a good matter:I speak of the things which I have made touching the King : My tongue is the pen of a ready writer.” I am about to help turn on the light and prayerfully I will not be the only one to benefit. I am less concerned about the realm of culture or politics  and others as I am the House of God. Why? Because every other arena of life is impacted by what happens in the church. The lights have not gone out suddenly .That would have caused a panic in the arena .They have been dimmed slowly -purposefully- and with little notice until we have found ourselves groping along like lost puppies on a moonless night.

I know I am about to end up outside most of the ecclesiastical camp . I know that roaches scurry when the light comes on and I also know that those who love to hide their deeds in the cover of darkness – as Jesus said – “will not come to the light lest their deeds be manifest or reproved “. In fact they hate the light and the one who dared flip the switch.The fear of man is a snare and the darkness we face is deadly for the people of God.

Spiritual leaders are endangering the house of God and not protecting our children in the one place that should be a haven for them…the church. Our view of God- of the Bible- of the great commission is being massaged and remolded by some of the most unthinkable things to have ever made way into mainstream evangelicalism . Take a walk with me. Say with me the words of David “Thy Throne O God is for ever and ever :the scepter of thy kingdom is a right scepter “. He Changes NOT! Lets Turn on the Light.

My wife and I have recently decided to home school our young son  .The ongoing search leads us down an obvious trail that many have trodden before us . Public schools have been a favorite target for loons masking themselves as educators for decades. Little has changed in public schools despite the hard work and efforts of many Christians, conservatives and parents. It has been a losing battle against the ideology of John Dewey and the heavy handed influence of the humanist U.S. Dept of Education.Today’s most recent and glaring change is more in the gender-less bath and locker room “movement” than the classroom.Big bucks low return is the constant state!

But our search through the many types of curriculum and enrichment offerings for the home school industry (a scary concept in itself)  has led to the discovery of some less obvious influences from the same pits that are causing parents to despair  of public education .I will mention a few. For one we noticed that four of the regional branches of the YMCA were exhibiting recently at a small home school conference in our area. Is it just me or has anyone else understood the ongoing and deepening compromise with YMCA? So if home school families have exited the public schools hoping to avoid these progressive advances, to some degree at least , then why would they be interested in a market pitch from one of the leading sell outs in the long struggle to raise our children off the progressive grid?

Another odd thing is that our sons K 5 curriculum is following on the heals of and tracking with the NEAs (another totally sold out organization) Read Across America emphasis and it’s early reading lessons bore a surprising likeness to the lunacy of Common Core lessons .Most surprising is that the curriculum is ultra evangelical conservative Bob Jones University home school curriculum. Why would BJU be tracking with the NEA? This is an honest and fair question not just paranoia speaking.

And what of our Children’s church curriculum ? Well ours like many others  comes from trusted sources like  Lifeway formerly the Baptist Bookstore.Churches have used this ministries products with out question for decades. Perhaps that is part of the problem here.No one is questioning or giving a second look at the influences and streams feeding into our children’s lives even and especially at church. Later this month I will begin a long expose’ of what influences Lifeway for one  is allowing into it’s camp and curriculum by way of it’s writers/ researchers and promoters.The public school you are paying for even if you are not using it is intent on treating your child as human capitol or as an industrial asset in the same way that China or Russia or socialist European nations have long done. Part of what is hidden and subtly invading your child’s heart and mind possibly right inside your church doors is no less Marxist and godless. Parent beware !

In 1926 J.W. Johnson penned these words in a classic “negro spiritual” as the songs of the era are called. The words hang heavily on a longing heart and ring true to the lonely struggles believers often face in a world in which they are alien. I think it is never more true than today and in no place more profoundly disquieting a feeling than America.

Most of us recognize the sudden shift that is happening / has happened under our feet .For most of us over 35 the world is forever changed and we know our children will live in a very different climate from the national and cultural America we were nurtured in. These changes have taken place on many fronts and this is not the point now  .For the moment my consideration is that the keen sense of alienation and isolation many of us feel is deep and lasting and that it is intensifying . These words have rang truer and over and over in my mind…We are “a long way from HOME…a long way from home.”

On no level do I find myself more isolated than in the landscape of the household of faith and that is THE most perplexing and ironic of all. What has happened to the people of God? How have we lost clarity in a world where the lines of right and wrong should be the most glaringly defined? How have we become muted by political correctness when we have the words of eternal life which comprise the living water lost and broken souls around us thirst for? How did we lose our way in the cultural narrative when we  have a divine and unchanging directive and imperative from the living God…”your are Salt and Light”? What has happened can only be blamed on spiritual leadership. WE preachers and pastors and ministers are to blame. We seem to have NO SHORTAGE of leadership focus or training -yet the great mystery is that we have less true Spiritual LEADERSHIP than ever.

Where did we get the idea that we are to be perpetually IN training ? The military does not do this- You graduate and then join the fight. Now our new leadership says there is not a fight .The new idea of leadership is to become a disciple of some secular guru and for ever be attending conferences or classes or training seminars . How stupid can we be? Do WE build the kingdom by earthy principles ? Does God work by human wisdom? Can lost puppies lead an army? Beloved I confess and cry out …God gives us leaders who are not sold out- distracted- fearful- or two faced. Give us people with clarity -preachers with a backbone – pews filled with leaders not followers and the wind of your Holy Spirit  not the empty words of the latest parrot with a book to sell .Give us prophets lest we die- and do not leave us as orphans abandoned like motherless children by ministers who cannot tell the arm of the flesh from the power of the living God!

Four lepers with no credentials (2 Kings 7) came to the brave conclusion and virtually, by the sound of their determined footsteps, set the besieging army of the Syrians to flight – ended a famine and freed the people of God with this battle cry…”Why sit we hear til we DIE ?” – it can be done  again . If the leadership has orphaned us to leave us hear to die then lets move forward with out them. Lost puppies- pastor ,elder, teacher , leadership trainer , move out or get out..of the way.

Jesus said it this way “Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you…” Luke 6:26 .To take this red letter warning to the next level we could say “especially  beware when your enemy likes what you are doing.”

Here is one huge example.  https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/news/2013/10/07/76376/faith-based-providers-and-the-affordable-care-act/     I found this article by the far left organization “Center For American Progress”. It is one of those over funded politically driven  , blindly pro everything socialist- think tanks. To my shock I actually caught them in praise of evangelicals and the “Faith Community”. The reason is the KEY role  we are playing (unwittingly ) in fleshing out the Affordable Health Care Law a.k.a. Obamacare .

This article surfaced in a search to identify just how many faith based non profit run medical clinics have sprung up in my region in recent years. From Dream Centers to Indigent Specialized care- to Hispanic focused health centers – to a ministry operated out of my own conservative church determined to get in on the  action – everyone -it seems is wanting to get the church in the healthcare business.   Here is an early blueprint        http://nccc.georgetown.edu/documents/faith.pdf

The issue leads us to this probing question…How does the church afford to do this? Well the answer is simple .It takes Government grants and  hooks it’s wagon to corporate funding as well- thus becoming a vehicle of God’s justice and the Gospel to people in need. Sounds   pretty good until you pause and consider the Center for American Progress take that we are actually aiding in the demise of free market healthcare and in fact- as the article  goes on the celebrate – Faith Based Medical Care is helping with another prime goal of the AHCA – School Based Health Clinics . Taking over primary care of our children’s health in School Based Clinics is not only an Obamacare brainchild but a shared goal of Health and Human Services and it’s primary partner of intense interest in children’s health -ye ole Planned Parenthood .        http://www.lifenews.com/2012/06/05/planned-parenthood-runs-public-school-based-clinic-in-los-angeles/  . How can this be? The evangelical church has made its harshest critics happy – furthered the demise of private health care- gotten tax payer dollars- made itself compliant with federal oversight – found an unlikely partner in Planned Parenthood -still able to pass the plate for yet more funding from Corporate America  AND the occupants of the pew and all the while thinking to itself it is ministering the Gospel ? Guess we have forgotten that WOE means we are in trouble. In this case if we do not have a course correction we are due for a spanking and one well deserved if we are this ignorant . Jesus help us.

After almost five years of working very hard to expose the sorted DNA of the assorted agendas coming against Faith- Family – Education ( Our children and Grand children) I had asked myself this probing question. “Do People (Really ) want to know the facts and what is coming with extreme velocity against them in the present and relentless persistence the the immediate future ?”. Also I pondered the Question “If they know -will they be willing to do something to stop it? “.

I am encouraged to say overwhelmingly – that MOST people indeed want to understand. They desire to know what is behind the efforts to overhaul life as we know it in these days of sweeping “Change”. We have come to believe CHANGE  is happening whether we believe IN it or not.

But are we willing to do something? Here is a plan of action !

Pray like your life depends upon it. It does actually !

Educate yourself and those around you. You are a click away from “empowering ” .It has never been easier to research and  that window of objective facts may close as the internet becomes more regulated. Stop living off snippets of half digested information.

Stand with People who are Taking a Stand -A three fold cord is not easily broken .Do not let people who are bold enough to engage and to stand- be left to stand alone.

Count the reasons you have to get your head out of self absorbing and time consuming distractions. Assess what you have of value to stand up for-Your family- your faith -your children and grandchildren- their future- your personal freedoms and finances-and recall your accountability to God when this vaporous existence is past.

Who is most absent in the cultural landscape? The pastors and elders and denominational leadership are -but for a very few, missing in action . No ONE has greater responsibility in our culture – which has the fingerprints of God given spiritual freedom- to be heard. Then why this deafening silence from the prophetic front?  Smoke out your pastor- your elders- your church /denominational leadership . God holds us accountable. Even MORE if we wear the mantle of servant of the Living God. Are they settling for Thirty Pieces of Silver and  selling out you -your family -your future- THE faith?

How Did We get Here?

That is a question I had asked before but only in the last 5 years became eager to find an answer to. Moving from the rhetorical  to finding the reality came from several shocking experiences and rude awakenings. We have veered far from the ancient path f Jeremiah 6:16.

In a 2010 plunge into a ministries fight for life in Georgia -I suddenly turned around to find no back up from the sources normally and safely taken for granted on topics not even a casual  Bible believer would falter on. Pastors were the worst and have remained so. I found myself after 33 years in uncharted waters.The landscape was suddenly and it appears, forever changed . While modern evangelicals are on the surface more interested in impacting the world around us than in the past- “what that looks like” ( a phrase I am just about nauseated to use) turns out to be very different from the eternal perspective held forth by Jesus and the New Testament .We are looking more like bleeding heart liberals wanting to save society than end time prophets calling for a wayward people  to repent .We have lost something key and valuable .We seem to be navigating these disturbing cultural waters “At Worlds End” with the Compass of Capt. Jack Sparrow.

The real question is not how did we get here but more about who brought us to this  state like lost puppies  in these perilous times? I say puppies because the general state of the church and ministers in particular is immaturity and we are paying a very high price for it.If I told you that one of the people most responsible for the direction of the church today holds a socialist and a Marxist as “the two greatest thinkers of the last century” would you find that alarming? Likely yes if you are over 40 and likely no if you are not. Hence a big part of the problem. We are tired of our old enemies and have fashioned new ones mostly around doctrine and are not at all familiar with those which are anti Christ..But  Who is this person who has “filled the (evangelical ) world  with his pro socialist/ Marxist ideology while no one was discerning ? His name is Bob Buford and his organization has crowned pulpit princes for over 3 decades. Leadership Network is activist Bob  Bufords’ vehicle to flood the church with socialist Peter Drucker’s Frankfort School ideology on “individual  responsibility ” for saving society and Marxist/ Communist leader of the USSR Vladimir Lenin on “Centralized Power” .http://ccdl.libraries.claremont.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/dac/id/2569/rec/2    Page 5 shows the quote in an archived letter from Buford to Peter Drucker in November 1994 .That was ten years after the founding of Leadership Network. The church and the seminaries are buying the Buford “product “wholeheartedly and “Selling the evangelical farm ” in the process. It is impacting our understanding of the Gospel and of the Great Commission for it.

Which of these would you say is most important? According to Solomon there is much to consider here.Proverbs 29: 23- 27 gives us a clear picture of the two opposing motives. Verse 24 says whoever is a partner with a thief hates his own life,He swears to tell the truth but reveals nothing.25 The fear of man brings a snare ,But whoever trust in the Lord shall be safe. My wife and I have had a front row seat for this reality for two years running.We have engaged concerns over those in THIS snare and watched people we love and trust be everything but honest.This is heart breaking but true.

So here is the tension- we are in the world but not of it. We are called to be Salt and Light and separate from sinners and yet FRIEND of sinners as was /is Jesus.We can all be glad for that divine disposition .But how do Christians navigate the above mentioned  divided ? There seems to be found a virtual battlefield of dead evangelical bodies giving stark testimony to our failure in this endeavor.Yet we refuse to learn from others mistakes and missteps. The resulting train wreck is getting hard to watch.The Biblical Evangelical -though perhaps as yet unaware- is watching the standard of Faithful- God ONLY Fearing Christian testimony all but vanish from our cultural and church landscape. Why- Fear of Man-Partnership with (the ) THIEF -and seeking the rulers favor when justice for man comes from the Lord.(vs 24,25,26). The church is being led into the SNARE of political correctness- The SNARE of being mainstream-The SNARE of not being disliked- The SNARE of not being “with it”on the latest wave of culturally relevance driven evangelical self marketing motif .And we are drowning in a sea of SELF. In the US- America is burning and we are hanging cool drinking Latte and espousing our preferred systematic theology .

Here is what we missed. vs 27. The unjust man is an abomination to the righteous ( so why do we fear him or want to be his partner or appease him) and He who is upright in the way is an abomination to the wicked ( so why would he/she outside the faith want to be our pal? They really don’t we just – out of fear hope that they do). Abomination is a strong word .One we FEAR using these days.Friendship with the world is enmity with God -James 4:4 and Even our carnal mind whose reasoning got us in this mess is enmity against God.Romans 8:7 .What is the cure? A man’s PRIDE will bring him low,But the humble in spirit will retain honor.If we do not humble ourselves and do major course correction then we will lose BOTH FAITH and FACE. The leaders of many today’s evangelical churches and denominations are caught in this SNARE . Pray for them but do not follow them off the cliff if they are unwilling to humbly admit they are wrong. WE must ALL give account- Fear the Lord- only let HIM be your dread .

Welcome .In the last six to seven years my wife and I have discovered a disturbing trend in modern church life. In the past the perceivable lines between Biblical conservative and compromising ( culturally progressive ) Christians has been very distinct. No longer. I am not speaking to the arena of politics in this odd and intriguing election year although Biblical values should have a bearing in that arena. This trend is more related to the current trajectory of the church and how it defines ministry , the Gospel, and really God Himself. Change IS in the AIR and if we do not perceive it internally then it’s dangers are even more REAL.

Here are some of the topics and issues this blog will address :

*What Happened to  Eternal Clarity ?

*Why is the Local Church Getting into Health Care and Human /Social Services?                  The answer will shock you!

*Faith Vs Financing – Two worlds collide

*Is Jesus  Once again being Wounded in the House of His Friends?

*If the Church Could Identify its Nemesis ,”What Would That Look Like?”                       There is an enemy within our gates and it’s Leadership is ruinous. SPECTRE ‘s tentacles are everywhere in evangelicalism.

*Is your Children’s Church and Sunday School Curriculum Tainted?

*Can a Biblical Church Partner with Government ?

*The Church Among  the Agendas-How and WHY we are Compromising with the LGBTQ, Abortion, Gaming, Drug Legalization Agenda’s and other Destructive Social Ills .

*Church Among the Ruins- Our  Post Judgement Future .

*Fear and Loathing in The Pulpit and Elder Board-How our Churches are  being Transformed right under our noses.

*The Cult of Planned Giving. Watch OUT -They are after the old folks money!

*Can we be Doctrinal  / Theological Conservatives and Cultural Progressives?                           This is a serious issue. Many ministers display a type of bi-polar disorder

*A Deeply Personal and Painful Struggle- Sounding an Alarm People Do Not want to Hear.