Watered down gospel. Are we helping God?

This, I hope will make you study your bible more. It is something I have been convicted of lately. It has me studying my bible a little differently now days. It is a little long, but I wish that you would read it and study it for your self. Hit me with your thoughts as well, via email or comments please. I would be interested in your opinions.

OK folks, this is my ‘sermon rant’. I have held off on posting this until I prayed more on it. So let me give it some kind of background or introduction before I start to my ranting and lose you completely.

During the Christmas holidays, I was back home talking to my brother Mike. Mike is the pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Port Arthur Texas. We often turn to talk on our beliefs when we converse, so be the case here.

Mike asked something about how our band was doing in the ministry, and if we had worked out some small problems I had discussed with him on an earlier date. I answered, that things were going great, things had been worked out, but I felt there was a strong conviction given to me about how we do things. – Mike – forgive me if I do not quote our conversation verbatim, but my memory fails me often. LOL

None the less, I shared with him how alter calls, invitations, sinners prayers, skits, etc., etc. ; seemed all to often to me – to kill the worship and movement of the spirit when we play. I gave an example, where we played a small church – we had just taken to the stage and played the first song when the pastor come up on stage, stopped us, and demanded the young men remove their hats. A couple songs later – when we were just beginning to see them worship freely – some of the folks took the stage and began to setup for a ‘funny skit’. As we finished our playing and not a single person moved, clapped, raised their hands, closed their eyes – they just stood there – and were standing because they were told to.

Now, please give me a second to explain my feelings and meaning of the above. I am not trying to measure success by the raising of hands, standing, or clapping – I know people worship differently, but their was a ‘dead’ feeling to the entire room. Not until, a local pastor, whose name I will keep out of this so not to make it look as if he shares my same thoughts and opinion, gave a message that night on how you can worship freely – did the spirit fill the room. We were asked back on stage and there was a complete change in the atmosphere. In fact, we, the band, were moved more than usual – to which I recall some crying on stage at the pure joy of seeing God’s children worship Him.

Then, when all had ended for the night – one of the church members found gum on the new floor. We found ourselves in a panic and emergency to get the carpet clean immediately.

To further explain – I feel we need to preach more of the gospel, worship with our hearts, and praise the name of Jesus without all the man made rules – or should I use the term ‘man made doctrine’?

My thoughts are that we seem to concentrate on things that are truly not as important than that of the Word of God we we gather to worship. We care about the building more, we care about attendance count, if the sermon is too long, when is lunch, the songs were all wrong, not enough people came to the front for the invitation, etc.

We measure our success … notice “our success”, by the number of members, the attendance record, etc. When we should preach and share God’s word no matter the count. The invitation is not guaranteed salvation. The ritualistic walk to the front, the saying of a “sinners prayer”, the baptism, and the new membership will not grant you salvation and in my opinion is all to often taken under pressure or half heartedly. I have read that it is termed “Decisional Regeneration”. (See source at bottom of page)

Not that all those who have come to the front have not faithfully accepted Christ as their saviour, but that we feel we need to help God with His work. God does not need us to help Him. We are to simply preach the Word of God and let the Word, let God do His work.

Since I am not a scholar, and my words, my thoughts, my opinions are sometimes hard for me to convey in the correct meaning and matter… I want to share something I read recently, that I feel shows what I am trying to state here.

“Some time ago there was a young woman under great distress of soul; she came to a very pious Christian man, who said “My dear girl, you must go home and pray.” Well I thought within myself, that is not the Bible way at all. It never says, “Go home and pray.” The poor girl went home; she did pray, and she still continued in distress. Said he, “You must wait, you must read the Scriptures and study them.” That is not the Bible way; that is not exalting Christ; find a great many preachers are preaching that kind of doctrine. They tell a poor convinced sinner, “You must go home and pray, and read the Scriptures; you must attend the ministry;” and so on. Works, works, works—instead of “By grace are ye saved through faith,” If a penitent should come and ask me, “What must I do to be saved?” I would say, “Christ must save you—believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” I would neither direct to prayer, nor reading of the Scriptures nor attending God’s house; but simply direct to faith, naked faith on God’s gospel. Not that I despise prayer—that must come after faith. Not that I speak a word against the searching of the Scriptures—that is an infallible mark of God’s children. Not that I find fault with attendance on God’s word—God forbid! I love to see people there. But none of those things are the way of salvation. It is nowhere written—”He that attendeth chapel shall be saved,” or, “He that readeth the Bible shall be saved.” Nor do I read—”He that prayeth and is baptised shall be saved;” but, “He that believeth,”—he that has a naked faith on the “Man Christ Jesus,”—on his Godhead, on his manhood, is delivered from sin. To preach that faith alone saves, is to preach God’s truth. Nor will I for one moment concede to any man the name of a gospel minister, if he preaches anything as the plan of salvation except faith in Jesus Christ, faith, faith, nothing but faith in his name. But we are, most of us, very much muddled in our ideas. We get so much work stored into our brain, such an idea of merit and of doing, wrought into our hearts, that it is almost impossible for us to preach justification by faith clearly and fully; and when we do, our people won’t receive it. We tell them, “Believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” But they have a notion that faith is something so wonderful, so mysterious, that it is quite impossible that without doing something else they can ever get it. ” (see source at bottom of page)
I feel that our “helping God” by doing invitations, alter calls, etc. Is making people feel like faith alone is not enough. I agree with Rev. Spurgeon’s sermon above – that we get so much ‘work’ stored in our brain, that faith alone feels to easy, to cheap, we question ourselves as to “Is that really all there is to it?”
Yes, it is! Ephesians 2:8 tells us:
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—NIV
The rest, will come after faith has been established. Jesus preached change – He preached faith. I can not find, anywhere in the Bible, where someone – say Paul – did an ‘alter call’, took count, or measured his success. He knew he was doing God’s will, doing his call, and preaching the Word of God. That was good enough.
So, do me a favor please. Take some time to read the sources I have listed below. It is a more educated and less ‘ranting’ than this blog. LOL I only felt that I needed to share this with anyone who reads my blog. That we are saved by grace through faith. It was a gift, that cost the life of God’s only son, Jesus, to us. Freely given, and as freely can be accepted.
Sources:
Rev. C.H. Spurgeon Sermon #34 August 5th, 1855
Decisional Regeneration an article by James E. Adams
Apologies – I do not wish to come across that my opinions are the only true and correct belief. They are mine. I share them here in hope that you may also “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” Phlilippians 2:12. I also want to say thank you to all the people I ranted to in person, LOL Nick, Stephen…you two espescially. You two are my closest brothers in Christ, and I thank Him everyday that we get to serve Him together in song and that He has brought you two guys into my life – and that you actually listen to me when I go off on a rant.

Until later, I hope you find this an interesting thing for you to study your bible on and pray you don’t think I am a lunatic. LOL It is 3 AM and there is a birthday party for a 5 year old I must attend in a few hours…so off to bed I go.

In prayer,
James