How many of us remember a world where the Bible was commonplace in public schools and government buildings.
Do you remember when every school day, sporting event, and governmental meeting was opened with prayer or at the very least a moment of silence. How about when definitions were simple, logical, purposeful, and not altered to fit special interests at the cost of safety and morality.
Remember when immorality was seen as shameful and not celebrated and advertised and when the church called you to repentance rather than making you comfortable in your sin. Do you remember a time when we sought to be biblically correct and not politically correct. What happened?
The church went silent. It went to sleep before God so that it could be woke before man. We have cowered in the face of being called bigoted, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, judgmental, and hypocrites.
We have surrendered the public spaces to those who told us to keep our faith limited to the four walls of our homes and churches. We have bent the knee to political correctness, globalism, universalism, and harmony.
We have allowed the redefining of our history and allowed our enemies to highlight our shortcomings and erase our accomplishments. We have turned the house of God into a rock concert crossed with an amusement park. We watered down the word so that the seats are filled while the hearts are empty.
We traded the uncomfortable truth that makes us change for the better for a more comfortable feeling of butterfly spirituality in our tummies and flames of passion that lead to flames of hell. We redefined what it means to be good while ignoring the fact that Christ himself said none are good but God.
We redefined love so that it is all about the self and sexual gratification rather than sacrifice and service to something greater than a fleeting feeling. We turned our eyes to politicians and eagerly welcomed handouts of entitlement that come accompanied by chains of enslavement and obedience to government rather than God.
We allowed the Bible to be torn in two imagining that the God spoken of in the Old Testament is different from the God made flesh of the New Testament. We then eliminated the uncomfortable parts that show the truth of our fallenness and depravity so we can feel good but not have to be good.
We cannot blame all of this solely on the Pastor in the pulpit himself. Although he does bear a heavy burden for the failure of leadership in facing down the lies of the spirit of the age. We as the body, also bears responsibility for our own capitulation as well.
We sought out churches that make us feel comfortable as we are but do not challenge us to be more.
We like Peter have spoken boldly in the safety of the upper room surrounded by fellow believers but have fallen to cowardice when challenged in public and in the courtyard of political leaders, and false teachers.
We fail to open the Bible at our bedside, now covered in dust from lack of use. learn it and hold our leaders or ourselves accountable to. We have taken what a man on TV tells us is biblical truth because he looks handsome, has emotional music behind him, and strategically placed puppets in front of him trained to say Amen even though the scripture he offers is limited, partialized, and out of context.
It is said that soft times make soft men. Well, that is truly evident in the West. We call it suffering for the Gospel when someone doesn’t like our Facebook post while the rest of the world is going to prison for speaking the truth, now labeled “Hate Speech”, or being tortured for being found with a fragment of the Bible.
Slowly though true suffering is coming to our own shores and what the Church needs now more than ever is real Christian Warriors clad in the whole armor of God, armed not with a gun but with the sword of the Spirit. We are called to boldly proclaim the truth of Christ in love (Ephesians 4:15). We are commanded to go out into all the world and share the Gospel (Mark 16:15). We are told to be salt and light unto the world (Matthew 5:13-16) and to not hide that light (Matthew 5:15). As we fight, we must ensure that as C.S. Lewis once said, “We are fighting for THE Faith not just our faith.”
How do we fight for THE FAITH? We must open the Word and say to ourselves as J. Vernon McGee did before he opened his Bible each time “He is right and I am wrong”. Remember Truth is not about your view of fair.
We do not defeat the darkness in our own power. We do not defeat it by what we heard someone else say or by what we get from the echo chamber of social media. We defeat it by being in direct and personal relationship with the Lord and by being personally knowledgeable. We defeat it by empowering our children with a reason to believe what they believe and not just telling them to believe.
Today I challenge you to arise and commit to be silent no more. Encourage and demand that your Pastor as well is no longer silent. Refuse to allow your faith to be limited by anyone to only the walls of your home and church.
Ensure the voice of your finances also is only given into the storehouses of true and Godly churches who preach the totality of the Word. Pray with one another openly and in public wherever you are that others will be emboldened by your faith.
Speak boldly now while you are able lest that freedom be lost for lack of its use and the memory of its existence becomes but a fairytale told with the words “Once upon a time…” Christopher Dion of Rusted Knight Ministries resides in Bandera.
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