In a recent blog, I strongly supported President Bush’s stance against government-supported embryonic stem-cell research. I am a pro-lifer only because of the Bible’s teaching (which I believe to be absolute truth) that life begins as an act of God at conception, and further that the responsibility to terminate life lies solely in His hands. Any society that does not recognize murder as a crime has little basis for any law at all.

This past week, however, President Bush commended Dr. Andrew on Eschenbach (FDA Commissioner) for his decision to allow the “Plan B” pill to be sold over-the-counter to adults. I’m surprised at the President’s tone considering his desire to foster a “culture of life” in America. The data from research on the pill shows divided evidence. The company that produces the pill, Barr Pharmaceuticals, claims that the pill prevents fertilization up to 72 hours after intercourse, but some research has shown that fertilization takes place but implantation is prevented. Essentially, the pill may equal an immediate abortion.

Beyond the issue of aborting life is the issue of sexual responsibility, which America seems to shun as an old-fashioned ideal. I believe that the last forty to fifty years have been a period of rediculous cutting lose of all responsibility in sexuality. Yes, I’m for sex only in the context of a covenant marriage between a man and a woman, but the issue is larger today than mere domestic partners and pre-marital sex. We live in a society akin to that of ancient Corinth or Ephesus. Sexual activity outside the bonds of matrimony has become idol-worship for Americans. Promiscuity and perversion is simply part of our culture.

This pill will further encourage a stripping away of sexual fidelity and responsibility. Sexual predators will see an easy out - lure a young girl into intercourse, then have her take a pill. Whatever happened to the very simple, common sense idea that if we reserve sex for a God-ordained scenario of marriage only, we’ll stay out of trouble?

The bleeding hearts among us will instantly cry “freedom” for women who are inconvenienced by the natural (that means God-designed) results of their own choices. They will also cry “tyranny” toward women who have been victimized through rape or incest. But the bottom line for me has little to do with the woman in question. I have the utmost compassion for a woman who has been the victim of rape or incest, but the reality remains that life only begins if God wills! Think of the face of that beautiful baby that comes forth from the young woman’s womb who became pregnant by no volition of her own. God declared He wanted no child to ever suffer and wants them all to be saved and to live in heaven with Him forever.

Mr. President, I believe we not only need a “culture of life” which would have been supported better by keeping this pill out of the hands of irresponsible people, but we also must have a revival of a “culture of responsibility.”

I know that we cannot change the hearts of sexually irresponsible people by making abortion (even in pill form) illegal. Nevertheless, conscience compels me to speak out continuously on behalf of the innocent unborn and young girls, who will really bear the brunt of this decision. Sex is not a toy! A pill cannot provide the easy out from the emotional damage done by sexual irresponsibility.

Mr. President, I love you and pray for you daily. I agree with your basic philosophy of life, but you kind of blew it on this one.

Have you ever read Acts 15? Many people find themselves skipping the chapter, or at best, lazily dozing their way through it to get to the excitement of chapter 16 where Paul received his great “Macedonian Call.” But I believe that there are thousands of churches in America that need to hear and heed the message of Acts 15.

Every church is a family and every family has a certain personality. You know families that are quiet and peaceful and others who are reactive and loud. There are families that are happy-go-lucky and families that always seem to be on edge and involved in unnecessary drama. The same is true with churches. Every church has a certain atmosphere that is determined by its overall attitude toward ministry and growth.

Let me give you the short version… Paul and Barnabas were doing awesome things for God, winning the lost to Christ, and establishing local churches across the region. Then the Judaizers showed up - a group of people who were telling all of these new converts that they had to be circumcised into Judaism before they could be saved. Note the change in atmospheres in the following passage…

“And being brought on their way by the church, they passed through Phenice and Samaria, declaring the conversion of the Gentiles: and they caused great joy unto all the brethren. And when (Paul and Barnabas) were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church, and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that God had done with them…” (verses 3-4)

Notice, growth is happening. People are being saved, churches are being started. After thousands of years of obstinate resistance, finally the Gentiles are submitting to Jehovah and receiving Jesus as Savior. The Jewish Christians must have been thrilled! They must have been overwhelmed with a sense of triumph as they watched God’s Spirit doing such great miracles in their midst. But then we read…

“But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses.” (verse 5)

Imagine pulling hot, fresh-baked brownies from the oven, covering them with a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream, drizzling warm chocolate syrup over the top and adding a touch of whipped cream and then… seasoning it with several tablespoons of garlic salt. Is your mouth watering now?

One of the great frustrations of ministry is when into the mix of Spirit-filled joy over what God is doing, someone misuses their spiritual saltiness like the Pharisees did in this passage. They were the rule-keepers, there to make sure that all of this growth was done according to the book (their own book, by the way - a system of humanly-originated rules designed for the purpose of bottlenecking ministry with extra paperwork).

One of the biggest problems with this dousing of spiritual flames is that it cannot be ignored. Verse six records that “the apostles and elders came together to consider this matter.” Then all of chapter fifteen concerns itself with one of the earliest church councils. Imagine, the Spirit-filled leaders of the early church, ready to take on the world, taking a break from their zealous pursuit of the lost to consider a matter brought up by… joysuckers.

Verse three records that all the brethren had great joy over what God was doing. Three verses later, those same brethren had to stop to deal with the complaint. Like poking a helium balloon with a hot needle, the pharisaical believers (they were saved according to Scripture) had managed to deflate the zeal of the fledgling church at a crucial time.

Why do people do this? Why, when things seem to start going well, does someone have to call what is happening into question? I believe there are two key words that must be noticed to understand the phenomenon. One is the word “Pharisees.” Remember their past? They were always rule-keepers before, nitpickers with an agenda for keeping everyone in line. They had been saved, but their old natures kept hanging around. Then the word “Gentiles.” Those Barbarians outside the Judaic covenant people who never seemed to want to live by the rules.

The same thing happens in Baptist churches (and others I’m sure) across the land. God begins to move and all of a sudden all of those new people start to come in. There is a breath of fresh air, a new kind of leadership, a fresh sense of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. The only problem is, when new people come in things… change! Ah, there it is. That pesky word nobody is fully comfortable with. Change.

When we speak of “change” in church we begin to envision a Christian heavy metal band, doctrinal corruption, speaking in tongues, and a plethora of other fears. We react with radical and irrational fear to change. Why? Because change is something that cannot be regulated or controlled. And nobody likes to lose control.

My wife and I have watched with glee as our tiny little baby has grown into a four-year-old. We wanted her to talk, now we’d like a little peace and quiet now and then. She’s growing. Do you know what the definition of growth is? It’s change. If our eight-pound infant had never changed, she would never have grown. You know what else comes with this change and growth? A loss of control on our part. Someday, she will be full-grown and we’ll have to let go. She’ll enter the world on her own and we’ll have little or no control over what she does with her life. We might have influence, but not control.

How do you react when change comes, when growth occurs, when God seems to be doing something to which you are not accustomed? Do you rejoice like the brethren in Jerusalem? Or do you get out the rule-book to make sure things have been done correctly? Families don’t sit down and examine Robert’s Rules of Order every time they make a decision. They make it together in faith. They are a dynamic unit. And so is a church.

Let’s get on board with what God is doing. We’ll be discerning of what is biblical and what is not, but we’ll not put a fresh movement of God under a microscope to be so intensely evaluated that we cannot enjoy the process. May God give us hearts of joy to watch Him at work!

The other day, Angie and I happened to tune in to one of America’s most popular preachers. I’m usually careful not to jump to judgment when it comes to another man’s message. I know the pressure placed on pastors to invent and deliver the perfect message, but I could not help but become a little upset about the blatant misuse of Scripture.

The speaker quoted Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge.” In context, this verse refers to the spiritual ignorance of people who assume they can worship God and other gods at the same time with no contradiction. This preacher, however, applied the verse to eating healthier. His explanation was that because we are ignorant of the content of food today, we are physically being destroyed. His more specific application had something to do with cold cuts, hot dogs, and other processed meats.

Granted, I need to eat healthier, but is it okay to take verses and apply them in the way they sound rather than in the way they were intended? It reminded me of the old saying that “a text without a context is a pretext.” I have no problem with preaching a fresh and relevant Bible-based message about eating healthy, but there are much better texts to be used.

Another popular preacher chooses verses from translations to make applications not according to the literal meaning of the verse, but according to which translation makes his point best. I promise, I try not to be picky. I can get along with preachers from a variety of perspectives, but I’m offended when God’s book becomes our little box from which we draw a word of encouragement for each day. When we handle Scripture in this way, we miss the truth of it.

Great men have endured great persecution to defend a literal, historical-grammatical interpretive approach to Scriptures. That is, we ought to interpret Scriptures according to the historical context and the grammatical meaning rather than simply the context of our modern felt need. Paul admonished young Timothy to be very careful to “rightly divide the word of truth.”

As a surgeon with a delicate procedure, so preachers must approach every sermon as though eternal life depended on it for some lost soul. It is a grave offense to utilize Scripture in a haphazard way. We must handle the word of life carefully. God wants to speak to us today through His word, which is always fresh and always relevant, but we need not help Him out in the task of making it more relevant than it already is.

Jesus: “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil (one)… Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” –John 17:15, 17

The church is a movement started by Jesus consisting of people who are “called out” together into one body in a single locality charged with the assignment of bringing the glory of God to all peoples in their community and in their world. Elsewhere the Bible calls God’s people “peculiar,” signifying that we are God’s alone and therefore are to be different and distinct in some way from the world.

There are basically three strategies when it comes to living up to our role as a “called out” people. One is isolation whereby we disconnect ourselves from the world around us and move into a spiritual ivory tower. We do this when we establish rules of righteousness that we can easily live by and use to assign others to a notch lower than ourselves.

The second strategy is imitation whereby we become like the world in order to reach the world. This seems to be a very popular approach today and it certainly builds large churches, but it fails to enable us to live up to the full potential of our calling as separate and distinct from the world.

The third strategy is insulation and infiltration in which we insulate ourselves with the truth of God’s Word and then carry that truth into the world with us. God calls very few into full-time ministry. He leaves the rest in their lives as His newly-called missionaries. Your workplace is a mission field, as well as your family and your neighborhood. If you isolate yourself from the world, you’ll never reach it. If you imitate the world, you might “reach” some but you’ll never bear lasting fruit. But if you insulate your life with God’s Word, then infiltrate the world with that truth, God will receive the glory!

“Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied.” -Acts 9:31

Most Christians are aware that Saul of Tarsus was the persecutor of the church who was converted to Christ and became one of the first and primary missionaries to the Gentile world. But I think we sometimes underestimate the impact Saul actually had. According to Acts 9:31, when Saul became a Christian and stopped persecuting the church, “then the churches had rest.”

We’re all going to leave an impact on the world of some kind. Having influence is universal, but the kind of influence we have is what is important. Saul left carnage in his wake, but Paul left the gospel in every city where he walked. Saul persecuted the church at large, but Paul established churches in Jesus’ name. As a matter of fact, the churches (notice the plural usage) multiplied.

You may not be a persecutor of the church, but you may not be helping the cause either. All of your life will be spent influencing others either for or against Christ, whether you realize it or not. We cannot shirk this responsibility, it is simply a given. What influence has your life made so far? Does there need to be a change in you so that there will be a change in the impact you leave behind?