Thursday, March 29, 2012

My Complaints ~ Number One

My Complaints

Number One
I have wanted to discuss “church” with folks at several churches and with several people and pastors, but I have been afraid to be criticized or even shunned. I have several issues which I have let fester and need to vent to be healed. It is not just my present church. I was born again 35 years ago. It took some effort and not a few years to pray and study enough to understand what I was encountering in the churches in my city. We so often hear: “If you are looking for the perfect church join it, and then it won’t be perfect anymore.” And: “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.”

I wonder what God says about this? We know he says: “be perfect and holy for I am both.”  We say, “Nothing will happen today that God and I can’t handle.” And then because we are not perfect or holy we sin and count on His mercy for forgiveness, the second 3rd and 13,395 time, counting on another r chance. Another chance at what? It must be perfection, yes? No? I know we fail, I fail a lot and it is too often sin. But in the climate of permissive “Christianity” I am exposed to I find little in the brethren to encourage me to be perfect and holy. But I shall forgive and not blame them, for they have had their own lukewarm brethren/pastors/teachers.

I don’t think many people know what perfect means or what holy means (or lukewarm).

So I go to the Bible and to the internet in search of the perfect and the holy. I am altogether certain that thought they would not boast of it, Paul, Peter, James, and John would confess if pressed that at the end of their lives they were prefect and holy, at least when they put effort into being so, and accomplished these ideals in the flesh by the grace, the gift of God. If not their letters would not be called infallible! You say, “But they were inspired to write them by the Holy Spirit. True enough, leading me to say that being perfect and holy has everything to do with a relationship with the Holy Spirit.

 Romans 8:14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
To be perfect, what does it mean? 

In the Old Testament:
1) complete, whole, entire, sound
   a) complete, whole, entire
   b) whole, sound, healthful
   c) complete, entire (of time)
   d) sound, wholesome, unimpaired, innocent, having integrity
   e) what is complete or entirely in accord with truth and fact (neuter adj/subst)

In the New Testament:
1) brought to its end, finished
2) wanting nothing necessary to completeness
3) perfect
4) that which is perfect
   a) consummate human integrity and virtue
   b) of men
      1) full grown, adult, of full age, mature

I don’t think God has put perfection out of our present reach. I know He has not. Flawless sinlessness, yes, that is presently impossible. But we can be filled by the Holy Spirit as Stephen was, and who is to say we cannot? And if we are then I believe this goes along was to making us be holy.

In the Old Testament:
1) apartness, holiness, sacredness, separateness
   a) apartness, sacredness, holiness
      1) of God
      2) of places
      3) of things
   b) set-apartness, separateness

In the New Testament:
1) most holy thing, a saint

Are we unwilling to seek God’s great ability to change, to repent and become the new creation we are said to be by faith IN Christ?

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
If they are not then are we, am I  IN Christ? Is He in me?

This is the first beef the first of some few issues I have with the church. The Lord addresses it, unless I am mistaken, in this way:


Revelation 3    14And to the angel (messenger) of the assembly (church) in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the trusty and faithful and true Witness, the Origin and Beginning and Author of God's creation:
    15I know your [record of] works and what you are doing; you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot!
    16So, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of My mouth!
    17 For you say, I am rich; I have prospered and grown wealthy, and I am in need of nothing; and you do not realize and understand that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.
    18 Therefore I counsel you to purchase from Me gold refined and tested by fire, that you may be [truly] wealthy, and white clothes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nudity from being seen, and salve to put on your eyes, that you may see.
    19 Those whom I [dearly and tenderly] love, I tell their faults and convict and convince and reprove and chasten [I discipline and instruct them]. So be enthusiastic and in earnest and burning with zeal and repent [changing your mind and attitude].
    20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears and listens to and heeds My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will eat with him, and he [will eat] with Me.
    21 He who overcomes (is victorious), I will grant him to sit beside Me on My throne, as I Myself overcame (was victorious) and sat down beside My Father on His throne.
    22 He who is able to hear, let him listen to and heed what the [Holy] Spirit says to the assemblies (churches).

I think ever decade has had its Laodiceans, and I know I have been cooled down many times by the climate I have encountered in my 3 ½ decades of faith.  Not that it is ultimately anyone’s fault but mine, nonetheless and especially because this is so I must speak out against lukewarmness. If Joel Osteen ever said a marvelous thing it was this (paraphrased): “We should endeavor not to be thermometers registering the temperature around us, but to be on fire for God and thus raise the temperature of the “room’, of those around us.”

God can raise perfect and holy children to into young men and fathers. He can make a congregation perfect and holy. We must believe this and want this desperately as individuals and as men.


James 4
 1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
 2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.
 3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
 4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
 5 Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?
 6 But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
 8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.
 9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.
 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.
James minced no words, yet he wrote this to raise the temperature, not to condemn the brethren.

More to come.

David Severy
P.S. I would like to believe this is not my fault, or even all my fault, but we are in this together.