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Showing posts with label Church Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Church Life. Show all posts

29 May, 2014

Untroubled Relationship & Those Bible Thumpers With Their Shallow TV Ministries




Lately, I have been so preoccupied with some of the TV evangelists’ responses to their followers on Facebook and Twitter that my heart is breaking.


As I read Oswald Chambers's devotion today, I decided to address those Evangelists directly because it is a plague. We are infested with them and most of them are concerned only with their bottom line and everything they do and say on Social Media is to keep their followers blissfully happy in their ignorance.

Sometimes I feel, these pastors are so preoccupied with fame and status to maintain their lifestyles, they tend to forget that what we read in the Old Testament the God that we see there, is not left in history. Whether we read the Old or the New Testament, they are the word of God and they are there for our benefits and for us to know the unchanging God.   So, when we read the books of Kings and Chronicles, we see that God always punished the Israelites for following after their rotten king’s way in abandoning God’s word and law. Then He deals with the kings for their own sin plus for causing Israel to walk away from Him.  

It is amazing how many pastors are out there, that are thinking FOR God and they have no shame. In fact, they have managed to believe in their lies and what they use for excuses, (which really work well with their marketing scheme) that the reason they keep answering to those faithful followers, with those lame answers, is because they know people are not ready to hear the truth.

Their marketing scheme is the following: keep the people where they are, do not rock the boat, do not tell them any deep truths that they cannot deal with and they will keep following you. In the meantime, those pastors convince themselves if they give their followers a few lame words of advice like “God loves you” these followers will not be wiser and they are kept happy. Some said “well at least they are there with me and they keep hearing the word of God and eventually the Holy Spirit will change their hearts. These pastors really convinced themselves that is the best course of action for their ministries and the people. Strangely, they believe their lies so much that they would pass a lie detector test. Anyone who is walking in the Spirit, you can see so blatantly the work of the devil through those greedy, rotten, hungry for fame and status pastors. They have been blinded by the devil, along with their followers, all the while they are convinced it is all for God. This is alarming. It is so dangerous and so many souls are at stake. IT IS PAINFUL TO WATCH.

One of my nieces who are following one of those greedy, nice, and well spoken TV pastors told me that her pastor does not talk about intimacy with God in the way I do. So, obviously it is okay for some Christians, not to have intimacy with God.  She even went further by saying that my intimacy with God does not have to match her intimacy with God. Even while she is saying something so stupid, evil, and so low, she still believes, somehow she has some sort of intimacy with God. Why not when she is taught that much by her pastors?

Oswald devotion for today reminded me of three things

1)      If God saves you and He did not zap you to heaven right away, He wants you to remain on earth to get to know Him, and to use your life for His divine purpose. You have to keep in mind that any work that you do for God has to be through your deep abiding love and faith in and through Him. I was reminded how much I was like a broken record while I walk with Him in the wilderness because I kept saying “oh this is what you meant?” I could see because they eyes of my heart were opened to Him and the work of the Holy Spirit. I could see because I was being taught directly by Him. This does not mean that I am not learning. I still learn from some great TV evangelists, pastors who were really called by God. But, all of us need to be so given to this life within that in our oneness with Him, we stop living this kind of second hand Christianity. Christianity is not passed on. Our faith that brings us to this place where we are real followers of Christ has to be passed on to us by the triune God through living our oneness with Him. 

2) Those greedy for fame and status pastors will be dealt with severely by God. One of the things that I learned directly from God is that when you are taught the real thing and when you are truly following after Him, you cannot in all conscience keep finding excuses as to why you cannot tell your followers the hard truth. He also showed me some of those pastors do not even know the hard truth because they are not walking in the spirit. Please do not let yourself be fooled just because they have a flourishing ministry. Do not let yourself be fooled into thinking just because so many people are following those pastors they must be doing the work of God. When you have a deep love for God, you understand what His love means, and you truly fear Him, not in word only, but in the depth of your heart, you tell people the truth no matter how hard it is for them to hear it. You tell the truth, whether this means your ministry might suffer and most of them would leave you and you might have to downgrade the mansion you live in. 

You tell the truth, because the truth is the essence of who you are and you cannot compromise or use feeble excuses that leave God out of the equation.  You stop seeing yourself like a god and trust the triune God to use you to keep a remnant for Himself. When you use excuses to keep in their ignorance and shallow faith, don’t kid yourself, you are not doing it for them or God, but for your wallets and to keep up with your lifestyle.  It your excuses were true, that would mean, God has no power to work in the hearts of those you are dealing with. THE BOTTOM LINE IS, YOU DO NOT TRUST THIS GOD you claim to be doing all this hoopla for. It means you do not love with the agape love either. At the end of the day, it is all about you. IT DOES NOT MATTER HOW BEAUTIFUL AND HOW AWESOME YOU LOOK NOW…..GOD WILL DEAL WITH YOU SOONER OR LATER. In the end, you are an actor, a pretender, a people pleaser, and you are wearing a mask so none of those lost sheep following you can see what you are made of but, God will not be mocked and your mask will come off in due time.

3) The third thing I was reminded through Oswald Chambers’s devotion is that deep intimacy with God is a real and universal truth for all of us. What Oswald Chambers explained in today’s devotion is a simple as one two three for some of us, simply because we KNOW GOD and we KNOW the truth directly from Him, so we speak the same language and through the Holy Spirit, we can recognize each other. Oswald said: “In that day you will ask in My name . . . ,” that is, in My nature. Not “You will use My name as some magic word,” but—”You will be so intimate with Me that you will be one with Me.” “That day” is not a day in the next life, but a day meant for here and now. “. . . for the Father Himself loves you . . .”— the Father’s love is evidence that our union with Jesus is complete and absolute.” 

You do not get to live out this union with God, in your head. It is not some empty words that you say to yourself to appease your conscience. It is a real life in oneness with Him. It is a life where you keep growing spiritually. How do you know you are a true Christian after years of claiming that you are one? The evidence is in what you are becoming on the inside. Living this oneness with God demands that you actually start living and walking in the Spirit to begin with. And if as a pastor you have the same followers living in their blissful ignorance years after years and you keep patronizing them over and over again it means one of those two things. One is that as a pastor, you are not doing a good job at all. The second thing could be that these people were never Christian to begin with. Either way, as a pastor, you are lousy. Your shallow preaching, your shallow popular written books and every word that proceeds out of your mouth is to keep these people as ignorant as possible and to appeal to the mass. SHAME ON YOU!