A PUNDIT in today's western usage is a person thought to be very well informed; an expert or authority; one who believes that everything can be known and should be pronounced upon . . . and he's the one to do the pronouncing.
We used to scorn such people as "know it alls". "Full of hot air," we said. But now we not only don't seem to mind their pontificating, we look for it. One person writes with all seriousness: "The key to a successful adult life lies in surrounding yourself with experts, a master person for every need."
Some say that we Americans live in a "punditocracy" - described as a society where we no longer have to learn or think, exert ourselves, or take risks. Life is manageable and secure to the extent that we choose the right people to give us answers to our questions. And so we are very much "pundit dependent".
Sadly, Christian workers can also be the same way. Experts and specialists keep telling us that we just can't make it without them; that we really need them if we are going to experience growth, usefulness, effectiveness, or just about anything else. They are ever ready to enlist us in a seminar, conference, or retreat, a CD or DVD series, a radio or TV program, book, journal, web site . . .
J. R. DeWitt writes: One occasionally gets the idea from some who preach and write that the whole of the Christian age awaited the advent of their ministries; that it is with them and the burden of what they have to say that the Christian faith began to make sense and to be understood in all its implications. But such an approach is entirely unacceptable, and those who speak in this way, introducing at the same time their own absurdities as though they were the gospel of our Lord Jesus, are to be reproached and their teaching repudiated.
This sounds to me like the days of the Old Testament prophets. The same kind of scenario. God's spokesmen had relinquished their ordained roles to become instead, "Pundit Prophets". They went about speaking comfortable words . . . their own ideas . . . none of it true but all of it accepted by Good's pundit-dependent people. In seeming amazement and disbelief, God asks: But who has stood in the counsel of the Lord, that he should see and hear His word? Who has given heed to His word and listened? The answer: "No one." Not the prophets. Not the priests. And certainly not the people. A few verses later: But if they had stood in my counsel and had caused my people to hear my words, then they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds" (Jeremiah 23:18,22).
Could it be that sometimes ineffectiveness in our spiritual walk and work is the result of this pundit dependency? Does it not come from the ridiculous expectation that worldly wisdom can produce spiritual fruit . . . Godly achievement . . . holy lives?
And so I ask myself. And I ask you. Where are we looking? To whom are we going for our answers?
The temporal satisfaction and the eternal significance of our lives depends on our answer.
It's For You To Decide
You can do what millions of others have done. You can settle down to the monotony of American life, get married, raise children, work, retire, die, and be forgotten. Or, you can become a pioneer, trail blazer, invest your life in a great adventure for God, be the first to give some unreached tribe the Gospel, and be remembered forever.
It's for you to decide.
- author unknown
It's for you to decide.
- author unknown
I Heard It Again
"I just admire you missionaries SO much! You give up everything to serve the Lord. I could never do something like that!"
Such a telling statement. And then in the same conversation: "How do you missionaries go to those dangerous places and terrible climates and yet work there so happily?
I'm not sure that a response will move the person who is asking off dead center or toward those places - people generally cling to their self-protective excuses - but I'll try. The big part of the answer is this : such missionaries have settled the survival question.
Those who ask these "how" and "why" questions clearly have not thought much about it, and so they think that missionaries are either super spiritual or completely crazy, while they somehow admiring them and faintly wishing that they could be like them.
Our "survival question" answer gives insight into the way Jesus lived and conducted His ministry. "Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28). Jesus was able to live as He lived and minister as He ministered because He had settled the survival question.
We say, "I can't live without this or that," meaning, "I could never survive without it." This just shows how deceptive has been the spirit of this age subverting what is at the essence of the Christian life. That is: Christians cannot live authentically without the cross. "Whoever does not forsake all [that everyone else is living for, longing for, and cannot do without] and take up his cross, cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33).
To be Jesus' disciple means to be like Him in embracing the cross and in His will to sacrifice self that the Father might be glorified through the worship of those so redeemed. This means that when I no longer ask, "How am I going to survive?" I am finally free to ask, "How can I serve?" and like Jesus, I move into all of life with freedom, authority, integrity and single-minded purpose.
Someone has said, "There's something worse than dying; it's going through life with nothing to die for." But I think there's something even worse than that. It's going through life never having died! Indeed, having never died, we have nothing to die for!
Have YOU settled the survival question? To the extent that there is any prior commitment to self, you haven't - and you will always be amazed when you see in someone else the joy and adventure of total commitment. In fact, I predict that you will always be more saddened when you realize that the person you watch with such admiration could have been you.
Such a telling statement. And then in the same conversation: "How do you missionaries go to those dangerous places and terrible climates and yet work there so happily?
I'm not sure that a response will move the person who is asking off dead center or toward those places - people generally cling to their self-protective excuses - but I'll try. The big part of the answer is this : such missionaries have settled the survival question.
Those who ask these "how" and "why" questions clearly have not thought much about it, and so they think that missionaries are either super spiritual or completely crazy, while they somehow admiring them and faintly wishing that they could be like them.
Our "survival question" answer gives insight into the way Jesus lived and conducted His ministry. "Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28). Jesus was able to live as He lived and minister as He ministered because He had settled the survival question.
We say, "I can't live without this or that," meaning, "I could never survive without it." This just shows how deceptive has been the spirit of this age subverting what is at the essence of the Christian life. That is: Christians cannot live authentically without the cross. "Whoever does not forsake all [that everyone else is living for, longing for, and cannot do without] and take up his cross, cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33).
Someone has said, "There's something worse than dying; it's going through life with nothing to die for." But I think there's something even worse than that. It's going through life never having died! Indeed, having never died, we have nothing to die for!
Have YOU settled the survival question? To the extent that there is any prior commitment to self, you haven't - and you will always be amazed when you see in someone else the joy and adventure of total commitment. In fact, I predict that you will always be more saddened when you realize that the person you watch with such admiration could have been you.
The only hope
I am more convinced than ever that the onset and then the ongoing significance of such revival in and through any of us will be solely, "By Prayer" - Philippians 4:6.
This that you will see did seem to start with just one man. Please watch this brief clip and consider its closing question:
Prayer Changes the Man
And
whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be
glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it - John 14:13-14.
In all our praying, however, it is important that we keep in mind that God will not alter His eternal purposes at the word of a man. We do not pray in order to persuade God to change His mind. Prayer is not an assault upon the reluctance of God, nor an effort to secure a suspension of His will for us or for those for whom we pray. Prayer is not intended to overcome God and "move His arm." God will never be other than Himself, no matter how many people pray, nor how long nor how earnestly.
God's love desires the best for all of us, and He desires to give us the best at any cost. He will open rivers in desert places, still turbulent waves, quiet the wind, bring water from the rock, send an angel to release an apostle from prison, feed an orphanage, open a land long closed to the gospel. All these things and a thousand others He has done and will do in answer to prayer, but only because it had been His will to do it from the beginning. No one persuades Him.
What the praying man does is to bring his will into line with the will of God so God can do what He has all along been willing to do. Thus prayer changes the man and enables God to change things in answer to man's prayer. A. W. Tozer. The Price of Neglect, pp. 51-52
In all our praying, however, it is important that we keep in mind that God will not alter His eternal purposes at the word of a man. We do not pray in order to persuade God to change His mind. Prayer is not an assault upon the reluctance of God, nor an effort to secure a suspension of His will for us or for those for whom we pray. Prayer is not intended to overcome God and "move His arm." God will never be other than Himself, no matter how many people pray, nor how long nor how earnestly.
God's love desires the best for all of us, and He desires to give us the best at any cost. He will open rivers in desert places, still turbulent waves, quiet the wind, bring water from the rock, send an angel to release an apostle from prison, feed an orphanage, open a land long closed to the gospel. All these things and a thousand others He has done and will do in answer to prayer, but only because it had been His will to do it from the beginning. No one persuades Him.
What the praying man does is to bring his will into line with the will of God so God can do what He has all along been willing to do. Thus prayer changes the man and enables God to change things in answer to man's prayer. A. W. Tozer. The Price of Neglect, pp. 51-52
Spending Yourself On Yourself
This is definitely not the Christian life, yet committed followers of Christ are sometimes viewed this way. “Get a life!” they say. Spend your money on yourself. Spend your vacation on yourself. Spend your retirement on yourself. You deserve it. You’ve earned it. Spend yourself on yourself!
But Jesus also speaks to us. In all four Gospels He warns, “The best way to destroy your life is to ‘get’ it!” (John 12:25). Matthew, Mark, and Luke similarly record, “What good does it do to get a life, and then lose it?” (e.g. Mark. 8:36)
We see how irrational this is when we understand that none of the things in life that we handle so casually are even OURS to begin with. Yes, we are talking stewardship here because according to the Bible, a steward cares for someone else’s property.
“Get a Life!” is then bad advice for a Christian on two counts: it is anti-discipleship and it is just plain wrong to steal or misuse another’s property.
This is something that we all spend our lifetimes learning and relearning but we make great strides when we acknowledge these two things and intentionally allow God to direct us. He will then lead us to places and into situations where we “get” the life God has for us – one of richness and abundance of blessing.
by Ray Shive in the Heartbeat section of Vital Signs newsletter
the quarterly update of TEAMS for Medical Missions
The Spirit's Sword - There Is None Like It
In I Samuel 21, when David was running from Saul, he came to
Ahimelech and asked for a weapon. When the priest had nothing to offer him but
the sword of Goliath, David said to him, "There is none like that. Bring
it to me" (21:9). Later in the Scriptures, the writer of Hebrews speaks of
another sword; one that is alive, powerful, and sharper than any other (4:12).
Oswald Chambers
spiritualizes a parallel between these two weapons: "When Christian
workers use the Word of God, they do not damage themselves or hurt others'
souls, but they do great damage to the kingdom of the Devil and bring benefit
to the souls of human beings."
Some years ago, my
wife and I visited a place - a kingdom - where Satan’s control is virtually
uncontested; a kingdom of 32 million where 99.8% are Muslim. Only 0.010%
profess to be born-again Christians. This was, and is still today, a place shut
up tight against avowed missionary work and any open preaching of the Gospel.
The Devil's
control of that part of his kingdom is pervasive; the religion that enslaves
these millions seems monolithic and indestructible. It is unquestionably
rock-like, but it is also one that is just waiting to be smashed in pieces by
the mighty hammer (another wonderful metaphor) of God's Word. It does seem to be
invulnerable, but it is really an obstacle to be thrust through . . . cut down .
. . utterly destroyed by the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God.
And it has begun
to happen. Even in that impregnable fortress of Islam we met people and
families who had been themselves penetrated with the sword of God's Word. We
also met some who right at that time were starting to feel its keen edge.
After that trip I
was more certain than ever that the mighty Word of God is the only means by which
damage can be done to an Islamic kingdom . . . or any other realm where the
Enemy holds sway. And it is the ONLY way that eternal benefit can be brought to
the souls of human beings.
It is “the power
of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.” It is “the Sword of the Spirit”
(Romans 1:16; Ephesians 6:17).
What are you up
against today? Is there something of the Devil's kingdom that for you seems
unassailable . . . invincible . . . unconquerable?
Say then of the Sword
of the Spirit: “There is none like it. Bring it to me.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)