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
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
BEAUTIF UL 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!
